Stock Indices

We believe a series of lower closes beneath the 200-day moving average (currently 2752 in the March futures) could be enough to awaken the sleeping bear from his short hibernation.

Mining stocks are facing an opportunity they haven’t seen many times in the past 8-years!

Take a look! The economy is slowing and corporate profits have peaked so how could stocks possibly be entering a new bull market and making a run to new all-time highs in the months ahead?

Whether you are a businessman or an ordinary citizen concerned about what’s going on in the world, the yield curve is something you should care about as it is probably the single best indicator of an upcoming recession and where the markets are headed.

Some veteran investors and traders see the current market situation as a repeat of early-2008, in which stocks fell while gold went up. That being said the bull market’s top isn’t necessarily in but risk:reward does favor long-term bears.

Don’t fall in love with this stock market rally. With most major averages having achieved sub-20% declines in recent weeks, stocks are likely in the early stages of a bear market. Although stocks could go marginally higher in the short-term, they ultimately will likely continue to slip sideways and slide downwards to a bottom somewhere around the 1,500-1,800 level on the S&P 500,

It is a pure leap of faith to believe that if the Plunge Protection Team is indeed directly intervening, that it is acting in the interests of the average investor.

We make the case in the charts below that we could be near a bottom, which represents a great buying opportunity. A recovery could start as soon as this week.

There is no question a dark cloud is looming over U.S. financial markets and that cloud just got a little darker over the past two days as key support levels in all of the crucial equity indices were violated. This sends a loud and clear signal to pay attention. Even the darkest of clouds has a silver lining, though, so my goal here is to highlight some contrarian points of view on an otherwise gloomy market perspective.

It is the overall TREND of the market which determines a bull or bear market and, currently, that trend is still rising. Such will not always be the case, however, and we may now be in the process of a trend change. I am not talking about a 20% correction type bear market. I am talking about a devastating, blood-letting, retirement crushing, "I am never investing again," type decline of 40%, 50%, or more. Here's why.