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Dear IT members and guests This is your weekend update, a brief summary to keep you informed about IT and its performance. The week's DOW activity was again characterized by whipsaw action moving up and down almost 100 points every day except Friday when some short covering took place. These erratic patterns are very positive for the type of trading InnovativeTrades is engaged in. Please check your e-gold accounts for the weekly payout plan and your personal IT online accounts for the compounding plan. Payments and balance adjustments have been processed for past week's trading activities. Make sure you apply the appropriate time frame when your funds start trading and when interest is being paid respectively credited to your account. Please check the "investment" page on our website under point 2. You will also find a link "Schedule" on the investment page which is an easy to understand graphic illustration of the time-frames. Please check validity of your email address, you will not be up to date about IT if your email address bounces. Gold went above 400 USD/oz on Tuesday this past week in Asian trading. Many gold specialists think there is more to go for medium term due to USD weakness and global security worries. To quote famous gold guru Jim Sinclair from his 11/19 update: "Gold is no longer a trading game but rather your ticket to feeding your family and maintaining your standard of living." Discussions about fraudulent programs are never ending. Speculation about survival time are an almost fascinating topic for many. To put things in perspective I quote from 11/23 Reuters: "NEW YORK (Reuters) - The scandals roiling the mutual fund industry have more than a few investors wondering if a mutual fund company could go belly up and leave shareholders penniless, just like Enron and WorldCom. The almost daily revelations of malfeasance in an industry that has prided itself on a squeaky-clean image has created doubts in some of the 95 million Americans who have entrusted mutual fund companies with $7 trillion of their life savings." Wishing you a prosperous and successful week Sincerely Peter http://www.innovativetrades.com |
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Dear IT members and guests Welcome back to our brief weekend update. Due to Thanksgiving celebration in the USA on Thursday 11/27 the past week was a 4 day trading week with Friday markets closing at 1PM EST. As always, your interest has been transferred to your e-gold accounts for the weekly plan, your personal IT online accounts have been adjusted for the compounding plan. Please note your interest payouts reflect the 4 day trading week. If any of your co-investors or individuals you introduced to Innovative Trades do not receive our updates please inform them to use a valid email address. The news letters can also be viewed on our website at any time. http://www.innovativetrades.com/html/links.asp No major breaking financial news this week. Noteworthy however, the US Dollar hit new lows against the EURO, 1.20 for the first time after the EUR was launched 5 years ago. Also other majors like CAD and CHF traded at record highs against the greenback.. Gold is not moving below 390 but did not manage yet to make a decisive jump above the 400 mark. Holding on to gold in Jan 02 when it was at around 280/oz has resulted in a nice ROI. Even better for those who had the guts to invest in the Argentine stock market in Jan 02 when the Argentine stock index was around 300 and the country in turmoil. On Friday the same Argentine stock index reached the 1000 mark. Triple your money in less than 24 months. We wish you a prosperous new week Sincerely Peter |
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Dear IT investors and guests In the following your update letter for the first week of December 2003. All active investor accounts have been credited as per plan, the weekly option directly to your e-gold account, the compound option to your IT online account. If you look at the past week's Dow chart you will notice another whipsaw action week which is of course very positive for program trading concepts. There are great hopes the Dow will break through the 10,000 mark again, a level seen last time on May 24/02. The 10K level is really only important from a mass psychology analytical view and makes great headlines in the financial press. Already now readers are being inundated with the events to come. Here some weekend Reuters head lines: • RPT-Wall St Week Ahead-Fed seen steady, Dow to run at 10,000 Sun 10:05am - Reuters • Wall St. Week Ahead: Dow to Run at 10,000 Sat 7:51am - Reuters • RPT-Wall St Week Ahead-Fed seen steady, Dow to run at 10,000 Fri, Dec 5 - Reuters Gold hovering at 400 and not giving up ground this week is being downplayed and preferably only mentioned as a side note. Of course the 400 gold price means 400 US Dollars and the USD continues to hit new lows against all the major currencies. Electronic trading gone wild, or will we ever find out what really happened. http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=COC...l=on&z=m&q=l&c= For sure some investor will have panicked. New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer continues his mission. It is quite amazing what comes to the surface of the murky soup of the "safe" and "guaranteed" mutual fund industry, the investment vehicle of choice for the average investor. Too much to mention here but if interested for starters just type " Invesco" in the yahoo finance news search engine. Wishing you a successful new week Sincerely Peter |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to our weekly update. First your accounts: All payouts for the weekly plan have been completed and your e-gold accounts have been credited accordingly. The weeks interest has been added to all compounding accounts. It is all up, Dow, Nas, Gold - well, the USD is not BUT after the capture of SH even the USD will be up on Monday however Gold could take a dive. We could see DOW 10,500 this week. The event happened on a weekend and it will not be easy to take a fast trading advantage as markets are closed. However we think there is a quick profit possible by shorting Gold and the EUR/USD and going long DOW. For sure not a contrarian view but the trend is your friend approach still works. At this time in early New Zealand trading the USD is up 1% against the EUR. These are short term views, long term reality will kick in. Also Osama is still out there. Long term a drop in gold price could be a buying opportunity. Next week's big story for fast money will be the IPO for China Life (LFC). This might be an over-hyped event but it will make a lot of money for some people in only a few hours. We attempted to allocate some placements hoping to be able to suggest it to our members but managed only to secure a small block of shares which we cannot make available. If you have a fast online trading account you should definitely try to enter an order on Wednesday when the IPO opens. We still think the hype factor and the huge over-subscription will drive the price up significantly. According to latest news pricing for trading is indicated at US$18.68. We don't think it will ever come again to those irrational opening price levels like in the dot com days but the initial quotes could be well over $23. Wishing you a successful new week Sincerely Peter PS: If any of your co-investors or individuals you introduced to Innovative Trades do not receive our updates please inform them to use a valid email address. The news letters can also be viewed on our website at any time: http://www.innovativetrades.com/html/links.asp PS/2: this news letter does not contain trade or investment recommendations but only personal views and opinions |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers This is your weekend update, a brief summary to keep you informed about IT and its performance. Please check your e-gold accounts for the weekly payout plan and your personal IT online accounts for the compounding plan. Payments have been processed and compound accounts balances have been updated. This was a 4 day trading week due to Christmas celebration on Dec.25. Accordingly your weekly payment credits and balance adjustments are based on a 4 day trading week. The DOW had a decent erratic activity for the week to the benefit of program trading systems. Stock of the week was the Canadian company Research In Motion Ltd, the inventors of the BlackBerry® wireless platform.(stock symbol:RIMM) On Monday the share price closed at $46, on Tuesday it closed at $69 thanks to extraordinarily exceeding Wall Street's expectations for sales and earnings. A great fast money maker for those who had the guts to buy before the earnings report. I hope some of you were inspired by our suggestion to try some shares in China Life (LFC). Have a look at the chart. This company went public on the NYSE on Wed Dec 17. Holding on to the shares for only one week will have made you a nice xmas gift of 25% profit. Europe and in particular Italy deals now with its own Enron style debacle, the dairy products conglomerate Parmalat. A very interesting rags to riches story which unfortunately seems to end in a disaster. This is the last 2003 update. Next payouts will fall on the first weekend in the new year. The Innovative Trades team wishes you a great start for 2004. Best Wishes Peter & Team PS: You will have noticed our webmaster's work in form of a new website look. We hope you like it. |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to our weekly update. This is our first news letter in the new year. May 2004 bring you success and prosperity. First your accounts: All payouts for the weekly plan have been completed and your e-gold accounts have been credited accordingly. The weeks interest has been added to all compounding accounts. Jan 1/2004 was of course a holiday consequently this past week was a 4 day trading week. Interest credits transferred to your accounts do reflect the shorter trading week. Several requests for an easier way to introduce Innovative Trades to new potential investors has prompted our webmaster to install a referral script. You can now create your own personalized IT site by adding your ID number to the web-address. For example if your ID number is 123456 your personalized site would look like this: http://www.innovativetrades.com/use...r.asp?id=123456 We trust you will make use of this feature only in context with your friends and associates. Even only a singular incident of mass mailing reflects negatively on the program and its members. Gold maintains a solid 400 plus level but this is of course a level measured in US Dollars and the USD continues to be weak against all majors. You might remember our idea 3 weeks ago to try a few shares in LFC (China Life) at its ipo day Dec 17. By Dec. 29 the price of this stock was up over 40%. We believe China investments and China related investments will be one of this year's dominant themes. We wish you a prosperous week. Sincerely Peter PS: A note about program trading from Jan 2/04 Wall-Street Journal: “Program Trading Rose to New Heights Last Year” “Program trading only accounted for 9.9% of big board volume during the entire year in 1989. For the latest week available, program trading accounted for 49.3% of the NYSE average daily volume. So far for the year, 39.6% of all trading for the year through December 19 was made by computer-aided trading strategies.” |
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Dear Investors and guests This is our second newsletter in the new year. Time is definitely a precious commodity. To borrow from the Presidential power terms dictionary InnovativeTrades is now officially online for over 100 days. We would like to thank our "old" and new investors who enjoy continued weekly returns on their funds. Together we look forward to a prosperous and successful future. Also this week's interest payments have been processed and successfully completed for both weekly and compound plans. A brief review of the week leads us to the end of the trading week. Friday was the most surprising day. Another example that the totally unexpected and outlandish event can happen. The statement refers to the unemployment numbers and the absolute totally wrong forecasts and predictions expressed by a massive herd of economists and pundits. To better understand the impact of such numbers I quote Reuters: "The Labor Department said nonfarm payrolls increased by 1,000 in December, far below the 136,000 expected by Wall Street economists, and the 181,000 to 200,000 expected by some traders on the Street." Consequently the USD tumbled even further and of course gold went up but only in USD/oz terms. Bonds shot up and the stock market program trading robots triggered sell orders. It took a while on the DOW till these numbers sank into the general public traders' mind and in the end the DOW closed 133 points down on Friday. On Monday we will see if Treasury Secretary Snow's calming comments on Sunday will have an impact on next weeks trading. Wishing you a successful week. Sincerely Peter |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to our weekly update. As always, your interest has been transferred to your e-gold accounts for the weekly plan and for the compounding plan your personal IT online accounts have been updated and reflect your new increased balance. The Dow showed a rather erratic performance this past week. A look at the weekly chart illustrates the tremendous whipsaw activity. This type of activity is positive for program trading. The more often the market direction changes the better. For details please visit the links we have listed on our website. In particular you should check out the NYSE website. Just when all the pundits expressed their research results that the USD is going to slide even more the greater powers changed the plan, at least for now. Verbal comments by European officials warning about the strength of the Euro were sufficient to trigger EUR selling. The USD gained and the Gold price went lower. Some more about Gold and this time in connection with an interesting situation in Germany. The president of the German Federal Bank wants to sell 600 tons of gold to finance education programs so he says. Possibly a politically motivated move. He did encounter unexpected resistance on various decision levels and for now Germany hangs on to the gold. Shouldn't we all hang on to some gold, just in case. Quite often gold is being downplayed as just another commodity yet many countries keep respectable reserves in the shiny metal, for example Germany sits on 3446 tons of Gold reserves, Italy holds 2452 tons, France 3025 tons. Banks and Big bucks J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM)announced that it will buy Bank One for about $58 billion in the biggest financial deal Wall Street has seen in six years. The merger will create a financial-services behemoth second only to Citigroup in terms of total assets. There is speculation this deal is part of a plan to save JPM from its massive derivative exposure and huge gold and silver short positions. A "too big to fail" scenario... We wish you a prosperous week. Sincerely Peter & team |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to IT's weekend update. Please check your e-gold accounts for the weekly payout plan and your personal IT online accounts for the compounding plan. Payments have been processed and compound accounts balances have been updated. This was a 4 day trading week due to Martin Luther King Day on Jan. 19. Accordingly your weekly payment credits and balance adjustments are based on a 4 day trading week. 4th quarter earnings is the present most watched event as it should give investors a idea of the future based on results and outlooks presented by stock exchange listed companies. The largest companies get of course the most attention. Microsoft reported 17% less profit but according to Microsoft the reason was a boost in stock-based compensation costs. The company expects to increase its profits in the future. Next week's highlights will include McDonald's, Merck, Gateway and Amazon. Although not a top priority on north American financial news screens, the Parmalat case, the Italian Enron style debacle, is increasing in size (exceeding 10 billion Euros) and drama by the day including now a suicide of a company accountant. Over 40,000 investors have filed suit hoping to get some of their savings back. Voices to review the offshore regulations are getting louder, more government control (if that is still possible) over financial matters are being discussed by ambitious politicians, not only for Italy but for all of Europe. The USD gained some ground against the EUR based on diplomatic sources making a comment that Euro zone ministers attending the upcoming G-7 meeting will announce that further strength in the EUR could cause the ECB (European Central Bank) to cut interest rates. We wish you a successful and prosperous week. Sincerely Peter & team |
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Dear IT members and guests Welcome back to our brief weekend update. As always, your interest has been transferred to your e-gold accounts for the weekly plan, your personal IT online accounts have been adjusted for the compounding plan. This week's big event is of course the Super Bowl. You might wonder what the Super Bowl has to do with the stock-market. Statistics aficionados attempt to connect any type of repeating events' outcomes with the future results of unrelated events and create a "theory" One of these theories is "The Super Bowl Theory." If the AFC team wins the Super Bowl, the market is headed down for the year. If the NFC team wins, the market is headed up. The theory was pretty correct 30 times out of the 36 games played. In 2001 the stock market went down rather significantly. The football fans amongst our readers know the winning team of 2001. Please consider this entertainment and do not base your investment decision on these theories. There are many more ideas about financial future outcomes based upon unrelated events' results. A Princeton University professor even wrote a book about this topic "A Random Wall Down Wall Street". The actual true financial event was Tuesday's FOMC meeting and the following announcement. Have a look at the Wed Jan.28 Dow chart and you will see exactly when the FED announcement was made public. Easy money for those who took a chance, and not only in the stock markets. Check out the EUR/USD chart for Jan.28 or the Bonds charts. Amazing the impact of words by an important personality. That is all it was, words, no change in interest rates, just words. Instead of saying to keep rates low for a "considerable period" they said instead they "can be patient" before implementing a rate increase. Sufficient to move world markets? Yes! Amazing but that is how the game is played. Let's see what the Super Bowl game can do... Good Luck with your bets on the winning team! Have a successful new week Peter & IT-team |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Please check your e-gold accounts for the weekly payout plan and your personal IT online accounts for the compounding plan. Payments have been processed and compound accounts balances have been updated. Looking at this past week's Dow chart gives you an idea about the volatility of the market. These are of course excellent conditions for short term trading. Friday we witnessed again the effects of the jobless recovery. The nonfarm payroll grew by 112,000 new jobs in January, far fewer than the expected 150,000 or more. Like last time (Jan 9) the markets reacted in a drastic fashion and within minutes. Some traders made a lot of money with basket position set ups. Gold up, USD down, Stocks up, Bonds up, all at the announcement of the jobs data. Check the charts for Friday, a fascinating illustration of the market participants' reaction. The G7 meeting in Boca Raton is/was this weekend's key event. One of the main topics, the US Dollar and its value respectively loss of value. Again we are back to the word game - how will the G7 statement be interpreted? "excess volatility" and "disorderly movements" in exchange rates were undesirable, a coded way of implying the dollar's fall against the euro may have gone far enough. On the other hand the US is more interested to keep the Dollar at lower levels to further spur up exports which eventually should create more jobs. We wish you a successful week Peter $ IT team |
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Dear IT investors and guests First your accounts: All payouts for the weekly plan have been completed and your e-gold accounts have been credited accordingly. The weeks interest has been added to all compounding accounts. Your withdrawal requests are being processed on an ongoing basis. This weeks key event was Alan Greenspan's semi-annual testimony to Congress and... the market participant's interpretation of his powerful words. Powerful words indeed, one single person is in a position to move world markets, at least short term. Amazing and almost scary. Mid-day Wednesday Alan Greenspan said he saw no urgency to raise interest rates. That was enough to send stocks higher, gold from 405 to 412, the EUR from 1.266 to 1.282, all within minutes. Friday's market action illustrates that even rumours do move markets (by the rumour sell the news). A rumour flared up that the ECB is selling EUR or planning to do so. Gold dropped sharply from 416 to 407, the EUR went down from 1.288 to 1.275 These are examples that show the sensitivity of the markets respectively how the market participants interpret information and react accordingly. Observing traders specializing in event driven trading can profit very handsomely form these situation set ups. At several occasions in our news letter we mention the European counter part of the Enron debacle, Parmalat. This is now a EUR 14 plus billion investor hole and the search for those to blame starts to reach for uncomfortable high levels. To make matters worse the owners of Italy's top tomato sauce producer Cirio have been arrested. Cirio has defaulted on "only" EUR 1.1 billion of bonds outstanding. Even more interesting both Parmalat and Cirio used the same auditors (Deloitte) and both had close links to the chairman of the Rome bank Capitalia. It's important WHO you know might back fire... We wish you a successful and prosperous week. Sincerely Peter & team |
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Dear members and guests Payments were processed with a slight delay due to e-gold's down-time, probably caused by a DOS attack. By Saturday night all payouts for the weekly plan were completed and all compounding accounts were up to date. Please note on Monday 2/16 the US celebrated President's Day which shortened out trading week to four days. Friday was definitely the most exiting day of the four days. This is true for the stock market and in particular for the currency and gold markets. Gold dropped below US$400/oz in a long time. The USD gained significantly against the majors. Why the sudden change in sentiment? I have to admit it is not clear to me what triggered the EUR sell off and official explanations almost sound like a struggle to find a believable reason. For example: Feb. 20 (Bloomberg): The dollar also rose to a six-week high against the euro after European Central Bank board member Klaus Liebscher said selling or buying currencies to influence the exchange rate is ``always possible.'' He declined to say what would prompt such action. :unquote If Alan Greenspan had dropped this remark would the EUR trade now at the 1.08 level? Also from the same Bloomberg article: The dollar rose to more than a two-month high against the yen after Japan was reported to have raised its terrorism alert. :unquote This fact did not help gold although the Japanese investors are traditionally heavy gold-buyers when critical scenarios start to shape up. InnovativeTrades is predominantly about program trading in connection with US stock market listed securities. We must be aware however that all markets are interdependent. If an American investor bought EUR's 18 months ago and cashes in his Euros for USDollars to buy shares in Microsoft he now gets a guaranteed discount of 25% on his Microsoft shares. The short term speculation is interesting indeed. Will the EUR see 1.15 before it breaks 1.30? Alan Greenspan is due to testify to the House Budget Committee on economic policy on Wednesday. He could move markets again. We wish you a successful week Peter & Team |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to IT's weekend update. Please check your accounts, your interest has been transferred to your e-gold accounts for the weekly plan and for the compounding plan your personal IT online accounts have been updated and reflect your new increased balance. In last week's newsletter we mentioned that the Fed Chairman will testify again to the House Budget Committee on economic policy on Wednesday. We also mentioned on several occasions how powerful people like Alan Greenspan the Fed Chairman can give a whole new meaning to the fact that words can move world markets. Besides remarks about cutting Social Security benefits the Fed Chairman expressed his thoughts on the US economy "The most recent indicators suggest that the economy is off to a strong start in 2004, and prospects for sustaining the expansion in the period ahead are good". Remains the fact however that it is still a jobless recovery. If you look at charts of various financial instruments you will be able to observe the impact these words had on market participants' actions. The US-Dollar up significantly against all majors, gold dropped below USD400/oz. German Chancellor Schroeder is now testing his word power indicating that the ECB should think about reducing the interest rate on the EUR. His political opponents suggested to him to refrain from attempting to play the role of a self proclaimed world economy guru. Schroeder is on a quick trip to the US and while having dinner with Mr Bush on Friday Bush expressed his desire for a "strong Dollar policy". If you invested part of your savings in mutual funds you might be interested in the term "Late Trading". It makes a lot of "guaranteed" money for the fund managers using their clients funds. Late traders purchase mutual fund shares after the supposed 4 p.m. close of the market, virtually guaranteeing themselves a profit. They typically trade based on news released after the market closes or on the direction the futures markets indicate the next day's open will take. Authorities have accused dozens of companies of improper trading in this industry presently managing assets of about 7.4 Trillion. Elliott Spitzer is active as always. It is unlikely however that the investing public will benefit from the funds recovered. Many bubble market investors will remember how they got mislead by Merrill Lynch's Henry Blodget in the late 90ties/ early 2000 when they bought every dot com illusion at totally inflated prices. Class action lawsuits against Merrill Lynch and its former star analyst Blodget were tossed out by U.S. District Judge Milton Pollack. The good judge is 96, and started practicing law in 1929. Talking about old boyz club... We wish you a prosperous week Peter & Team |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to IT's weekend update. Please check your e-gold accounts for the weekly payout plan and your personal IT online accounts for the compounding plan. Payments have been processed and compound accounts balances have been updated. This past week was rather eventful. From Greenspan to Supertuesday to Martha Stuart to USD up and down and Gold down and up. As usual the experts with the excessive salaries were all wrong. It is rather ironic, one of the best trading indicators to make money "go against the expert opinion" On Wednesday the dollar hit its highest levels this year against the EUR, YEN and CHF, triggered by rising optimism over U.S. job growth and expectations this would mean higher U.S. interest rates. Consequently gold dropped way below 400 reaching at some point USD 388/oz Last week's suggestions by high ranking politicians and economy experts the ECB should raise interest rates are wiped away and no longer an issue. In fact on Thursday the ECB held its regular board meeting and gave no sign an interest rate cut was near. The man with the power words delivered a speech to the economic club of new York and he happened to mention that "eventually" US interest rates have to go up. 48 hours later the complex economic reality show shifts gears and goes in reverse, things are not as they appeared 2 days ago. Friday's important payrolls data showed the U.S. economy added far fewer jobs than expected in February. The U.S. Labor Department reported only 21,000 new jobs were created last month. Economists had forecast the addition of 125,000 jobs and for the jobless rate to remain at 5.6 percent. Speculators, relying on the heavy bullhorning of the jobs data by the financial media had been looking for even stronger job creation and bought the US Dollar earlier in the week. Result, USD down, EUR up, bonds up, gold up (over 400 on Friday's close). Expert court room journalists with 20 years of experience explained a guilty verdict in the Martha Stuart case would be very unlikely. Have a look at Friday's chart of this stock, symbol MSO. The announcement that a verdict was reached made the stock price go up over 20% in about an hour. Then of course the experts were wrong, the verdict guilty on all counts triggered a sell off of almost 40%. China is the hot investor topic, especially in the IPO market. Chinese firms have raised US$730.62 million from overseas IPO's so far this year and plan to raise up to a further US$21.5 billion over the rest of 2004. Linktone Ltd (LTON) had its debut on NASDAQ on Thursday. But not everything considered hot turns a profit right away. Short term traders did not get a chance to make money. The stock opened Thursday at $19 and closed Friday at $15.70 Makes you wonder what Reuters financial journalist Steve James was "observing" Quote: NEW YORK (Reuters) By Steve James - Raymond Lei Yang watched stock in his company,Linktone Ltd. (LTON.O: Quote, Profile, Research) soar in its debut on the Nasdaq on Thursday, as investors flocked to yet another initial public offering in the burgeoning Chinese market. UNquote Next week another hot China ipo will start trading, Internet and wireless service provider TOM Online, backed by Asia's richest man Li Ka-shing, is scheduled to start trading on March 10. Considering that very wealthy entrepreneurs usually know where to invest their money this ipo could be worth an early position. Have a successful new week Peter & IT-team |
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Dear members and guests All payouts for the weekly plan have been completed. All compounding accounts are up to date and reflect your new balance. The first 3 days of the past week developed into an "orderly" down trend. A look at the weekly DOW and Nasdaq charts illustrates this. >From Monday to Wednesday the Nasdaq lost about 100 points, about 4.5%, the DOW went from over 10600 to 10250. In an "orderly" trend, up or down, it is difficult to generate short term trading profits. The swings within the trend line are so small that trading in and out of long and short positions generate very minimal results. Thursday the picture changed due to the terrible event in Spain. Almost always the markets over-react on critical news. Stocks went down sharply, gold moved higher and the US Dollar lost ground, bonds went up. On Friday the over-reaction underwent a correction and the markets bounced off the lows. The financial media touts it as buying opportunity. Traders and investors bought stocks and the US Dollar, they sold gold and silver. Has gold lost it's safe haven status? One would have expected a sharply rising gold price after the Madrid disaster and possible al-qaida links. The pundits explain it with the USD strength. Gold could touch the 390 mark due to the stronger USD they explain. Long (er) term gold should perhaps be viewed differently, at least according to Jim Rogers who is in the process of launching his new hedge fund based on commodity futures which include precious metals. Rogers outspokenly bets against the US Dollar. (Jim Rogers along with George Soros were the founders of the Quantum hedge fund famous for its currency trading success). Ballooning US deficit numbers support the outlook for a weak USD. The Treasury plans to borrow a net $177 billion this quarter to finance a budget deficit estimated to reach a record $521 billion this year. Impressive numbers indeed. We wish you a successful week Peter & Team |
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Dear IT investors and subscribers Welcome back to IT's weekend update. Please check your accounts, your interest has been transferred to your e-gold accounts for the weekly plan and for the compounding plan your personal IT online accounts have been updated and reflect your new increased balance. The newly introduced IT-FX plan has been very well received, the initial response has exceeded our expectations. If you wonder what VIX is have a look at the charts of past week's Dow and Nasdaq charts. Simplified VIX is the volatility index and projecting "market fear". It measures implied volatility in S&P 100 options. Everything can be transformed into a chart, the symbol for the volatility index is ^VIX Everything (almost) can be traded, soon even volatility is going to be a trading instrument. Friday 3/26 the CBOE will be launching a futures contract to trade the Volatility Index. Monday was overshadowed by fears over al-Qaeda's reported responsibility for the Madrid bombings. A struggle for the exit door was obvious as the trading stats showed 8 times more down volume than up volume. An indication that the big boys were un-loading shares. In fact about 2.5 Billion Dollars were removed from equity funds in only 3 days. Tuesday was "Patience" day, the new hint word by the almighty Alan Greenspan. Nobody expected any change in interest rate therefore traders are interpreting the FED verbal statement. The FOMC said "We can afford to be patient about raising rates", implying that credit costs will stay at the 1958 low despite a strengthening economy because inflation remains under control and job growth is basically non existent. At the announcement the Dow dropped 100 points within minutes but then gained it all back. Noteworthy that the Baghdad hotel bombing on Wednesday caused gold to run up $5/oz from 402 to 407 around 1pm EST whereas the Madrid disaster had no effect on the yellow metal. Friday's sell off was supposedly caused by the quadruple witching options expiration. For some readers this may sound like a trading strategy based on medieval believes. Quadruple witching occurs on the 3rd Friday of March, June, September and December. On these particular Fridays all 4 options contracts expire, stock index futures, stock index options, stock options, and single stock futures. The markets will go up once they catch the #2 guy al-Zawahri...will the markets really go up?? Or will increased fear over retaliation drive the markets down? We wish you a successful week Peter & team |