A look at some leading indicators

We’ve already discussed the negative condition of the NYSE internal momentum indicator series known as HILMO (Hi-Lo Momentum).  Also joining the list of weak indicators are the leading indices which are necessary for a healthy stock market: the NYSE Broker/Dealer Index (XBD) and the PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX).

Let’s start by looking at the XBD.  Here we can clearly see the negative non-confirmation of the broker/dealer stocks.  The XBD chart has failed to confirm the higher low in the S&P 500, which suggests that the market isn’t quite as healthy as Wednesday’s turnaround would seem to suggest.  The strongest market environments are always accompanied by strength in the broker/dealers.  When this group of stocks fails to confirm the S&P it usually means there is latent weakness that must still be dealt with before the broad market can launch an extended rally phase.

The semiconductors have been perpetual laggards this summer.  While the chip makers aren’t as important as the broker/dealers, it’s still preferable to see strength in the semis when the major indices are rallying.  The persistent relative weakness in the SOX (below) is another reason why the market has had difficulty in launching a sustainable rally in recent months.

Notice also that the CBOE Volatility Index (VIX) is looking lively.  The 15-day moving average for the VIX is curling up in reflection of the rising short-term volatility.  Reading chart patterns for VIX can be much more deceptive than the patterns for individual stocks, but the short-term pattern suggests that the sellers may attempt another run on the market in the near term.

[Excerpted from the August 19 issue of Momentum Strategies Report.]

Will the stock market return to earth this summer?

What accounts for the equity bull market’s stubborn refusal to bend to the bears’ will despite a clear lack of internal strength?  That’s the question investors are asking right now in what has been a grinding, directionless stock market this summer.

The answer to that question is simple to answer, yet complex when you look below its surface.  Corporate funds are driving this bull market much more so than direct participation by small retail investors.  The pattern that has been established since the start of this year has been a case of wash, rinse, repeat: the S&P 500 Index (SPX) rallies to either a new high or a previous high, then the sellers enter to force stock prices lower.  The sellers rarely succeed in pushing the SPX much below its 200-day moving average before the buyers step back in to regain control.  The net result of this continual process has been a lateral trading range for much of this year.

What’s remarkable about the market’s resilience for the year to date is that internal momentum for the NYSE broad market has been negative in recent months, as the following graph shows.  This indicator is based on the new 52-week highs and lows and underlines the stock market’s internal path of least resistance based on the rate of change (momentum) of the new highs-new lows.  As my late mentor Bud Kress always believed, the new highs and lows are the single best statistic for discerning what he called the “incremental demand for equities.”  The following chart shows the complete series of Hi-Lo Momentum (HILMO) indicators as originally conceived by Kress.  They show a stock market that is beset by numerous cross-currents and a rather large degree of internal weakness.

Normally when NYSE internal momentum is as weak as this chart illustrates, the market would have nowhere to go but down.  After all, the HILMO indicators show the market’s internal path of least resistance and when they’re all declining in unison it means that there are way more new 52-week lows than there are new 52-week highs.  So why has the stock market refused to decline in a sustained fashion all year?  Probably because the public aren’t major participants in equities, unlike in previous bull markets.  Institutional funds are the primary demand drivers for stocks, and institutional participants are far less likely to sell heavily unless they have someone else to sell to, namely the public. 

A shrinking supply of stocks is another reason for the market’s resilience against bear raids in recent years is another factor worth mentioning.  The number of U.S. exchange-listed stocks has declined almost every year since the late 1990s.  According to the Strategas Group, the total number of exchange-listed companies sank to 4,900 by the end of 2012 after peaking at 8,800 in 1997.  “De-listings of failed uncompetitive technology stocks, another M&A surge in the mid-2000s and a relative shortage of initial stock offerings all contributed,” Michael Santoli observed in December 2013.  Sarbanes-Oexley and the growth of buyout funds devoted to acquiring smaller companies and turning them private also contributed to the shrinkage of publicly traded stocks.

The trend of shrinking equity supply may be in the process of ending, however.  The number of U.S. listed stocks rose to 5,008 as of last year, according to The Wall Street Journal.  This marked the first time since the Internet stock boom of the late ‘90s that the number of public companies actually grew.

Dr. Ed Yardeni has another explanation for the stock market’s resilience since 2013.  “Investors have been impervious to the sorts of anxiety attacks that caused significant corrections during the first four years of the bull market,” he recently observed.  Yardeni noted that falling commodity prices have been a concern for investors, as have the meltdown in Chinese stock prices and the ongoing bailout trauma in Greece.  Yet the U.S. equity market has refused to panic.  He attributes this to the rising trend of the 52-week average of the Investors Intelligence Bull/Bear Ratio. 

This series, which begins in 1988, is near record-high territory.  Yardeni explained: “That’s because the sentiment survey’s percentage in the correction camp is also at a record high.  In other words, when trouble mounts, sentiment doesn’t turn bearish.  Rather, it turns mildly defensive, betting that any selloff will be just a correction in a bull market.  Ironically, that helps to explain why corrections have been missing in action since the start of 2013.”

What it would it take to panic the big institutional investors into selling stocks heavily?  More than perhaps any other factor, the bull market in equities is being driven by institutional investors’ belief that the U.S. economy is gradually improving.  Indeed, virtually every positive economic news headline has been greeted with enthusiasm on Wall Street.  Even negative news is often used as an excuse by big investors to buy stocks based on the assumption that it bolsters the case for the Fed not raising interest rates. 

The belief that the domestic economy is improving is supported by the New Economy Index (NEI), a measure of U.S. retail economic strength, is near an all-time high.  Note the progression of the NEI trend since breaking out of a sideways range earlier this year.  NEI has continued higher since then, a sign that U.S. consumers are still spending despite the bad news about the global economy. 

As long as consumers believe their jobs to be secure and the U.S. economy to be inviolable, the retail spending trend isn’t likely to abate anytime soon.  Neither, for that matter, is institutional investors’ refusal to cash out their stock market holdings as the bull market nears its seventh year of existence.  

The myth of gold price manipulation

How eager are gold bugs to believe their ill fortune over the last four years is the result of sinister forces rather than a lack of prudence on their own part?  The answer is easily seen in the writings of gold commentators over the last few months. References to organized manipulation and an official conspiracy to suppress the gold price abound among many analysts and their followers. 

The collective passion behind this belief has reached a fever pitch and has created something akin to mass hysteria within the gold investing community.  To even question this ingrained belief is to elicit the scorn of the conspiracy crowd.  So ingrained is their belief that gold’s losses in the last four years are the result of manipulation that they refuse to pay heed to the underlying fundamental and technical reasons for the metal’s 4-year bear market. 

This should come as no surprise, however.  As Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, “Men in general live as much by appearances as by realities: indeed, they are often moved more by things as they appear than by things as they really are.”  This explains the eagerness of many gold investors to believe that the metal’s value has diminished due to the acts of organized manipulators instead of owing to the natural market forces of supply and demand.

Indeed, the main reason why so many gold bugs incessantly chant the mantra that “gold is manipulated” is because most of them stubbornly refused to sell at the 2011 top.  That the bull market for gold ended in September that year was made abundantly clear by the actions of the CME Group, which raised margin requirements for precious metals several times that year.  This, in no uncertain terms, established that the regulatory and liquidity framework were no longer friendly for metals, thus speculators no longer had an incentive to load up on it. 

Upon realizing that the 10-year upward trend in gold prices had broken in 2011, long-term investors still had plenty of time to sell at least some of their gold holdings in order to book healthy profits.  The worst ravages of the 4-year bear market in gold which began in September 2011 occurred in 2013.  That gave investors more than a year in which to distribute their holdings so as to minimize the impact of the decline that followed.  Yet true to form, the years since 2011 have proven to be a “slope of hope” for the many investors who refused to sell. 

In its original conception, the term “manipulation” was simply a term used to describe high pressure salesmanship in the marketing of securities.  The process by which investment assets are either accumulated or distributed fell under the rubric of manipulation, since without wide public participation a bull market cannot occur.  The professionals who undertake to either purchase or sell assets must, at times, play against the public, hence the impact of professional “manipulation” in the broadest sense.  This is not the same thing, though, as the willful engineering of a sustained market decline for the express purpose of keeping an asset’s price permanently depressed (as many gold bugs allege). 

In 1933, John Durand and A.T. Miller wrote the following on the subject of manipulation: “In the broadest sense of the word, manipulation, in the form of purposeful effort to control prices, is seldom absent from the market.  Practically every [market] has at least one professional guardian who watches to see that it does not fluctuate too erratically, and protects it against violent onslaughts.”  The authors concluded that manipulation “need have no terrors for the intelligent speculator who will take the trouble to learn its ways: he should in fact profit by its leadership.”

As far back as the early 1900s, traders who knew how to “read the tape” could easily spot the operations of would-be manipulators.  Consider the words of Richard Wyckoff in his 1910 book, “Studies in Tape Reading.”  He wrote:  “The element of manipulation need not discourage any one.  Manipulators are giant traders, wearing seven-leagued boots.  The trained ear can detect the steady ‘clump, clump’ as they progress, and the footprints are recognized in the [tape].” 

If Wyckoff’s words be true, why then do so many complain of manipulation when they should be able to counteract its negative influence with prudent market analysis?  Perhaps because of a lack of technical trading skill, the influence of manipulators is grossly exaggerated.

Gold’s 4-year slide can be explained in terms that even novice investors instinctively understand: whenever an asset is the subject of a speculative bubble and its price is driven to unsustainably high levels, the bubble must inevitably burst.  Or as they say in commodity parlance, “High prices cure high prices.”  That is, when a commodity’s price is driven to extremes, the demand for the commodity diminishes.  A decline then sets in which returns prices to more reasonable levels.  When the bear market pushes prices to unreasonably low levels, investors who recognize the undervaluation step in and begin accumulating it until eventually a new bull market commences and the cycle repeats.  This is the fundamental law which governs all tradable assets; gold is no exception.

The question I posed in my original commentary on gold manipulation remains unanswered: why invest in gold at all if one truly believes the market for it is manipulated?  If one truly believes that gold is controlled by manipulators who want to depress its price, then owning it must surely rank as the ultimate fool’s errand.  Or could it be that there’s another reason for gold bugs’ stubborn refusal to sell? 

The drawing below by the political cartoonist Darkow is worth a thousand words.  This was during the investing public’s hue and cry over High Frequency Trading (HFT) on Wall Street and the supposedly “rigged” nature of the stock market in consequence of it.  Of course the real reason for the outcry over HFTs is because the public needed a scapegoat to blame their lack of participation in the stock market rally of 2009-2012.  But like every other specter, HFTs gradually disappeared from the public’s consciousness and was replaced by another fear, namely manipulation. 

As an 18-year veteran of the gold market, I fully understand the mindset of most gold bugs.  They believe that gold prices should proceed higher in a non-stop linear fashion until it reaches what they consider to be “fair value,” that is, somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 an ounce (if not higher).  A gold price anywhere south of $10,000 is considered by this crowd to be an outrage and the obvious work of evil conspirators.  Any decline in gold prices is most emphatically the result of dark and sinister forces bent on establishing a New World Order.

                                 

This leads us to our next question, viz. what is the driving force behind the conspiratorial mindset?  What exactly motivates the conspiracy theorist into believing that his world is shaped by powerful manipulative forces?  The answer is that there is a certain measure of emotional comfort in the belief that big market declines are completely outside one’s control.  Hence there is no need for actively evaluating one’s investment decisions.  That the 4-year bear market in precious metals can be explained by a far-reaching conspiracy to depress gold prices provides a cathartic effect to many investors.  It soothes the sting of the losses these investors have suffered since 2011 as they’ve watched the value of their gold holdings continuously plummet. 

The belief in a conspiracy to suppress gold prices originates from the accrued losses that many buy-and-hold investors suffer whenever gold enters an extended bear market.  In just the last couple of years we’ve seen the gold market conspiracy theory belief grow into a rather profitable cottage industry for some.  Indeed, certain commentators have made a lucrative living from books, newsletter and websites devoted to explaining gold manipulation.  There’s even an organization dedicated to uncovering and stopping the participants alleged to be involved in it.

The words of Robert Edwards & John Magee are worth quoting: “The market is big, too big for any person, corporation or combine to control as a speculative unit.  Its operation is extremely free, and extremely democratic in the sense that it represents the integration of the hopes and fears of many kinds of buyers and sellers.  Not all are short-term traders.  There are investors, industrialists, employees of corporations, those who buy to keep, those who buy to sell years later – all grades and types of buyers and sellers.”

Yet, as previously mentioned, there’s also no denying that some degree of manipulation exists in the everyday operations of gold and other asset markets.  With the stakes as high as they are, this is to be expected.  An experienced investor recognizes this truth and can generally avoid the ill effects of manipulation.  Certainly any investor worth his salt would not be so foolish as to risk his hard-earned capital on an extended period where markets are showing signs of undergoing distribution (i.e. organized selling) or other periods of extreme volatility.  If an experienced investor suspects that any of his investments are the subject of organized manipulation he certainly would have enough sense to unload them rather than suffer the vagaries of such a campaign.  “Holding and hoping” is the last refuge of the naïve and inexperienced. 

None of this is to say that gold is a poor long-term investment.  It’s worth pointing out that gold has outperformed many other commodities and asset categories in the last decade.  Even today, after a 4-year bear market, its price per ounce is still well above its previous bear market low of 2001.  Moreover, as one of my readers has pointed out, “Gold price has kept pace with inflation and then some since 1970s.”  Claims of manipulation notwithstanding, gold has done an admirable job of maintaining value over the last 40 years.  When viewed from the perspective of the long-term chart (below), its performance since 2001 is even more impressive.  In fact, it’s hard to understand the gold bugs’ cries of “manipulation!” when looking at the following graph.

This is cold comfort for the conspiracy-obsessed gold bugs, though.  They won’t be satisfied until gold rockets to $10,000/oz. and the gold standard is reinstated.  Until that day arrives they will continue to vilify the invisible hordes of manipulators and conspirators who seek to bring about an Orwellian slavery by eliminating gold ownership and replacing it with “monopoly money.”

There is consolation, however, in the knowledge that this, too, shall pass.  In due time the prevailing fears over organized gold market manipulation will be replaced by yet another fear.  This is how public opinion proceeds -- from fear to fear and from outrage to outrage.  Eventually all discussion of manipulation will be forgotten as this phantasm disappears into the fog of the collective consciousness. 

Is the gold price manipulated?

One of the most commonly held beliefs among gold investors is that the market for gold is heavily manipulated.  It has become an article of faith among gold advocates that the price is subject to direct control by government, central banks and other parties who have a vested interest in depressing the gold price.  In this commentary we’ll explore this belief and try to arrive at a firm conclusion as to its veracity. 

Nearly four years after the gold bear market began it has become increasingly common to hear gold writers mention the gold conspiracy theory in their commentaries.  I can’t recall as many references to gold manipulation since the late 1990s, when the gold price was nearing the end of its 21-year bear market.  At that time it was quite normal to see discussions of gold market manipulation as gold investors were becoming frustrated by gold’s seeming inability to rally.  Meanwhile the stock market was zooming to all-time highs, which made gold bugs feel even more frustrated for missing out on the equities bull market.

At the time, the rationale behind the alleged gold price manipulation was the prevailing belief that the U.S. government favored a stronger dollar.  The strong dollar policy of then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin catered to this belief.  It was thought by conspiracy theorists that the U.S. sought to collapse of the vulnerable nations by weakening foreign currencies in order to facilitate a fully integrated global economy.  This theory was given some credence by the near collapse of commodities in the summer of 1998 along with currency crises in Russia, Argentina and several Pacific Rim nations.  As it turned out, the scare was short lived and gold and other commodities soon thereafter established a long-term bottom.

The market for gold is immensely huge and virtually impossible for any one entity to control its price swings.  Beyond the very immediate term, any attempt at raising or depressing gold prices would almost certainly meet with failure.  Even a coterie of interests devoted to pushing gold prices lower would meet with certain failure due to the enormous size and complexity of the market.  As one well known market analyst of the previous century commented, “…the market itself is bigger than all the ‘pools’ and ‘insiders’ put together….the great market movements are beyond the manipulation of the combined financial interests of the world.”

One commonly shared belief among gold bugs who subscribe to the manipulation theory is belief in a global conspiracy. Probably the most famous example of this is the Illuminati concept.  Illuminati theorists believe in a highly organized group of elite individuals within government, industry and finance who share the common goal of undermining the sovereignty of nations and establishing a one-world government.   

This group, moreover, is allegedly unified by centuries of blood ties and political connections.  In his book, “Exploding the Doomsday Money Myths,” Sherman S. Smith observed: “The idea of such total unity and perfect loyalty among relatives and different families and nations is unfathomable.  From what we know about history and the infighting that can occur within even a single family unit, the possibility of such a large group successfully devising and implementing a planned strategy for more than two hundred years is miniscule.” 

While there’s no denying that conspiracies and monopolies do exist, there’s also no denying that for every attempt at controlling an industry or a commodity there is a counterbalance.  Within any group of would-be monopolists there are those who can never agree on a common plan for gaining control; common experience teaches this (as anyone familiar with corporate politics knows).  Further, there are always other parties who would also like to gain total control in opposition to other conspiracy groups.  In other words, there is no one overriding “Illuminati” monopoly group, but multiple groups of would-be controllers competing amongst themselves.  “If this weren’t true,” wrote Smith, “the entire world would already be controlled by the Mafia or other such underworld organization.”

There are several questions which should be asked by those who subscribe to the gold manipulation theory.  To begin with, why would manipulators actively seek to push prices lower when there is less to be gained by a lower gold price than a higher one?  The manipulation crowd is presumably in favor of multinational businesses which comprise the global economy.  It’s well known that higher commodity prices reflect a healthy outlook for big business due to the increased demand for raw materials and industrial inputs.  Gold being the strongest barometer for commodities demand, a falling gold price is more apt to reflect deflation, which is the bane and scourge of big business.  If anything, manipulators would have more interest in raising gold prices, not crashing them. 

Secondly, what interest could gold manipulators have in lowering gold prices when it automatically presumes a stronger dollar?  A stronger currency does no favors to the U.S. economy over the longer term.  It results in lower export prices for U.S. manufacturers and strains profit margins.  As the Wall Street Journal reported on April 24, the strong dollar has been “wreaking havoc” on the profit margins of American multinationals.  A stronger dollar forces multinationals to raise prices in order to offset currency issues, yet as WSJ pointed out, this only tends to depress profits due to lower sales. 

In fact if a gold conspiracy did exist, the only conceivable reason for knocking down prices would be for the sole purpose of allowing the manipulators to buy the gold back at bargain levels.  This in turn would allow them to profit from the inevitable bull market which always eventually follows a long-term bear market.  To this end, I can’t recall gold bugs discussing manipulation during the glory years between 2002 and 2011 when the gold price was rocketing to all-time highs.  Indeed, it would seem that cries of “manipulation!” are selectively applied to only those times when gold’s prospects have dwindled.

Finally, if the conspiracy theorists truly believe that the gold price is subject to manipulation then why do they advocate owning gold?  This is probably the biggest inconsistency of their hypothesis.  Why even touch gold if its price is subject entirely to the whims of an elite group of power brokers?  Could it be that the ringleaders of the conspiracy theorists haven’t bothered to smooth out this dissonance because so many of them have a vested interest in promoting gold coins? 

I’ve noticed over the years that many conspiracy theorists advocate owning gold; some of them even sell it as retailers, regardless of whether its price is rising or falling.  In fact, some of the most aggressive marketing efforts of gold bullion coins occur when the gold price is showing its greatest weakness.  It comes across as contradictory that the very people who declaim loudest against gold manipulation are also those who advise owning it even when its investment prospects are dim.  Could it be that there is just as much a conspiracy among gold coin retailers as there allegedly is among the alleged gold market manipulators?

Gold’s greatest attribute is that of a fear barometer.  When investors are concerned about the longer-term economic outlook they invariably turn to gold as a safe haven.  This was true in the 1970s when investors worried over the impact of runaway inflation; it was also evident in the previous decade when they had many concerns about war, terrorism and the global economy.  When investors are less fearful, however, gold loses its luster as safe havens are ignored in favor of riskier assets.  This, and not some well organized gold conspiracy, is why gold’s price has been declining since 2011.  

Clif Droke in TradersWorld Magazine

The July/August/September issue of TradersWorld magazine (#60) features an article by yours truly entitled “Measuring Stock Market Internal Strength.”  It’s available in print format or in PDF at the following web address:  http://tradersworld.com/60.pdf.  

Also contained in the latest issue is a review of my latest book, Mastering Moving Averages.  Special thanks to chief editor Larry Jacobs for the review.

Greece and China: heralding a new bear market?

What started out as typically sluggish summer week quickly morphed into an extremely eventful one.  In just the last five days we witnessed the intensification of the Greek debt roller coaster, the bursting of a mini-bubble in Chinese equities, a temporary shutdown of trading on the NYSE, and a brief but meaningful pullback in U.S. equities.  And to think the summer is still young!

Investors are clearly disquieted over the impact the overseas crises might have on the U.S. stock market.  But are they right to be concerned? 

Before we answer that question let’s take a closer look at the principles behind the latest round of global market turmoil.  Below is a chart showing the Shanghai Composite Index, which shows the primary trend of the Chinese stock market.  As we’ve talked about in the past, China’s stock market also can serve as a leading indicator for the S&P.  It goes without saying that China’s prospects carry an outsized impact on the global economy, including its primary trading partner. 

Coming to the rescue of the broad market this past week was the 200-day moving average, first for China’s Shanghai Composite Index and then for the S&P 500 Index (SPX).  Both indices finished the week above their lows and both made nominal gains for the week.  China’s stock market caught a much needed break as a powerful short-covering rally kicked off, giving the bulls an opportunity to regroup.  It’s worth mentioning that while China’s Shanghai index has relinquished much of its gains in the past month, it’s still up almost 80 percent in the past year.  By any historical measure this is extremely impressive.

As for the controversy surrounding Greece, the last few days have demonstrated the ability of negative news headlines to catalyze market moves when stock market internal momentum is declining.  Under any other technical condition the headline surprises of the past month would have been shrugged off by the broad market.  But with the NYSE internal momentum indicators (based on the new 52-week highs and lows) in steep decline, the path of least resistance for stocks was down.  

As long as the daily number of new 52-week lows on the NYSE remains well above 40 the stock market’s weakened internal condition will leave it vulnerable to negative headline surprises.  Despite this negative short-term variable, however, it’s a testament to the overall strength of the U.S. broad market that the major indices haven’t taken worse hits despite the bad overseas news lately.  I think we can chalk this up to the underrated impact of the Year Five Phenomenon.  This is another way of saying that the 10-year equity market cycle is in the ascent as are several of the other major long-term Kress cycles. 

With so many long-term cycles in the “up” phase, the bears are having a difficult time creating downside momentum for equity prices.  The Year Five Phenomenon should be even more favorable for the bulls beginning around the fourth quarter of 2015.  This is why the crises in Greece and China are unlikely to bring the bear out of hibernation for the U.S. anytime soon.

If the Greek debt drama in that country truly poses a serious threat to the global economy, however, it should be evident in the price of gold.  Gold as a barometer of investor fear is nonpareil; it responds whenever informed investors foresee situations which threaten global market stability. 

Instead of a concerned response among gold investors, what we find is that the yellow metal is singularly unconcerned with the recent goings on overseas.  As the ultimate fear gauge, gold’s failure to rally in the face of global market turmoil strongly suggests informed investors don’t foresee a global recession anytime soon.  I maintain that if gold isn’t unduly concerned with foreign market turbulence, neither should we be alarmed. 

While Greece’s economy remains in tatters, China’s economy is still quite strong.  The popping of the mini-bubble in Chinese equities is nothing if not a growing pain for the world’s manufacturing powerhouse.  Meanwhile in the U.S., the consumer is slowly beginning to flex his muscles after years of remaining dormant.  The state of the retail economy can be quickly gauged by looking at a composite stock price of the leading U.S. consumer retail, business service, and business transportation stocks.  This composite picture is encapsulated in the New Economy Index (NEI).

As the following picture shows, the U.S. retail economy is still in good shape, though it’s hardly growing by leaps and bounds.  The two trend lines in the NEI chart reflect the 12-week (red line) and 20-week (black line) moving averages.  As of July 10, NEI has equaled an 8-year high made earlier this year.

If you’ll indulge me, I’d like to offer some anecdotal evidence on the state of the economy in my neck of the woods.  Living as I do in a tourist-dominated regional economy along the North Carolina coast, I have the unique perspective of being able to observe the yearly changes in tourist spending patterns.  The first few years following the tumultuous housing crisis were understandably subdued.  Housing construction and real estate sales declined appreciably while the demand for summer housing rentals was also down for the next few years after 2008.

Gradually the real estate and tourism outlook in the coastal Carolinas began improving, though, and by 2013 it was clear that the region’s economy had turned a corner.  The summer of 2015 has been a stellar summer for the region’s tourism and the best one I’ve observed in some time. 

June and July have been record tourism months for many ocean communities along the North Carolina coast.  As someone has observed, this summer’s increase in shark attacks is a backhanded compliment to the success of the Chambers of Commerce in drawing people to the beach.  The pace of new home development has dramatically picked up this year, too, and appears to be accelerating.  The region’s economy is clearly on the upswing.

I mention this because what bodes well for Carolina coast real estate and tourism typically augurs well for East Coast real estate in the aggregate.  Considering that the West Coast has seen most of the improvement in the real estate market in recent years, it looks like the East is about to experience its own resurgence.  This in turn will further stimulate an economy in need of an extra boost. 

Should investors worry about Greece, China?

To briefly address the concern many investors are having, I don’t believe that either the Greek crisis or the collapse of China’s stock market will ultimately hurt the U.S. economy.  

As economist Scott Grannis pointed out in his informative blog post (“China stock crash: index up only 72% in the past year): “China is not collapsing, it’s learning how to deal with prosperity.”  He further cautioned investors that “ instead of worrying that the collapse of stock prices is going to trigger a collapse of the Chinese economy, I’d be thinking that what was a crazy-overvalued, bubble market just a few months ago is now coming back down to earth.”

As for Greece, if the debt drama in that country was truly posing a serious threat to the global economy it should be evident in the price of gold.  Instead, what we find is that gold is singularly unconcerned with the goings on overseas.  As the ultimate barometer of fear, gold’s failure to rally in the face of global market turmoil strongly suggests that informed investors don’t foresee a global recession anytime soon.  I maintain that if gold isn’t concerned, neither should we be unduly alarmed.