The secret gold mania continues. I say secret because while gold is horribly overbought (via the triple-RSI > 80), and the goldbug army is going nuts (go take a peek at Greg Hunter’s interviews – all goldbugs, all going nuts) and yet “gold price” on Google trends is 41, while “bitcoin price” is 39. That’s the highest value “gold price” as a search term has been in 5 years, and it still is barely moving the needle. Be quiet! Don’t tell anyone about the crazy (Big Money-led) gold rally. Nudge Google wants it to be a secret. Armstrong sees gold moving higher due to war, but it might not go there in a straight line. War seems ever more likely, Europe vs Russia, and maybe US vs Iran.
Consumer Economy
Personal Income (PI); $25.442T +194.7B (+0.77% m/m)
Durable Goods, New Orders (DGORDER); $289B +2.7B, (+0.93% m/m)
Median New Home Sales Price (MSPNHSUS); $414.5K -12.9K, (-3.11% m/m)
Auto/Light Truck Sales (ALTSALES); 16M (units) +502.0K, (+3.14% m/m)
GDP (GDP); $29.7T +348.9B, (+1.17% q/q)
Personal Income looks strong – at these levels, it is more than keeping up with inflation.
Durable goods orders looked strong also; that’s projecting next month’s production.
Q4 2024 GDP (not adjusted for inflation) grew moderately, presumably goosed by migrant spending and all that USAID cash flow.
New Home prices are slowly chopping lower, although they did not make a new low this month.
Auto sales increased slightly – a small bounce after last month’s big drop – but heavy truck sales made a new 3-year low. That’s not specifically recessionary, but sales of heavy trucks tends to fall ahead of recessions. Note this chart is seasonally adjusted; the NSA chart is much more choppy.
Of the economic news, only the heavy truck numbers looked recessionary. And even this isn’t a four-alarm-fire just yet.
Credit & Rates
Fed Balance Sheet (WALCL); 6.740T -15.7B (-0.23% w/w)
Total Bank Credit (TOTBKCR) 18.1T +31.4B (+0.17% m/m)
30 Year Mortgage Rate (MORTGAGE30US); 6.65% -2 bp
10 Year Treasury (DGS10); 4.26% +1 bp
20+ Year Fund (TLT); -0.62%
We saw a nice expansion in bank credit (8.8% annualized), but not much happened in rates this week, which is interesting, given the plunge in risk assets.
by david-allan 
