Pull the trigger with confidence.

The total amount of margin debt has been screaming higher, a factor which has drawn a lot of attention.  High margin debt has been present at major market price tops in the past.  But there is more to this relationship than just the overbought indication.

Lars Von Thienen of the Foundation for the Study of Cycles recently filmed a great video, available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=lic-00cjI40, where he looks at the cycles implications of these data. He used cycle analysis software to detect... Read More

Crude oil prices have been in an amazingly strong positive correlation with bond yields for a few decades.  But it is not a perfect correlation, and there can be information in the subtle differences.

It makes sense that oil prices and bond yields should move together.  Higher oil prices mean higher prices generally, and inflation is the enemy of any fixed income product, stealing away the value of the future payments.  So it is not a surprise to see them moving together.

What is... Read More

The Ratio-Adjusted Summation Index (RASI) for the NYSE is down to -522 and still falling.  This is low enough to mark a decent end point for an ordinary market correction.  Yes, it can go lower than this, especially in a determined bear market.  But a low reading like this in a long term uptrend is a nice thing to see.

When my parents first created the McClellan Oscillator in 1969, they were initially looking at just the individual exponential moving averages (EMAs) of the daily... Read More

There has just been an improvement in the US trucking fleet data, according to the folks at Cass Information Systems, and it has bullish implications for the stock market. 

Cass publishes data each month on several categories of trucking data.  The chart above shows the 12-month rate of change (12ROC) for the Cass Freight Shipments and Expenditures Indices.  When both of these are positive, it carries a strong positive message for the stock market.  If both are negative, that carries a big... Read More

I covered here in June 2026 how the upturn in oil prices was on time, but the magnitude was overly amplified by the war with Iran.  Now oil prices are starting upward again after a pullback, and this is going to be a much longer uptrend.  That is the message of gold's 20-month leading indication shown in this week's chart.

This is a relationship I discovered years ago, when looking at gold and oil prices on a long term chart.  I was not using the time offset then, but when I tilted my head... Read More

I have been following several different futures contracts in the weekly Commitment of Traders (COT) Report since 2001.  Bitcoin futures came along in December 2017, and were featured in the COT Report starting in April 2018.  So the history is not as deep as a lot of the other futures contracts I track.  One point which became clear early on is that the COT data for Bitcoin futures work differently than other contracts.

I prefer the original format data, which breaks down traders into... Read More

The yield curve has been steepening ever since its maximum point of "inversion" back in June 2023.  That is good news for the economy that the yield curve is steepening, as that serves as a healthy sign for GDP.  The term "steepening" refers to yields at the long term end of the maturity spectrum being higher than short term yields.  So steepening can occur by raising long term rates, lowering short term ones, or some combination of the two.

A climax point for this steepening trend is due... Read More

Treasury Secretary Bessent made news this week, announcing he was going to be upping the program whereby the Treasury Department buys up long-dated T-Bonds.  The intention of that program is to switch more of the Treasury's debt from long-dated instruments to short ones, to lower interest rate costs but more importantly to minimize the economic damage to housing and other markets from high long term rates.  It is a nice idea, but the numbers are against him.  And so is the message from gold... Read More