As we approach a full month of the government being shut down, we find ourselves living in a data desert. A rare exception came this morning in the form of the Consumer Price Index, which was a little lower than expectations.

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As we approach a full month of the government being shut down, we find ourselves living in a data desert. A rare exception came this morning in the form of the Consumer Price Index, which was a little lower than expectations.

Instead of the normal daily bar charts, let’s do something unusual and check out a much cruder granularity: annual bars. That’s right – – just a single bar to represent the billion things that take place inside a calendar year.
Below is the SPY going back for about eighty years. I have highlighted with rectangles two portions to make a particular point.

You think the 23% increase we’ve seen in the U.S. is bad? Take a gander at Argentina’s 2,164% rate! Whoever bought gold in that country years ago is sitting pretty.

The Fed’s favorite inflation number (and most boring chart) was just updated, and the predicted 0.2% figure was nailed, as it usually is.

At this point, far into the broad market recovery rally with gold stocks so close to the primary target (HUI 500+/-) I want to make sure I am speaking clearly as a human, rather than mechanically as a TA or macro funda dork. That will probably shorten this report and possibly the next few reports to come, until something big happens.
Big? Well, a broad top and breakdown would be big. A Fed policy shift would be big. A significant US Dollar rally would be big (given it would be against a government that seems bent on devaluation), a precious metals upside blowout and reversal, a commodity failure, a precipitous decline in long-term Treasury yields, or a resumed rise in those yields. All big.
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