Bulling Bullion

Hola from Mexico's Isla Mujeres. I'm winding up a two-month extended family vacation down here, and we love this place. It's sad to leave, but I'll be returning to my more usual pace of portfolio updates and fuller Commitments of Traders posts when I get home to Canada, where we've had a pretty brutal winter this year. Or so I hear from depressed friends... Cheers!

But I digress. Friday's Commitments of Traders report gave me two new signals: bullish for bullion and my trading setup for the S&P 500 goes to cash on April 18. Check out my newly updated latest signals table for more details based on the CFTC's latest COT data release. My other setups remain the same: cash for crude oil and natural gas, bearish for the 30-year Treasury bond and bullish for the Nikkei.

For gold, the signal goes from cash to bullish on Monday's open of trading. For the S&P 500, readers may recall that the wrong-way small traders got highly bearish last week, which gave me a bullish signal for the setup with a three-week delay (i.e. on April 11). Friday's COT report showed the same small trader crowd suddenly getting super-bullish in their net futures and options positioning as a percentage of the total open interest. That pushed my setup back into the cash column. (Recall that the "smart money" commercial hedgers have been bullish, but I need both groups of traders to give the same signal before I will take a trade.)

Good luck this coming week.

TAGS: SPX, S&P 500, gold, BKX, Bank Index, natural gas, Nikkei, crude oil,Treasury, bond, COT, Commitments of Traders,derivatives, Black Swans,market timing,trading system development, CFTC,Commodity Futures Trading Commission,COTs Timer, out-of-sample testing, walk-around testing

Disaster Finds Nikkei, S&P 500 Smart Money Super-Bullish

Boy did that Nikkei bullish signal seem bad at the beginning of the week. Now, however, it seems spookily prescient. After a huge gap down in the wake of the tsunami disaster, then more turmoil as the nuclear catastrophe unfolded, my position in the Japan iShares (EWJ) is now actually in the money. Who knows how it will turn out, but this past Friday's new Commitments of Traders data is even more bullish for the Nikkei. I've updated my latest signals table based on the new numbers from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The data for the Nikkei shows the "smart money" large speculators and small traders - the two groups of traders I follow for this market - ramping up their net futures and options positioning as of Tuesday. Yes, that was just as the gravity of the disaster was really sinking in and its nuke implications were sowing panic.

On the same day, the COT data also show the "smart money" commercial hedgers in S&P 500 futures and options got suddenly much more net bullish. Meanwhile, the wrong-way S&P 500 small traders - whom I fade - freaked out and got highly bearish. So much so, in fact, that their signal flipped to bullish. That has given me a new bullish signal for the S&P 500, which takes effect with a three-week trade delay.

See more details on these and my other signals on my table. Good luck this week!

Nikkei Bullish, Gold to Cash, Bearish on Bonds

The latest Commitments of Traders numbers are in, and here are my new signals from my latest signals table: gold goes to cash on Monday's open of trading, Nikkei goes to bullish, and the 30-year Treasury bond goes to bearish. Check out the signals table for more details on the latest COT data and my other trading setups based on this weekly data. I'm temporarily away from my office for a few weeks, so apologies for not updating my portfolio page and the lack of more detailed reports here. Good luck this coming week!

Bullion Bullish

A few new signals to report on my newly updated latest signals table: gold goes to bullish on Monday's open of trading, natural gas goes from bearish to cash on Monday's open, and my setup for the 30-year Treasury bond goes to cash as well. All other signals remain the same: S&P 500, Nikkei and crude oil are all in cash, while my signals for the BKX U.S. Bank Index is bullish. Good luck this coming week!

Gold to Cash, Banks to Bullish

A couple of new signals on my latest signals table: gold goes from bullish to cash this week, BKX Bank Index goes from cash to bullish. Also, on Monday, March 7, natural gas goes from bearish to cash. Sorry for the tardy post about last week's Commitments of Traders numbers. I updated the signals table on the weekend, but didn't have a chance to post on it until now. Good luck this week!