The "Guy Bottom" might not be there after all - just a poor market where no rallies hold. I have no analysis for you other than this is vicious action. The bear snickers at us! This has to be the 3rd or 4th failed "reversal" in the past few weeks. The total inability to follow through for more than a few hours stinks. This is feeling more like 2001-2002 by the day.I thought I could put the buckets away for a day or two - apparently not. Where are those darn unicorns, butterflies, and mermaids? The 2nd half recovery was supposed to begin a week and a half ago! :)Well we were actually up 3% around noon for the day. Unfortunately rallies don't last more than ...

It is always amusing to see the end of the day gain or loss in the indexes, and how it sometimes hides the wild action of the day. Today was one of those days - we gapped down (bearish), rallied from what appeared to be a test of support (bullish), gave that all up and tested new lows - 1260 (bearish), and then reversed and rallied to the highs of the day (bullish). For all that action and headache, it just took us back to right near where we closed yesterday. But it scared and/or emboldened traders multiple times, in completely different directions. Absolutely nuts - as they say in bear markets neither bulls nor bears have an easy time making money (the strongest rallies are usually contained within bear markets, but they are sudden and out of the blue).Here is a ...

By Mike Caggeso Associate Editor Spot price of gold eclipsed $935 in trading Monday, its first time above the mark since May 22, as another fresh round of record oil prices exacerbated existing market-wide turmoil. In light of the Federal Reserve’s decision to hold interest rates at 2.0% - its first rate freeze since September 2007 - many thought the dollar would rebound, and in turn, sweep the legs out from under gold. But the opposite proved true and gold rallied to its highest price in more than a month. Story continues below… Sign up right now, and we’ll send you an important new report for free: “The Three Best Investments in Asia.” ...

Oftentimes I talk to investors, even sophisticated ones, and I realize that they treat metals as a group. Particularly in the subset of base metals, most point out the price action of copper and conclude that all base metals are in a raging bull with no signs of slowing down.

Close examination of correlation between various metal prices reveals a very different story, as we shall illustrate. (most charts here are from my friends at Kitco.com)

Phases of a market

“There is nothing new in Wall Street. There can’t be because speculation is as old as the hills. Whatever happens in the stock market today has happened before and will happen again.” – Jesse Livermore, Reminiscences of a stock operator

Each market invariably goes through different phases of a bull. Starting with bottom, accumulation, rise, mania, rolling over, crash, sucker’s rallies, and then it starts all over again. People can

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Things work a certain way.

This is our eleventh May at our cabin and one thing we can count on every year is that no matter how warm it might get in April it will get very cold and maybe even snow, like it is today (that picture is from this morning), sometime between May 10th and May 15th.

Invariably someone will make a comment in April about it being warm from there on out and it is always wrong. The cyclicality of this is very reliable.

There is an obvious parallel here with the bear phase of a stock market cycle. There are always feel good rallies in a bear that cause people to think it will be a bull from there on out and it is always wrong.

Of course this could be a first or maybe despite it quacking like a bear it is not, but …