People Are Frightened, Money Pouring Into Switzerland & Gold

from KingWorldNews:

With continued volatility in global markets, including gold and silver, today King World News interviewed one of the legends in the gold world, Keith Barron. Barron consults with major gold companies around the world, as well as major brokerage houses, and he is also responsible for one of the largest gold discoveries in the last quarter century, a remarkable 14 million ounces of gold.

Here is what Barron had to say about the ongoing crisis in Europe: “Well, there are a lot of scared people here. There is a lot of money that’s been pouring into Switzerland and the Swiss franc. As you are aware, the Swiss National Bank has pegged the Swiss franc to the euro, so there is tremendous pressure on the franc.”

“They (the Swiss) have to take these euros and go and buy other currencies. So they have actually been sending the Norwegian kroner and other currencies such as the Canadian dollar higher, just because of these massive inflows into Swiss francs. Eventually that peg is going to break, but they are doing whatever they can right now to keep it in place.

Keith Barron continues @ KingWorldNews.com

Cytec Industries Inc (NYSE: CYT)

Today’s article focuses on a stock approaching a 52-week high. As a reminder, when it comes a stock hitting a 52-week high, I prefer to look for ones hitting a “NEW” high. To clarify, this would be a stock that hasn’t hit a new 52-week high in quite some time. In addition, and more importantly, I want the stock to have broken through a key area of resistance. This way I know that it wasn’t just any move higher, it was a key breakout.

Cytec Industries Inc., a specialty chemicals and materials company, engages in developing, manufacturing, and selling chemical products primarily for aerospace composites, structural adhesives, automotive and industrial coatings, electronics, inks, mining, and plastics markets. The Engineered Materials segment offers aerospace-qualified and industrial-grade prepregs, resin infusion systems, structural/surfacing adhesives, pressure sensitive adhesives, and formulated resins, and carbon fiber reinforcements. The In-Process Separation segment provides mining chemicals, including flotation promoters, collectors, frothers, dispersants and depressants, solvent extractants, flocculants, filter and dewatering aids, antiscalants, and defoamers. The Additive Technologies segment offers polymer additives, such as ultraviolet light stabilizers and absorbers, high performance antioxidants, and antistatic agents. The Coating Resins segment provides specialty coating resins comprising coating additives and waterborne resins; conventional and ultraviolet curable powder coating resins and industrial coating resins. The company sells its products and services directly, as well as through distributors primarily in North America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, and Latin America.

To review Cytec’s stock, please take a look at the 1-year chart of CYT (Cytec Industries, Inc.) below with my added notations:

CYT has been trading mostly sideways from February until present, while running into a clear resistance at $65 (navy). After briefly falling below the $56 support (brown) level in June, the stock has worked its way back up to the $65 resistance. The $65 resistance meets my definition of a clear resistance level that would signify an important 52-week high breakout if CYT could manage to break above it. IF that were to happen, the stock should be heading higher overall.

The Tale of the Tape: CYT has formed a key resistance level at $65, which would be a 52-week high breakout if the stock can break above it. A long trade could be entered if CYT breaks above $65 or pulls back to $56, with a stop set below the level of entry.

Use This Buy Signal for a Short Sale General Dynamics could pop to $64 where it should be shorted

General Dynamics Corp. (NYSE:GD) — This is the world’s fifth largest military contractor and one of the key makers of small jets. Because of its dependence on government orders, GD has had its earnings and price objective regularly cut by analysts.

Technically the stock is attempting to consolidate at $62 after falling from a high of over $74 earlier this year. But a death cross in June and high-volume selling, which tests the support at $62, will likely give way to lower prices.

The stochastic issued a short-term buy signal, which could pop GD to $64 where traders may try to execute a short sale with a target of $58. Investors should consider selling this stock and switching to better long-term prospects.

Short-sellers should check with their broker for special requirements and place a stop-loss order at 5% above their short-sale price in order to protect against unlimited losses.

Click to Enlarge

The British imperialists snapping up swathes of Africa to cash in on the world’s food shortage – and forcing out small farmers

by Fred Pearce, DailyMail.co.uk:

It is an odd retirement hobby. Britain’s top soldier, the former commander of British Land Forces and the man who capped his military career by presiding over the funeral of the Queen Mother, has been planting crops in the African bush.

Not personally, you understand. But Sir Charles Redmond Watt has been mixing with Chinese billionaires, Saudi sheiks, Wall Street whizzkids and a motley array of British adventurers who agree with the financial guru George Soros that ‘farmland is one of the best investments of our time’. And for those wanting lots of land, nothing comes cheaper than a slice of Africa.

I have spent the past two years on the trail of these land grabbers, who have between them taken control of an area roughly ten times the size of Britain, most of it in Africa. And I discovered that Britain is the world’s biggest centre for private land grabbers. City financiers are the new imperialists, returning to colonies we walked away from half a century ago.

Upon leaving the Army, Sir Charles, who once commanded 125,000 military personnel, became chairman of a shell company, Las Vegas-registered Kryptic Entertainment, which later changed its name to Farm Lands of Guinea.

Read More @ DailyMail.co.uk

Chart of the Day - Verisign (VRSN)

The "Chart of the Day" is Verisign (VRSN), which showed up on Thursday's Barchart "52-Week High" list. Versign on Thursday posted a new 10-year high of $46.77 and closed up +0.22%. TrendSpotter has been long since July 27 at $45.42. In recent news on the stock, Verisign on July 26 reported Q2 EPS of 45 cents, which was in line with the market consensus. Verisign, with a market cap of $7 billion, is a leading provider of infrastructure services to website owners, enterprises, electronic commerce service providers and individuals.

US Weekly Economic Calendar

time (et)	report	period	Actual	forecast	previous
MONDAY, AUG. 13
	None scheduled
TUESDAY, AUG. 14
7:30 am	NFIB small business index	July		--	91.4
8:30 am	Retail sales	July		0.2%	-0.5%
8:30 am	Retail sales ex-autos	July		0.3%	-0.4%
8:30 am	Producer price index	July		0.2%	0.1%
8:30 am	Core PPI	July		0.2%	0.2%
10 am	Inventories	June		--	0.3%
WEDNESDAY, AUG. 15
8:30 am	Consumer price index	July		0.2%	0.0%
8:30 am	Core CPI	July		0.2%	0.2%
8:30 am	Empire state index	Aug.		7.0	7.4
9:15 am	Industrial production	July		0.7%	0.4%
10 am	Home builders' index	Aug.		--	35
THURSDAY, AUG. 16
8:30 am	Weekly jobless claims	8-11		365,000	361,000
8:30 am	Housing starts	July		765,000	760,000
10 am	Philly Fed	Aug.		-4.1	-12.9
FRIDAY, AUG. 17
9:55 am	UMich consumer sentiment index	Aug.		72.0	72.3
10 am	Leading indicators	July		0.3%	-0.3%