Monday, February 20, 2012

China to the Rescue Once Again

While the markets are closed for the President's Day holiday here in the US, the futures are open for trading in some markets. Those markets are reacing to overnight news that China is lowering the Reserve Ratio Requirement for its banks after having spent most of last year raising it.

Market watchers are interpreting this as a loosening of the monetary strings in China and reading it as bullish for the commodity sector as a whole while the equity guys (who never need a reason to be wildly bullish) are using the news to goose the S&P futures higher.

Risk aversion is getting tossed out on the news with the Dollar getting whacked lower, gold and silver moving higher and the long bond getting sold off and moving closer to the bottom of that multi-week trading range.

At the rate these guys are chasing stocks higher, we are going to see the S&P 500 over 1400 before Spring arrives. Ah yes, nothing like more liquidity to take care of everything. I really think we need to throw out all the old economics textbooks and rewrite them. Matter of fact, it would be a very short book containing only 4 words that one would need to know to become a world class economist: "LIQUIDITY CAN FIX ANYTHING".

Debt good; Savings bad.

Next question.

Gold has resistance that can be seen on the price chart near the $1740 level. That has held the metal in check for last few days. It ran to this level overnight but could not penetrate it so let's see if it can push through Monday evening here in the US or Tuesday morning. If so, it will set up a run towards $1750 which is where the next test will be. Bulls MUST clear that level and HOLD it above there to set up the critical challenge of the next resistance zone.