It was a strong September, the best in seventy years, with the Dow up more than 8% for the month while the other averages were not far behind. As the third quarter closes, however, the clear winners were precious metals. But it appears that both commodities and stocks have more to run in the weeks [...]

It would seem that a low-volume battle is being fought over that 1,130-1,150 level on the S&P 500. As I expected, the break above 1,130 occurred this week and now the bulls have to defend it while attempting to push up above 1,150.

“Greed is good. Now it seems its legal” Gordon Gekko, “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” The Oliver Stone directed sequel to the 1987 film “Wall Street” starring Michael Douglas, Shia LaBeouf and Josh Brolin, opens Friday in the aftermath of two years of financial crisis that almost sank the global financial structure and put 9.9% [...]

As investors waited for stocks to make up their mind, gold and silver took off this week. Gold made new highs while silver’s price level is higher than at any time since 1980. The question is will stocks follow that lead or fall back as they have the last two times the S&P 500 reached [...]

The recent price action in precious metals this past week convinces me that a new bull run in gold and silver is underway. For those investors who have yet to add some exposure to precious metals, now would be a good time.

After opening the month with a five percent market melt-up, investors were expecting a follow through this week that would take the averages higher. There was even talk of a possible break through the ceiling of this trading range that has lasted almost six months. Instead we only managed a couple point gain over last [...]

If you have been watching commodity prices over the last two months, you would think that the world’s consumers are in for another escalation in food prices last seen in the summer of 2008. Yet, short-term movements in agricultural prices do not necessarily translate into higher food bills in the long term.

This wasn’t supposed to happen. The week before Labor Day is notoriously slow with few, if any gains or losses for the week, but somebody forgot to tell that to the markets. It would appear from the upside action that we are once again going to run the S&P 500 Index back to the top [...]

There was a time when one of the rules of asset allocation was to always keep a little cash in your portfolio. Cash was the safest bet you could make. It became the place where we retreated when the markets were in free fall. Today, however, cash as an asset class, earns almost nothing. As [...]