Gold added about five bucks to its price from the time that trading began in the Far East Thursday…and the London a.m. gold fix. Then from there, it gave back seven dollars going into the p.m. gold fix…and after that, it gained over eight dollars until half past lunchtime in New York. Then a really serious seller showed up taking nine bucks off the price between then and the close of electronic trading in New York. It was pretty choppy trading all around…and it was obvious that every rally ran into serious resistance. The same could be said for silver. But according to the usual New York gold commentator [who is not Dennis Gartman, by the way], volume in gold was heavy…estimated at 140,658 contracts…”which involved a 21.6% surge in the last half-hour. The presence of such determined buyers and sellers during the floor session is unusual.”

Wednesday’s open interest in

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If you have been reading this blog for a while you know that THE CROSSHAIRS TRADER promotes simplicity.  Am I alone in thinking this way?  I do not believe so!  I would hazard to guess that most all, if not all, professional traders believe that successful trading boils down to having and following a very simple set of rules. 

Here is a very short list of comments from very reliable sources—successful professional traders.

 

John F. Carter:  “It is important to remember that there is no need to spend wasted years looking for complicated setups or the next Holy Grail.  There are very simple setups out there to use.  Some of the best traders I know

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Trading legend Dennis Gartman is one of the most influential market commentators out there. He is what we like to call here at Notes an “investor’s investor.” That is, he’s a market veteran who speaks directly to other traders and investors.

He is best known for his daily newsletter, The Gartman Letter, which is read with morning coffees by countless Wall Street operators. In short, Gartman is an underground investor par excellence. Gartman recently gave an interview with Canada’s The Globe and Mail. In it, he reveals his stance on the inflation/deflation argument and how to best hedge against an inflationary outcome.

Gartman is not your typical inflation hawk. He sees deflation and inflation taking hold in the future: inflation in raw materials prices “sooner rather than later” and deflation in wages. When asked, “Will we have inflation or deflation?” his answer is “Yes.”

For those who want to hedge against inflation, however, Gartman has perhaps the

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Gold didn’t do a lot in Far East trading on Tuesday. The low of the day occurred at the open in London…and for the next two hours, gold put on a spirited rally [$10+] that ended with the price going vertical about half an hour before the Comex open. However, as is always the case at moments like these, the usual not-for-profit sellers showed up and did their dirty until it was time for them to go for lunch at 12:00 noon in New York. Once ‘da boyz’ were at lunch, gold made a $7 run higher, which ended the second that floor trading was over on the Comex…and electronic trading began.

And by the time that gold trading was over for the day…most of that gain had been made to disappear…and gold finished down about a dollar from Monday’s close.

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From the first paragraph of my Saturday commentary…”I don’t know what it is about that [one hour and change] stretch of time between the Sydney close and the London open…but if there is going to be a down day…it starts right there a large percentage of the time.” Any questions? Actually, both gold and silver got sold off the moment that the New York bullion banks opened for business 6:00 p.m. on Sunday night…which is very early Monday morning in Far East trading. Shortly before 3:00 p.m. in Hong Kong, gold had almost made it back to unchanged…and silver was actually up a couple of cents when the hammer fell. The bottom for gold came very shortly after the London a.m. gold fix at 5:30 New York time…and in silver, shortly after the Comex open. The ‘rally’ in the US dollar that started at the same time as the precious

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This week’s video-o-rama comes to you a day late as I make my away from Cape Town to Europe. Notwithstanding terribly slow broadband at South African airports, I have managed to compile an interesting potpourri of clips.

Topics ranged from another round of discussions about the proposed regulatory reform to Fed chairman Ben Bernanke facing a grilling on Capital Hill over the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal to the usual dose of debate on the outlook for the economy and financial markets.

The stars of this week’s round-up include Steven Pearlstein, Pete Peterson, Warren Buffett (US economy in “shambles”), Nouriel Roubini (US economy “sort of stabilizing”), Puru Saxena, Edmund Phelps, Mohamed El-Erian, Robert Prechter (a “lot more” bear market) and T. Boone Pickens.

The compilation kicks of with Barry Ritholtz, author of must-read “Bailout Nation” and editor of The Big Picture blog, sharing his views on

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It was a very uneventful Thursday…at least as far as gold and silver prices were concerned. Both metals rose and fell gently from the beginning of Thursday’s trading in the Far East…right up until the London silver fix 13 hours later…which is noon in London and 7:00 a.m. in New York. By that time, their respective prices were both back to almost unchanged on the day. But once the silver fix was in, gold tacked on about $7…and silver gained around 16 cents by the end of New York trading at 5:15 p.m. A certain amount of this rise may have had something to do with the falling US dollar…which began its descent shortly before 11:00 a.m. in New York.

The only happening of note, was that every attempt by gold to breach $940…or silver to break above $14…was quietly turned back.

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In very early Tuesday morning trading in the Far East [still Monday evening in New York]…gold and silver saw their lows of the day. However, by the time that the Comex was open about 14 hours later, gold was up twelve bucks. But that was its high of the day, as the price was taken down immediately…and by the time that the Comex closed, eight dollars of that gain had been given back. Tuesday was a nothing day, really. The gold charts make it look worse than it really was…as most of gold’s move on Tuesday [and Monday, for that matter] can be chalked up to the gyrations of the US$.

However you will carefully note that although the dollar did a round trip in value between early Monday morning and Tuesday afternoon…neither gold nor silver were allowed to get a sniff of their Monday highs that occurred in early Far

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A batch of gloomy economic reports during the past few days suggested that recent optimism about a global recovery might have been premature. This caused Doug Kass to warn that “stock prices have moved ahead of fundamentals” and Kenneth Langone to caution that “investors seem to be getting ahead of themselves”, although he maintained that the long-term outlook on the market was positive.

Big banks across the US announced large common stock offerings and plans to repay the government, and the US administration attempted to bring transparency to the credit derivatives markets and also crack down on the credit card industry.

In addition to Kass and Langone, commentators featured on camera in this post include Elizabeth Warren, Meredith Whitney, Alan Greenspan, Peter Boockvar, Giles Keating, Jim Rogers, Barry Ritholtz, Dennis Gartman, Abby Cohen, Peter Eliades and Laszlo Birinyi.

The

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Notes from the Investment Underground

Thursday, April 23, 2009

Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

The greatest economic disaster in recorded history (and how to profit from it)… Your market ”script”… Lessons on guerrilla investing… Banks switch sides… The best communications company in the world… 3 sectors you should own now… Your key to “permanent wealth”… A massive glitch in the administration’s matrix… Notes subscribers beat up on your editor… 1,159% gains as stocks go bust… And more!

*** “The current administration’s economic strategy could create the greatest economic disaster in recorded history,” says Porter Stansberry in today’s DailyWealth.

Not only is the administration planning on enormous deficit spending this year, but the current plan calls for increasing deficit spending for the next decade – spending that will more than double ...