Silver 10 oz winner

January Engelhard Contest Winner

We are pleased to announce that Richard V. of San Diego, California was the winner of last month's silver bar contest. Richard's guess of $31.34 was only $0.011 cent off the final closing value of silver for January. Richard will be receiving his prize of a 10 oz Silver Engelhard Bar.

5 things in relation to gold

I didn't know stockcharts could be set like this, but it is cool. 

So much for being a "gold nut"

Bakkan oil pays out quick
But falls off quick also.

Railfax, Silver Coin Treasure, IYT 2 day candles

Railfax is good stuff. Every January seems a huge drop off, so the current one is nothing to get all excited about. We are quite a bit better off than 2009 though.

http://railfax.transmatch.com/

 IYT looks like a great short, although you need to be ready for a retrace at least halfway up that big down candle.

Can you spot the silver coin in this pocket change?

 Who'd of thunk it?   I didn't know the Bernank was married to Ayn Rand

 This was my setup for long Yen
It has played out with yen getting alittle stronger, with ALOT of 78 retracements to wipe out lots of betters.

TLT is a tasty short, working so far

Free Magazines Link, Oil and Gas

Free Magazines

I like to receive the print version, gives me more flexibility on when I can read it.

This page has a lot of Oil and Gas related magazines

Good to bone up on an industry if making investments in that sector

http://www.freetrademagazines.com/oil-gas-electrical-energy-magazines/

Peak Oil

I bought that book "Profit from the peak" Peak oil that is, Texas tea, black gold.

$3.99 and supersaver shipping from Amazon

 I'll be doing some more investing in direct ownership of oil wells, but making the right choice of what companies to buy into as General Partner is very important.

Lots of hucksters in the business, snake oil salesmen. Everyone has their hand in the till, get to many administrators and the profits to you go from spectacular, to being happy to just get your money back at all.

But the moral of this chart from EIA data is that we haven't hit peak oil. And some of the Deep Bakkan US field with horizontal drilling could be a game changer.  Direct ownership of energy producing assets is better than "money in the bank" IMHO.

Long in this market? Why not also do a Casino long MGM

This is from Breakpoint Trades, chart by me.    BPT has great trade ideas, saves hours of grinding through charts, and I don't have those hours to spare, so I buy that hard work for $1.30 per day.    Good bargain, sign up using the link on my site, they do credit me, which help me bring more quality to this free site.

Long Yen

Reader asked...does long Yen (actually short USD/YEN) reflect as short US equities...and answer is "maybe"....as below.

Well kind of, usually USD/YEN and NZD/YEN move the same way, and the NZD pair is my risk on risk off indicator…but it has been acting odd last few week as currency wars get into full swing.

I am Short bonds through TLT short, and with unsanitized money printing by Big Ben, there is incentive to think that equities continue their upward climb (even though 5 RSI is amazingly "over bought" what a silly word).     We could go into a Bataan Death March type of pattern, an unrelenting steady slog upward that kills shorts, and leaves no pullback for the broken shorts and bulls that hesitated....leaves them no pullback to get long on and they all stare in disbelief and missed profits as the Death March trudges on.   

Long Yen could also be a very short lived position

The next step is when currency wars don’t get the balance of trade issue done….then the world goes into competitive devaluation, which doesn’t necessarily mean prices go down….but manufacturers may be forced to sell below profitability (like maybe they are just covering the overhead portion of their gross margin, and there is no profit portion of their gross margin).    Even though  prices are tight, commodities are up and so the price the consumer pay may not see “deflation” like the deflationistas predict (Pretcher Mish guys)

 Big News Week, this could keep the "parade" going if positive.  This quote from ILB

• Tuesday, Jan. 29th – Consumer Confidence. The December report was ugly, with consumers' expectations for the economy falling 15 points.
• Thursday Jan. 31st – Gross Domestic Product. Recent estimates of GDP show slow growth. Of course, the government's own heavily managed CPI inflation statistics have been used to paint a brighter growth picture. When adjusted using the same CPI calculation employed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the 1970s, as reported by ShadowStats.com, the GDP picture is downright ugly.
• Thursday Jan. 31st – Jobless Claims. Estimates regarding the number of jobs created put the rate very close to what is needed to offset population growth. In other words, we are treading water. The percentage of people not employed, but not counted by bureaucrats as "unemployed" remains very near the levels seen at the height of the financial crisis. The problem is especially acute among young people.

Long Yen with a tight stop

Deflationista Survey Results

Here are the results, the free version of Survey Monkey stops around 100 reponses, which is quite annoying.   Their stock went down 50% in my book.

Electricty Chart from 1973 to 2012

Electricity Data from  the US Energy Information Administration

 http://www.eia.gov/electricity/data.cfm#summary

Population Data from the CDC (funny that was the best source of population data)

 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2011.htm#chartbookfigures

Took a few hours to create this chart of Electricity use per person in the USA, since 1973, I think it speaks volumes.    "They" Probably don't even see a need to fudge this data, unlike a "corrected" inflation or unemployment report.

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What do you think of this chart?    
Are we just switching to more fossil fuels, and maybe some impact from PV?