StocksPayWell

Bearish sentiment on gold and miners is now unwinding and should provide fuel for this rally. The fact that oil has broken down from a flag formation is another positive sign as lower oil prices are positive for miners.

Oil has sold off because the U.S. and Europe have stated that they may tap into their strategic oil reserves in an attempt to keep oil prices down. This is a band aid approach that may help in the short term but in the long run it will not have a major effect on the price of oil. Oil is going up in the longer term but it may take a quick drop to it’s 200 day EMA at 98. Then again this could be a false break down and when the news wears off oil will be back in the 105-110 trading range.

I mentioned in my entry of March 24 that TLT bonds were having a counter trend rally and would hit resistance at the 115-116 area. Well TLT didn’t make it that far as it got hammered at 114. Friday’s action formed a bearish outside candlestick that encompassed the prior 3.5 days worth of gains. TLT may find some short term support at it’s 200 day EMA of 111.01 and the March 19th low of just under 110. but this looks like a broken trade. There is longer term uptrend support at about 95 and that is where TLT looks like it is headed.

My guess is that the 30 year bull market in treasury bonds is officially over. One way to play rising interest rates would be to buy TBT. While there can be pricing problems with double inverse ETF’s this particular one has formed a rounding bottom and with interest rates coming off almost 0 it looks like the only direction this ETF can go from here is up.

The dollar has not been exhibiting any great strength lately as many analysts had been anticipating. The Euro has in fact been slowly rising as the perception is that Europe has at least temporarily solved it’s debt crisis while the U.S. has a potentially larger one looming in the future. There are countries like Russia, China, India and Brazil that are actively working to undermine the dollar as the universl currency of exchange.

If a sovereign debt crisis were to hit the U.S. it seems unlikely that the dollar and treasuries would be the main beneficiaries of it as the entire fiscal system of the U.S would be under fire. I would anticipate that gold, silver and other hard commodities would be the primary asset classes that capital would flow into.

Conclusion: It looks like the rally in gold, silver and miners is underway. In any event some gold and silver should be a long term holding in any portfolio.