What happened to the newsletter?

Hi there, my user name is "victorh". Thanks for the offer of a referral"

S&P 500's Put/Call ratio has plunged to 2018 lows., does this bode well for a continued rally in the near term?

Interesting article about the coming Global Liquidity Crisis. When you initially click on the below link it will offer you the option to sign up to Evernote. Just click "Skip" and you can then read the article. 

https://www.evernote.com/shard/s674/sh/9dc6dcf0-8de7-4838-a50d-1610be7e9a05/f99b517a0a2ca1a650f113c0253d440c

How can the COT's be bullish, when the Kitco site says this "Hedge funds and money managers added a hefty 13,931 contracts to their net short position in the week to July 31, bringing it to 41,087 contracts, the biggest since records became publicly available in 2006, data showed on Friday."

So how can the COT's be declining meaning less shorting when the net short position is the largest since 2006?  

Why COT's can't be trusted. Interesting article at the link below explaining  the history of COT's and why they aren't that useful especially during market declines. 

http://www.321gold.com/editorials/radomski/radomski072718.html  

I understand the COTs could go lower but if we are in some sort of bottoming phase is it normal for short interest to be at the highest levels since 2006 and for open interest in futures to be rising, not falling?

COT not that bullish. I thought the 75k level of the COT's was getting more bullish but the following comments from a major publication today seems to suggest the opposite. Comments?

"Hedge funds and other speculative investors have increased wagers that gold prices will fall over the past five consecutive weeks, pushing them to their highest level ever during the week ended July 17, according to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Data going back to 2006. 

Adding to worries, analysts say open interest in gold futures has been rising quickly as prices have fallen.

“This suggests that short sellers are pressing their bets,” Sundial Capital Research’s Jason Goepfert wrote in a note to clients last week. Typically the opposite happens when gold prices are bottoming out."

Gold COT not really bullish. Last week that it was the "non-commercial specs" that went shorter - and again this week we see they added 12K short OI and took off 7.8K of their long OI.

Unlike most times... there was a huge chunk of puts that ended up in the money on this last options X.

If you look at today's dis aggregated report you will see that the "managed funds" added 11K short and less than 1K long OI. That isn't what I want to see.

In the Jan-April time frame the non-commercial specs were averaging around 3.3 to one long to short. As of today's report it was 1.92 to 1 long to short. Ever since I've been watching the COT's rising prices have been dependent upon SPEC interest.

I am a bit confused as when you say sell the TER May 18th 32 puts and buy the 31 calls how is that a spread? You would have to sell the May 18th 32 puts naked which requires a lot of margin. For TDameritrade to sell 10 TER MAy 18th puts at .70 on a naked basis would take in $700 and require margin of $5,900.       

Actually too bad you weren't super bearish as when u made that post that was just before the market made that huge  drop. So is the takeaway the MA's aren't that useful at critical junctures? 

As per the discussion earlier it can be quite expensive to sell naked SPX calls but there is a much cheaper way to accomplish the same thing. For example selling a naked 1215 strike put expiring tomorrow April 4 for $13 will require $52,000 in margin for each option sold naked.

However the margin required for selling naked options on the ES futures are much smaller for some reason. Using the same example above selling a naked put with a strike price of 1215 on the ES futures only requires $6,200 margin. The added advantage of dealing with ES options is they trade all night so you can get out anytime versus not being able to trade until the normal market open of 9:30 EST. 

It went x-dividend is why

Does a evening star pattern in EUR/USD mean the USD is potentially ready to go up? 

Fed minutes released 2pm today Feb 21

That Gold chart Big Picture chart is from clivemaund.com. He is as wrong almost as often as he is right. Steve and Matt seem to think Gold will break out at some point this year and I agree although impossible to know exactly when and if the breakout will be a true one or a false breakout. Best to wait for price action to confirm things. This week may be rough for Gold with China closed for the New Year holiday as in the past whenever China is closed Gold has a habit of getting hit.         

Big picture observations on multiple markets   https://rambus1.com/2018/02/11/weekend-report-the-topping-process-begins-the-bubble-finds-its-pin/

Got rid of a lot of weak hands in the PM stocks today. Earlier huge losses were more than cut in half by the close. Hopefully, that actually means something. GDX bottomed at the exact same level as it did in July at $20.83. Volume at 100 million was the highest since April .

Stage should be set for a mean reversion snapback rally to $22.50-$23.00 next week. GDX down 7 straight and 9 of the last 10. Closed below lower Bollinger 4 straight sessions. Most oversold since December 2016.

Although the early Tuesday morning spike low was 2593 in the regular trading session hours, in the overnight session for the ES futures it was a lot lower at at 2529. Do you think we will retest the 2529 level?