Gold closed at $999 on Tuesday. Then, yesterday, it closed down $2. There’s a time to buy gold; and there’s a time to sell it. Which time is it? The question rose with the gold price itself. It needs an answer.

The price of gold today, adjusted for inflation, is about where it was 26 years ago. After peaking out at nearly $2,000 (again, in 2009 dollars), in 1980, the price fell to the $1,000 level (in today’s money) in 1983.

We were gold bulls back then. And we were idiots. It was the end of the gold bull cycle, not the beginning. The gold price fell for the next 17 years.

Some people draw the wrong lesson from this experience – that gold is always a bad place for your money.

Today’s Financial Times:

“In spite of low interest rates, that make owning gold cheap, the opportunity cost of owning it is

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The ISM Manufacturing Index increased to 52.9 in August, better than the expected 50.7 estimate, after increasing to 48.9 in July.  This is the highest level since June of 2007 as the index had been below 50 for the past 18 months, thus ending the streak of contraction towards recovery in the manufacturing sector.  11 of 18 manufacturing industries are reporting growth when comparing August to July: Textile Mills; Apparel, Leather & Allied Products; Paper Products; Miscellaneous Manufacturing; Printing & Related Support Activities; Computer & Electronic Products; Transportation Equipment; Nonmetallic Mineral Products; Electrical Equipment, Appliances & Components; Fabricated Metal Products; and Chemical Products.

Construction Spending in July edged down by 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $985.0 billion, and was expected to remain flat following a 0.1% increase in July (revised downward from a 0.3% gain).  Private construction is up by 0.1% over the month, while

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by Edward Hugh: Barcelonabr /br /br /The Russian ruble strengthened the most in more than three months against the dollar yesterday (gaining 1.7 percent to 32.2247 per dollar at one point) as oil rebounded above $60 a barrel and OAO Sberbank reported better-than-expected earnings. Sberbank shares jumped 5.1 percent after first-quarter net income turned out to be above analyst estimates. But the rise was also helped by the fact that Russia’s central bank spent approximately $2 billion from reserves to try to stop the ruble from falling yesterday, taking central bank reserve spending over the two working days since they lowered interest rates half a percantage point on Friday to around $4 billion, a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchiveamp;sid=aTqgrOY1vdEo"according to reports in the newspaper Kommersant/a.br /br /Russia’s central bank cut its main interest rates for the fourth time in less than three months at the end of last week after the government estimated the ...

An interesting analysis on the performance of the S&P 500 Index during various phases of the economic cycle was highlighted in a recent report by Citigroup Investment Research & Analysis, courtesy of US Global Investors.

The table below shows the performance of the Index in 15 complete economic cycles since 1921 and part of the current economic cycle. The performance has been broken down into five phases of each economic cycle: early expansion, middle expansion, late expansion, early contraction, and late contraction.

Interestingly, the average and median figures show that most of the stock market performance occurs in the early and middle expansion phases, and in the late contraction phase.

In order for this study to be of use one obviously needs to know where in the economic cycle we

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My latest column is up at RealMoney. It marks the last of a several part “wallflower” series on stocks with limited analyst coverage on Wall Street.

Standard Parking (STAN) is a leading national provider of parking facility management services. It provides on-site management services at multilevel and surface parking facilities for all major markets of the parking industry. Its properties span 2,100 locations, containing over one million parking spaces, in over 330 cities across the U.S. and Canada.

The company grows both by acquisitions and by winning new contracts. In the first quarter, Standard Parking completed the acquisition of Chicago’s GO Parking. Recent business wins include valet and self-parking services at the Trump International Hotel and Towers in Chicago and the parking operations at five facilities in Queens, New York, by the Greater Jamaica Development Corp.

Furthermore, because the company offers a wide range of services, it can often expand the business

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1 word comes to mind of late - complacency. Today's medium sized sell off had me thinking of the last time the market sold off in a meaningful way. The fact I could not remember is a case in point. It looks like we had 1 day back there on April 11th but other than that since the quarter turned on April 1, it's been all good. Despite almost all bad on the economic front. No wonder everyone berates us with "it's all priced in", and "all up from here". If you review this week's postings you see 1 theme - selling and building cash. I'm back to nearly 20% in cash, and about 18% short exposure which is a very hedged exposure. I still am aghast this market does not treat $120+ crude more seriously - as I wrote ...

I have not written in some time about a theme that I think is an important one. Skeptics could probably argue that the reason I haven’t written about it was that the recent facts have contradicted my belief, though the fact is just that I haven’t gotten around to it. So, to put the cards back on the table, it is time to talk about valuation cycles. Many people can tell you that the average market P/E over the long term is something like 15 times. Of course, “average” doesn’t imply that the P/E is always 15. About half the time it is higher, and about half the time it is lower. The trick is figuring out in advance which half is which. In behavioral finance, some would argue that the market follows long-term trends in valuation. Rising valuations spark investor interest, and additional investors adding money to the market causes ...