A Look at Friday’s Market: The overall market moved moderately higher in a broad based move that could best be summed up as short covering and the squaring up of positions ahead of the holiday weekend. In the commodities markets Oil was higher by $1.85 to $96.47 per barrel, and Gold was higher by $30.50 to $1,685.30 per ounce. In the grain markets, Wheat was lower by $0.134 to $8.70 per bushel, while Corn was lower by $0.086 to $8.026 per bushel, and Soybeans were lower by $0.056 to $17.644 per bushel.
A Few Thoughts on Tuesday’s Market: In looking at the charts of Friday’s trading activity, very few of the charts I looked at appeared to be demonstrating any sort of a break from their recent trading ranges. The one exception to this is the gold and silver stocks. They all had breaks above recent trading ranges; and appear to be headed at least to new short term highs. Of course it is always wise to remember that gold and silver stocks have a tendency to be very volatile and can reverse course suddenly and without warning. With that being said, I found Newmont Mining ‘NEM’, Barrick Gold Corp. ‘ABX’, Gold Corp. ‘GG’, and Yamana Gold ‘AUY’ to have attractive chart patterns.
The Bottom Line: While it clearly looks like we may be in a proverbial “dull market” I am certainly not expecting things to stay that way. At this point in time, my estimate is for the 1st couple of days this week to be rather tame trading, and then I see a chance for things to get rather volatile towards the end of the week.