BullMarketRun.ca

Gold has traded in a narrow range between $1,771 and $1,781 so far today…as of 6:20 am Pacific, bullion is up $5 an ounce at $1,779…Silver is 18 cents higher at $34.80…Copper is off a penny at $3.75…Crude Oil has lost $1.49 to $90.40 while the U.S. Dollar Index is up marginally at 79.94…

McEwen – Great Time To Be Buying Gold Shares, “Enormous Diversion In Price Performance”

Industry legend Rob McEwen is critical of how many Gold producers have been managed in recent years, but nonetheless believes this is one of best times ever to be holding Gold shares…”There’s an enormous diversion in price performance that’s happened basically around 2011 so that shares are really cheap now relative to Gold,” McEwen told Mineweb.com…”Someone looking to get exposure to Gold, I think will see Gold shares as a cheaper way of getting their Gold exposure than buying a bar of Gold now, because of that difference”…

Today’s Markets

Asian markets were mixed overnight with sentiment dampened after data showed China’s official purchasing managers’ index for the services sector fell to 53.7 in September from 56.3 in August as growth in the country’s manufacturing industry stabilized at a slower pace, putting the world’s second-largest economy on course for a seventh straight quarter of slowdown…the Chinese are celebrating Golden Week, so the Shanghai Composite remains closed until next Monday…European shares are slightly higher this morning while stock index futures in New York as of 6:20 am Pacific are pointing toward a flat opening on Wall Street…the latest ADP numbers just came out…the private sector created 162,000 jobs in September, a bit better than expected, as the service sector continued to be the economy’s main employment driver…

Coming up this week, the FOMC minutes are released tomorrow while the Labor Department’s employment report comes out Friday…the market will be closely monitoring tonight’s presidential debate…in Europe, the European Central Bank and Bank of England hold meetings tomorrow…the Bank of Japan holds its monthly meeting tomorrow and Friday…

Euro Zone Economic Indicators Weaken Further

Dwindling new orders and faster layoffs marked a worsening decline for euro zone companies last month, according to business surveys that dent hopes the economy will return to growth before 2013…a good gauge of economic growth, Markit’s Euro Zone Composite PMI fell to 46.1 in September from 46.3 in August…while revised up slightly from a preliminary reading two weeks ago, the index has been stuck below the 50 mark that divides growth and contraction for all but one of the last 13 months…order books shrank last month at the fastest pace in more than three years, while firms cut staff at the fastest pace since January, 2010…

U.S. “Hooked On Crystal Meth” – Gross

Bill Gross, who manages the $273 billion Total Return bond fund for Pimco, has compared the U.S. government’s reliance on debt financing to a “crystal meth” addict, in the latest in a series of dire warnings from one of the most influential investors in the bond market…“The US, in fact, is a serial offender, an addict whose habit extends beyond weed or cocaine and who frequently pleasures itself with budgetary crystal meth”, said Gross in an interview with the Financial Times…Gross places the U.S. in a “Ring of Fire” that includes countries with precarious finances such as Greece, Spain and Japan…citing separate but similar reports from the International Monetary Fund , the Bank for International Settlements and the Congressional Budget Office, Gross said that to put American finances on a sustainable footing the U.S. must cut spending or increase taxes by 11% of gross domestic product over the next five to 10 years…to close the gap requires tax or spending changes of $1.6 trillion a year, he said…by comparison, tax cuts and spending programs set to expire at the end of the year, the so called “fiscal cliff”, total $200 billion…he said that failing to address the problem would ultimately lead to government printing of money and inflation…“Bonds would be burned to a crisp and stocks would certainly be singed; only Gold and hard assets would thrive within the Ring of Fire”…

Obama’s Lead Narrows, First Debate Tonight

President Barack Obama heads into tonight’s first presidential debate with a narrow lead over Mitt Romney in a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News nationwide poll that illustrates each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses entering the campaign’s final stretch…the survey shows the race tightening, with Obama now leading 49% to 46% among likely voters, down slightly from the five-point lead he enjoyed in mid-September immediately following the two parties’ conventions…Romney has also pulled even with Obama in the crucial swing state of Florida…the survey of likely voters had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points…Obama maintains commanding leads among Hispanics, young voters and women, with his share of the crucial Hispanic bloc appearing only to widen…a whopping 71% of likely Hispanic voters said they plan to vote for Obama…Romney, who has run a poor campaign so far, holds a strong margin of support among white voters and men…his challenge tonight is to articulate an inspiring vision for the country while also landing some hard punches that can knock Obama off balance and put the President on the defensive, where he should be given the state of the economy and the nation’s finances, for the first time in this campaign…

“So Let Me Get This Straight”

The best line of the 2012 Presidential campaign so far goes to Republican Dr. Barbara Bellar – a former nun, an Army major, a lawyer, and a college professor who’s running to be a state senator from Illinois…in a video that has gone viral, Bellar asks “What the blank could possibly go wrong” after delivering a one-sentence indictment of ObamaCare at a recent Women For Romney/Ryan event…

“So let me get this straight…this is a long sentence…we are going to be gifted with a healthcare plan that we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don’t, which reportedly covers ten million more people without adding a single new doctor, but provides for sixteen thousand new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman doesn’t understand it, passed by congress, that didn’t read it, but exempted themselves from it, and signed by a president who smokes, with funding administered by a treasury chief,who didn’t pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before any benefits take effect, by a government which has bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that is broke…

“So what the blank could possibly go wrong?”…

Venture Exchange

The Venture Exchange, in need of some fresh momentum, fell 7 points yesterday to 1322 as it continues to trade slightly below the resistance band between 1350 and 1365…the supporting 20-day moving average (SMA) is at 1313…

John has charts on four companies this morning (including a couple that our readers have requested) – CMC Metals (CMB, TSX-V), dividend-payer Mart Resources (MMT, TSX-V), Woulfe Mining Corp., (WOF, TSX-V) and Carpathian Gold Inc. (CPN, TSX)…

CMC Metals (CMB, TSX-V)

We’re continuing to perform due diligence on CMC Metals (CMB, TSX-V) which is a step closer to near-term production at its Radcliffe Gold Property in California with the Bureau of Land Management having completed an environmental assessment of this project and accepting the plan of operation…a 30-day public notice period is now in effect…the stock gained a penny-and-a-half yesterday to 15 cents on the news…this is an interesting situation to put on one’s radar screen, though it likely won’t be ready to make a major move until November or December…technically, CMB is looking healthier than it has for quite some time and is close to breaking through a downtrend line that has been in place for over a year…below is a 2.5-year weekly chart from John…

Mart Resources (MMT, TSX-V)

A Venture stock that pays you a dividend is a rare breed indeed…Mart Resources (MMT, TSX-V) has been trading in an upsloping channel for the past year, and below is an updated look at the chart from John that shows this pattern should continue…

Carpathian Gold Inc. (CPN, TSX-V)

Woulfe Mining (WOF, TSX-V)

Notes: John, Jon and Terry do not hold positions in CMB, MMT, CPN or WOF.