Diamonds On The Dow
Brian Bloom
Dow Theory seeks to call the direction of the Primary trend - based on:

Right now, the P/E ratio on the S&P Index is overvalued in terms of the following 30 year chart, and there has recently been a worrying dip of the price away from the red "overvalued" line towards the blue "fair value" line (Charts courtesy Decisionpoint.com) )

In scrolling through the charts, I spotted the following corroborative formations on the monthly charts of DJ Industrials and the Transportation Indexes:

Both charts seems to have diamond formations (which are sometimes "continuation patterns" but, more often than not, "reversal" patterns)

The Transportation Index has a "double top" formation.

On balance, when you take all three of these observations together, it looks like the Primary Bear Trend wants to start reasserting itself. The issue is "confirmation". No firm call can be made BOTH diamonds break either up or down.

From my perspective, the market's knee jerk reaction to Bernanke's appointment was: "Inflation ahead", as evidenced by the sharp spike up in precious metals prices, and the sharp spike down in the US Dollar.

The chart that has been worrying me most of all is the monthly chart of the 30 year T-Bond yield.

Note:

Summary

If Mr Bernanke is going to man the printing presses then this will exert downward pressure on the US Dollar which, in turn, will put upward pressure on long dated interest rates. In turn, this will put downward pressure on equities and on real estate prices.

So what do we do?

Private investors should move to the safety of gold

The Government should back away from a "paper" solution to the economic woes, and move towards an industrial solution. Infrastructural investment will stimulate the economy far more robustly than moving towards a war footing externally, and a police state internally.

All of the above will offer an added benefit of assisting the environment to heal itself.


Brian Bloom

Australia, October 26th, 2005