20110826 Weekend

Dow 11,284.54 +134.72
Nasdaq 2,479.85 +60.22
SP500 1,176.80 +17.53
10-YrBond 2.19% -0.03

Dollar lower and closed at lows. Precious metals higher and closed at highs.

GLD 177.47 +5.11
SLV 40.41 +0.41
PTM 21.36 +0.06
XLE 65.81 +1.25
XLF 12.77 +0.11
VXX 41.07 -0.65

This week, margin for futures contracts on gold was raised. Following the script of the silver take-down earlier this year, will there be more margin hikes the next few weeks? Increasing volatility in price of gold. Gold closed well over 1750 (which was a key level) at 1794. If gold tests lower 1700s next week, that would be a nice buy. For precious metal futures traders, the disparity in leverage between silver and gold has been reduced thus slightly increasing the attractiveness of paper silver.
Barron's article Gene Epstein saying gold price not going higher for a year. James Turks says gold will quickly go over 1900 and "should hit $2,000 within 30 days".

Big lunar cycles this upcoming Monday.

Head of the private Federal Reserve, chief counterfeiter Ben Bernanke, spoke at the big bash in Jackson Hole and didn't say much.

Bill Cara wrote, "Yesterday, in the heat of a crushing sell-off in the heaviest weighted components of GDX and GDXJ, two of my holdings, which are not included in either of those indexes, closed the day over +10% higher.
The ETF situation has gotten so bad for honest traders that I really have no more appetite trading the components, and I’m going to recommend to the smaller companies whose shares have been put into GDXJ that they bitterly complain to the SEC, and demand their ticker symbols be removed."

BAC 7.76 +0.11