On gun control

A belated welcome on board Mr. S. Prochemian (if that is your real name)


I wrote this piece just after the murders at Sandy Hook.
I decided not to publish at the time simply because the issue was too emotive and raw. Time has passed and it is time for solutions.

Listening to talk radio whilst driving is enough to make ones blood boil whether you are conservative or liberal in philosophy because the views and opinions are intractable and predictable. Of course the topic for a week has been gun control and the horror of Sandy Hook. It's a parents worst nightmare right up there with child abduction. Suffice to say a sad lunatic with gun shot adults and kids without remorse. The why may be down to prescription drugs (fanapt) http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/nancy-lanza-feared-son-adam-worse-article-1.1221505, his own bad head chemistry and of course easy access to his weapon of choice. The anti gun crowd contends if he didn't have access to guns then we wouldn't be talking about Sandy Hook. The NRA contends that if the teachers were carrying then he would have been stopped. Both arguments have some merit and both are flawed.
There are 190 Million guns in private hands in this country. Any idiot can buy one with a couple of hundred bucks legally or otherwise. Taking guns away from the public would take decades no matter what the coercions or incentives are. So let's get that off the table right now. It will never happen.
The NRA's argument that if a teacher was carrying is equally flawed because the lunatic would just show up with a bigger guns and body armor or build a bomb. So lets use the tech we have and a little common sense. Students and teachers go into schools. Visitors have to wait either outside or in a visitor room with bullet proof glass. Not expensive and not difficult to administer.

S Roche's Week In Gold

 The week started poorly with indistinct signals. Mindful that his trading would be reported by this writer


at the end of the week Roche made an effort to inform himself on the likely outlook for gold. He noted sombrely that Goldman Sachs predicted $1,200 yet Citi predicted $1,675 but was heartened to see that Goldman Sachs also predicted $1,825. Armed with this valuable information he set himself to work.

 After putting on a series of unsuccessful small short and long positions (1) Roche became convinced that $1700 would be bested (2):

Friday Metals Wrap, 1/25/13

It's a fascinating time to be following the "markets." Something strange is afoot. The $VIX hasn't been this low since April 2007. What the hell was I even doing in April 2007? I vaguely recall a wedding of some sort where I drank myself practically into a coma and woke up next to the fat bridesmaid. Anyway, I've overlaid the $VIX (orange) over the "Gold Safe Haven" quotient. Gold doesn't exactly shine in this environment. I'm holding onto my puts, and in fact (as I mentioned in the comments section of S Prochemian's post), I added to my short position Wednesday when the miners (down big) decoupled from commodities and stocks (both slightly up). I've mentioned that trade several times here -- I learned about it during a two-week trial at Le Metropole Cafe. They could very well be right that it's some kind of manipulative signal. Or maybe you have a better explanation. Anyway, it's the one trade I can think of that has never failed. Sure, it might fail next time, but it's been easy money for a few years now.

S Roche's Week In Gold

 This is the first of what may, or may not be, weekly posts about the gold trading adventures of S Roche, the tyro trader. It comes about following a chart he stumbled across and posted on Screwtape as well as TFMR several weeks ago. By following the evident patterns S Roche's trading account was subjected to several extremely large shocks, some of them in a positive direction.  Emboldened by this, and taking it as a clear sign of his acumen, skill and trading-smarts - luck, in support of the law of large numbers (Ed.), S Roche has undertaken to share his experiences with the world at large via this writer, a distant relation.

                 

     
      S Roche, Tyro Trader

You may see the family resemblance:

S Procheimian, This Writer
Whether these recountings of the week's ups and downs in gold become a regular feature or not is in the lap of the Trading Gods, and the editorial policy of Screwtape Files, which given that Jeanne d'Arc is permitted to post, on a site largely interested in precious metals, would seem to be non-existent.


Now to work:

Here is the gold chart in question as it first appeared. It was drawn early Dec, 2012:


 You will note that a clear channel is evident using Median Line Analysis, or Andrew's Pitchforks. Here is the same chart today, the channel is still relevant:



Bob Pisani Revisited (a fresh look)

I recently completed a batch of data importing for the database project (link), which cleared a backlog of files waiting to be processed. The completion is a huge milestone because it finally provides the ability to search (almost instantly) for gold bars across 18 different funds, in records covering the last 18 months. So while Screwtape Files was the FIRST blog to identify Bob Pisani's mystery bar ZJ6752, we now return to the study armed with more information.

The goal remains the same ... "use the database to identify gold bars that we see in the media, for additional narrative". This gives us a larger picture for virtually no extra effort, because the hard work of building the index is already done.

Bob Pisani and me,
from the filmed-but-
never-aired documentary:
"Prosimians in the Attic".
First, a quick history for those who haven't encountered the ZJ6752 story - CNBC's Bob Pisani presented a small series on gold in 2011. We're interested in serial numbers for bars that appear on camera. I studied the clips to find more serial numbers than just ZJ6752. These are the video references (in order most interesting to least), with the ones I've taken images from, in bold. Note that the only high-resolution footage I could find were the advertisements on youtube.
  1. "Gold Rush: The Mother Lode" (4.55) cnbc link
  2. "The King of Refineries" (4.28) cnbc link
  3. "Gold Mine" (1.56) cnbc link
  4. "Gold Rush: The Bullion Trail" (4.11) cnbc link
  5. High Definition Advert for the Series # 1 (0.31) youtube link
  6. High Definition Advert for the Series # 2 (0.38) youtube link

Sunday pre-game, 1/13/13

 A lot of good discussion in the comments of last week's post. Be sure to check out S Roche's meticulous appraisal of Martin Armstrong's predictions. We really should make that into a guest post, actually, but first Mr. Roche would have to prove his prosimian bona fide by choosing an avatar for himself.

At any rate, as I mentioned last week, I won't be able to post much till March, but I'll try to keep my usual charts updated as time allows, especially with all the good commentary going on.

First things first, gold expectedly stalled at the 144-day MA. I'd rather not be trading currently, but I had to buy some GLD puts yesterday. Check the resistance of the RSI as well.


Sunday pre-game, 1/6/13

Hello friends, I have a quick post for you as I'll be traveling for the next three weeks, and with so much stuff going on probably won't be able to post till February. So, gold hit the yellow channel Friday (see above chart) and bounced off strong [1/5 edit: these charts reflect COMEX close, gold was up another $10 and silver almost 30 cents]. I sold my puts... I have no clue where the metals are headed in the short term. It seems somewhat absurd that gold is trading below where it was before QE3 was announced (much less QE4). Recall that after practically every Fed event for over a year and a half, gold and silver would sell off (ostensibly) because QE wasn't announced. Sure, it seemed like eventually it had to be announced, at least to metals bugs, but one in the hand is always greater than two in the bush. Uncertainty is uncertainty. And there were lots of arguments floating around, especially by mainstream pundits, that QE was a non-starter because it wasn't working or that it wasn't needed (insofar as the banks were saved and unemployment numbers were slowly recovering) or that it would only be an option of last resort (e.g. it would take a big equity sell-off to justify it) etc. But no, we got QE and open-ended QE at that, and gold has fallen. Also, on a related note, gold's upside action seems to defy what you'd expect in a market dominated by momentum traders. As a case in point, I mentioned in the comments of my New Year post that I expected Wednesday's rally to be quickly erased to close the week. That's just how things have gone lately when the charts start to look good. Seems to me Ed Steer's term of "not-for-profit trading" is what's going on. At any rate, it can't be ruled out. 

Anyway, seeing as gold on the linear chart has just touched the bottom of a very conservative, long-term channel, you gotta believe a new low next week (as happened Friday during overnight trading), makes the red line the next target:









I've begrudgingly started looking at Fibonacci fans. In the past I've found them useless, but it appears to be dictating silver's action pretty well, or at least giving off that illusion. 

2013 Metals Pre-game



This year, I decided to sit for my portrait before I started drinking to greet the New Year, as I usually end up quite shit-faced, and wouldn't want to portray myself as some degenerate rake to our global audience: