A couple of months ago, I was very downbeat (again) about the prospects for the shares of DFS Furniture (DFS) even with it describing itself as “the market leading retailer of living room and upholstered furniture in the United Kingdom”. Whilst the shares have nearly halved over the last year, as a bunch of people have realised they either cannot afford a new sofa and/or have better things to be doing with their money, the stock has pushed up over the last couple of months. What is going on?

Gold finished the week at $1798, having been as high at $1803 – nicely up on last week’s $1756. Gold mining stocks too headed further up as the recovery since the September low continued, as can be seen on my chart of Gold versus the Gold mining ETFs GDX (major), GDXJ (juniors) and GOEX (explorers):

Gold finished the week at $1756, up a tiny smidgeon on last week’s $1751 but essentially unchanged in a week of little US economic data. Gold equities fared a little better and put in another new recent high to continue the run since late September.

Hello Share Gatherers. Next year, the UK economy will do the worst of all the G7 economies. So says the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. The OECD expects the UK's economy to shrink by 0.4% in 2023 to be followed by minute growth of just 0.2% a year later. Meanwhile, there is strength in many emerging countries. 

Gold finished the week at $1751, down a notch from last week’s $1771 but still well up on recent lows, having put in a high point of $1785 on Wednesday. US economic data offered little to cheer about, and the US treasury market continues to ring all manner of alarm bells. Despite that, US equity markets finished the week on a bit of a high – but for how long?

Gold closed the week at $1771 – strongly up on last week’s $1683 and way better that the recent low around $1620 notched up at the beginning of the month. The US$ has slipped off its perch too: is it (at last) all change?

Gold closed the week at $1683, up nicely from last week’s $1646 and back above the apparently all-important $1675 mark. But perhaps the real surprise is that it rose at all, given that the Fed again hiked interest rates by another 0.75% to 3.75-4% and warned of more pain to come. Normally, that would see the yellow stuff weaken, given that the yield on Gold is zero. But instead, someone lit the blue touch-paper.

Gold finished this week at $1646 per oz, marginally down on last week’s $1658 and almost back to the $1645 of the week before. Gold is going nowhere fast, although the Gold mining ETFs I have been keeping an eye on are still gaining modest strength, as can be seen from the chart below (courtesy of ADVFN).

Gold finished the week at $1658 – marginally up on last week’s $1645 but essentially unchanged. However, as gold hovers around its recent low, Gold miners have picked up a smidgeon, as can be seen from my chart of Gold vs GDX (Gold majors ETF), GDXJ (Gold juniors) and GOEX (Gold explorers). I discussed a potential M&A frenzy HERE in the wake of three potential bids for AIM-listed Shanta Gold (SHG) and wonder if that might be showing up in the chart.

Gold closed the week at $1695 – nicely up from last week’s $1661 and comfortably above the apparently all-important $1675 level. But the bigger news from Gold was the rise to almost $1730, which prompted the most bearish Gold-bull, Jordan Roy-Byrne of TheDailyGold.com, to suggest that we may have finally seen the bottom, and that this means that the (downward) break of $1675 was a false breakdown. On the face of it, after last weekend’s depression (the darkest hour is always before the dawn!) things are looking more hopeful.

I start by rubbing more salt into the wounds of Chris Bailey as I look at just how screwed is Carnival (CCL). Then onto whether we are in a recession or not and how long it will last. In light of my conclusion I urge you to ignore Malcolm's share tip tomorrow. Finally a thanks to a reader who stopped me poisoning my family last night with my self sufficiency. Tonight's episode of that part of my life is marrow and ginger jam.

Every month the Global Fund Management Survey (FMS) is published.  A bit like any survey, you have got to be a touch cautious, as if something is already consensus, it is hard to keep on being smart (unless something is fundamentally brilliant or terrible).  As for the survey this month, even if you compare the FMS cautious levels towards a weaker economy, thoughts are akin to how they were in October 1998, December 2000, August 2006, July 2008 and March 2020.  As for recession fear hopes, we are not far off the fear levels seen from FMS levels seen in March 2009 or April 2020. 

Gold closed the week at $1676, down from last week’s $1717. I had hoped that we might have seen the end of this particular bear by now, but on the back of still uncomfortable US inflation figures, as US Government Bond yields headed higher in expectation of more rate-rises, Gold headed south. The one glimmer of hope is that Gold closed the week almost bang on the recent lows right on Jordan Roy-Byrne’s line in the sand at $1675. Will it bounce from here?

Hello Share Followers. You might think that, given the shortage of spending mazuma these days, it might not be wise to invest in the rag trade. But the clothes retailer Inditex (0QWI) is proving that’s not always the case. It’s just reported that sales for the first half of 2022 jumped by a quarter to 14.8 billion euros. And profits did even better, improving by nearly a third to 4 billion euros. Not at all bad, eh?

Gold closed the week at $1713 – down from last week’s $1739. However, in Sterling terms it closed at £1488 – up from last week’s £1481, reflecting the weakness of the pound and a reminder of the usefulness of Gold as an insurance policy. The Fed (and the Bank of England under the useless Andrew Bailey) are still talking tough in the face of sinking economies, in the face of rampant inflation. To my mind, they are either bluffing or are heading for massive self-inflicted recessions. In either case, holding Gold is a great insurance.

Veteran businessman and analyst Simon Hunt is a cheerful chap. Not. His predictions are grim.

There is an old fable amongst musicologists described in two questions: a) what is it that we try to learn from the great masters and b) why do we fail. The answers are a) how to get out of a hole and b) because they don’t get into one in the first place. This week the economic masters of our time got into a hole – Jackson’s Hole – and are wondering how to get out. The problem is that the economy is itself in a hole – squillions of unpayable debt and acre upon acre of magic money trees – and there is no way out. The solution, of course, would have been not to sink into such debt, financed by printing money, in the first place – but they dare not admit it.

Gold finished the week at $1804 per oz – a useful gain from last week’s $1777 and back through the $1800 barrier. As the economic storm clouds continue to gather, things are looking up for the yellow metal, even if the Fed continues to play hard-ball with now declining inflation as it talks up its capacity to continue raising interest rates into a recession.

Gold ended the week at $1777, up from $1767 last week, and held up well in the face of a surprisingly strong jobs report in the US last week. That jobs report was good news, supposedly, but following the previous week’s bad news on US GDP which was taken as good news, this week’s positive jobs report was taken as bad news and market fell, with the exception of the Dow Jones index. Hmph!

Hello Share Scrapers. This old punter is in a difficult bind at the mo. I have always, even when the clouds were dark, opined that shares were generally a safe investment and that the sun would come shining through. But I've had a road to Damascus moment. And I now think a recession with an accompanying share crash is most likely.

I am reminded of the words attributed to Prime Minister Jim Callaghan during the Winter of Discontent by The Sun. Callaghan denied having said “Crisis? What Crisis?” and today it seems that President Biden is having the same difficulty understanding the word “recession”. He tells us that this doesn’t look like a recession to him – but the standard definition being of two quarters of negative growth says otherwise: US GDP fell by 0.9% in Q2, following on from a 1.6% drop in Q1. That should be ringing alarm bells, rather than being the cue to try to challenge our intelligence.

Gold ended the week at $1728 – up (at last!) from last week’s $1709. It may not be much, but bearing in mind what happened in between times, I wonder if this may be the start of a rebound. Gold has had few friends for weeks and even Tom Winnifrith, a Gold bull (if a bit less madly so than me) was expressing doubts. If even he is having doubts, have we reached capitulation and finally turned the corner?

Gold finished the week at $1709, down (again) on last week’s $1743. This all seems a bit odd, as inflation figures from the US showed it was still on the rise and Gold is supposed to be the great inflation hedge. If only it were that simple.

Hello Share Tweakers. We’ve all noticed shops closing in our town centres. The new businesses springing up seem mostly to be in the catering trade. Coffee shops and cafes are the main invaders, restaurants are not. Many posher eating places never recovered from lockdowns and stay shut and one high street catering venture that appeals to me in these difficult days is Greggs (GRG).

Previously writing on marketing decision-making platform group System1 (SYS1), in February with the shares down to around 250p I concluded that they could offer some value but at this valuation I’d still want to see some clear overall delivery towards future expectations. Having last closed at 310p, what of a current 268p share price on the back of latest updates from the group?

The way the markets are currently it feels like there is plenty of risk in buying anything, even in the sectors that are expected to remain strong in the coming months.

Another week, another slip in the Gold price: it closed this week at $1813, down from $1827 last week. But as real yields rise, Jordan Roy Byrne of TheDailyGold.com comments that one might have expected Gold to show rather more weakness than it has – especially with the US Dollar still on the rise. That it has not fallen off a cliff suggests that the market is already sensing an abrupt reversal of course by central banks.

Analyst, Lior Gantz, warns that we are already in a recession, and things will get worse.

Gold finished the week at $1827 – down a little from $1840 a week ago as the divergence from the general stock market continues. Of course, I view stock market strength as…..ahem……transitory, to coin a phrase, so if Gold is diverging that is good news for Gold Bulls. If only this final roll-over would hurry up!

Investment analyst, Ted Oakley of Oxbow Advisors, believes that in order to mitigate inflationary pressures, the Fed will push us into a recession. He explains how rising rates affect the economy, slowing the housing market. In addition, consumers are cutting back on expenses, and many will lose jobs as the economy contracts.

Gold finished this week at $1840 – down from last week’s $1872, but a good recovery from the drop to test $1810 in the wake of the Fed’s rush of blood in raising interest rates this week by 0.75%, accompanied by the suggestion that we could be in for the same again at the next meeting. The Fed wants us all to know that it is taking inflation very seriously. Very seriously indeed.

Gold finished the week at $1872, nicely up from last week’s $1851, following a day of yet more bad US inflation numbers and a corresponding sell-off in both equities and bonds. Gold initially followed the market down, but then rallied. Is this a sign of a decoupling which would see the yellow metal head sharply north as equities head the other way?

Gold closed the week at $1854 – a small improvement on last week’s $1847, but not yet enough to cure the sell-off in Gold stocks (although they did improve this week). So when are we going to see the great explosion I have been looking for since the start of the Covid crisis? I don’t think it will be long.

Gold has had a pretty terrible few weeks: back in late February it spiked to $2050 and then hung around in the mid-$1900s until the end of April. Now it has been challenging $1800 from above and closed the week at $1847. Of course, in the context of being just $1200 for years ago the yellow metal has done well, but given all that money-printing and rampant inflation one might have expected more of late.

I suspect that very few investors and surprisingly few PLC directors have any idea what a recession looks like. For starters most folks in both camps are rich but in a recession, it is the poor or lower middle classes who get whacked hardest. That is especially so when it is an inflationary recession as those lower down the order tend to have the least ability to “play catch up” by forcing through pay rises. And secondly you have to be of a certain age to remember a savage inflationary recession as an adult – the last one was ended with some fairly painful medicine by the blessed Lady Thatcher forty years ago.

That was quite a week – having started in risk-on mode, all the major indices were slapped down on Friday, US treasuries fell away yet again and gold and silver slumped as the week drew to a close. Gold ended the week at $1,932, down from $1,974 a week ago, having bounced off resistance at $2,000. Meanwhile the Dow closed down 2.8% on Friday, alongside a 2.6% drop on the Nasdaq and a 1.4% fall from the FTSE100. The 10-year US Treasuries closed the week on a yield of 2.9% whilst 2-year hit 2.67%. The reason for the end-of-week squall was the Fed.

Jordan Roy-Byre of TheDailyGold.com  is getting very excited about the prospects for Gold and Gold stocks, saying this week that now could be the last chance to buy cheap and that he thinks that we are in a bullish consolidation ahead of a major break higher in the next 2-5 months. Given that he is perhaps the most bearish Gold-bull around, it is a big call.

Gold ended the week at $1922 – down from last week’s $1991 as the assault on the record high petered out. The Fed raised interest rates, the Bank of England hiked rates again, the Ukraine war continued with more horrific attacks and inflation was still there rearing its ugly head.

What a week! A week ago Gold was at $1973 and threatening to take out the all-time high from August 2020 at $2063. It squeaked over $2070 intra-day on Tuesday then in a volatile week dropped back down to $1960 on Friday, before recovering to close the week at $1991. Silver had a similar whip-saw week, as did markets in general – and I fancy that we are in for more of the same next week as Ukraine continues to play out, the Fed announces its first interest rate hike (or not….) and inflation continues to run amok.

Crash! Having had a fair old go at clearing $1900 Gold went into reverse this week to close at $1764 – down a whopping $114 from last week. Apparently Jerome Powell, head of the US Federal Reserve, has suddenly become a hawk……having told us he would ignore inflation data for the rest of this year, that unemployment is his biggest concern and that he wasn’t even thinking about thinking about tapering QE (which, we are told, would come before raising rates), now we are told to expect maybe two rate hikes in 2023. And that was enough to send precious metals into a tail-spin.

Hello Share Crunchers. Now you may disagree, but my alarmingly long experience of watching the markets tells me that there are golden days ahead . Those who take the opposite view, and they seem numerous, believe that the money pile Whitehall has spent on subsidising working victims of the pandemic, will plunge Blighty into recession. The bears also cite a reluctance to start going out again, red tape in trading after Brexit, mounting unemployment, rising inflation and lower house prices as serious threats to share prices. Let’s take those arguments one by on.

Another day of FTSE gains and online electrical retailer AO World (AO.) has announced results for its half-year ended 30th September 2020, emphasising “the results we’re announcing today give huge confidence that our business is well set for the future to cement the changes”. The shares have currently responded, er, around 7% lower to about 390p…

Hello Share Funsters, We were all cheered when vaccine news from Fizer sent shares shooting forward a few days ago. But the value of my own portfolio was disappointingly unchanged. That’s because I have a few Covid plays. And because the jab news depressed the prospects of companies which have benefitted from the epidemic, the rise in the value of my Shell (RDSA) BP. (BP.) Compass (CPG) and Whitbread (WTB) was cancelled out by my covid plays.

Hello, Share Fans. You’re probably worried about the effects the virus will have on the economy. You might dread a recession which will have a nasty impact on our shares. But recessions aren’t always bad for business. Did you know some of the biggest and best companies were started during an economic slump?

Hello Share Munchers. Some of us really miss the old Woolworths stores. And the nearest modern equivalent I can think of is B&M (BME). It seems the public also warm to B&M stores. They sell everything from food to household goods to, well, nearly everything that’s not too big. Now we all know that high street stores suffered during the epidemic. But not B&M it seems…

Listen to Sunny Jim in 1976 and panic..

Hello, Share Graspers. Truth be told I’ve just had a pretty poor week. One of my biggest investments, the futuristic battery maker Ceres (CRW) has continued an unexplained fall. It began when a big fund sold about 5% of the shares. Though as I opined at the time, that was understandable and no reflection on Ceres. This was a fund that buys interests in bargain companies and comes out as a matter of policy when the shares have a bumper rise.

Hello, Share Searchers. Though I support most house builders in these difficult days, I’ve not covered Vistry Group (VTY) before. It’s fairly new, being formed in January following the acquisition by Bovis Homes from Galliford Try (GFRD) of Linden Homes, and I happen to think it’s got a good chance of growing its share price...

Hello Share Chasers. You'll know that Uncle Tom has arranged a new online share show for next weekend (Saturday, July 18). This one is dedicated to mining. And, being Tom, he’s managed to assemble a collection of friends and colleagues, who happen to be the country’s best mining investment experts. This is good because, just like oil exploration used to be, choosing the right miner to invest in can benefit your portfolio valuation possibly more than any other strategy.

I have not yet drunk myself under the table following Gold’s passing $1800, although there is a small bottle of Ouzo which has come to my attention in the cupboard. The question is perhaps where now and how to play it, but the bigger question for me is just how bad things are going to get.

Equity markets have had a startling run since posting coronavirus lows back in March. It seems to me that the appetite for risk hadn’t been dented and most seemed to believe in the V-shaped recovery theory once the economies around the world had reopened. Most startling for me is that the Nasdaq was actually up on the year so far. That seems to me to be utter lunacy: I see an “L”-shaped non-recovery for the time being.

Hello, Share Crunchers. At our fabulous online share show (which you can still plug into until Christmas) I told Uncle Tom that Shakespeare would be a great armchair tycoon. I was thinking of his ‘To be or not to be’ speech. Hamlet, as you’ll recall, was racked throughout by indecision. It’s the bane of the investor’s life.  

Just wait for the backlash, the bad times are only just starting

I take my hat off to Woodford dog, revolutionary washing machine maker (geddit?) Xeros (XSG). It closed Friday with a market capitalisation of about £6 million, according to ADVFN, and has just raised another £6 million without totally crashing the share price. In the current environment, that is quite an achievement – especially since the company has been a cash-burning dog all through its life. What might we learn?

On the occassion of my father's 82nd Birthday i ponder how miserrable life must be for him today. I urge you to hold your nose and go online to the Mail on Sunday just to read Peter Hitchens today. His column is golden prose, a joy to read. we agree on the coronavirus and the Government's appalling response. Luke Johnson is in the same camp and I quote from his Sunday Times column reflecting on where my animal spirit sits as a consumer, an investor and an entrepreneur. Where, I ask,  do you sit dear listeners? I sense, in many cases they have been crushed and thus what lies ahead is a recession of the sort few of us have ever seen before.

It has been a truly wild period on the stock market and I fear it is going to get worse before it gets better. The coronavirus has ripped through everything and it is panic stations on the markets – as well as in the supermarkets. Some of it is logical: I’m not sure I would want to own shares in an airline right now, nor a restaurant business, and I would not be surprised to see some casualties in the fullness of time if the coronavirus plays out as seems to be expected.

As everything crashes and burns in the markets there is one asset - gold - which has managed to keep its head above water. At the end of last week it looked as though we were on the edge of another significant move higher, and then markets had a big sell-off and gold was tramped down again. But the week just ended has seen gold recover and have another go at breaking out, putting in an 8-year end-of-week high.

Every cycle begins and ends in excess...

Analyst Tavi Costa sees the current business cycle as being almost over and is waiting on an overall downturn in equities. Two-year yields reveal that we are near the top of the cycle. In the US, manufacturing reports are trending lower, and non-farm payrolls have had a sizeable downward reversion. 90% of the yield curves in Canada have already inverted, and many other countries are similar.

Technical analyst JC Parets has been bullish for the last year on precious metals, and a part of his thesis was a call for a weaker dollar. However, the dollar index has been flat while gold and silver have shown a great deal of relative strength. If the dollar weakens, that would likely boost the uptrend in metals while if it strengthens that may weaken gold.

A bit better, only 1 coughing fit in 25 minutes. Thanks for all your best wishes. In today's podcast I discuss the threat of recession and what it means for your portfolio, a grilling for 'Arry of Kefi (KEFI) for you to take part in, all things Burford (BUR) with references to Avanti (AVN) and Quindell (QPP) and why I'm writing to the Nomad and AIM Regulation this weekend and Corero (CNS) which is a true shocker in every respect. We did warn y'all!

I start with the threat of a UK recession, piffle tweeted by the lunatic David Lammy MP, the link to Brexit (minimal) and the stockmarket implications. Then onto Burford (BUR) where events move apace but the company seems to think bear raider Carson Block of Muddy Waters is in legal hot water. Instinctively I side with Block, however if today's Mail is correct and he has closed much of his short while still issuing bearish tweets then is he any better than Chris Oil on Sefton or shamed broker SP Angel on Blue Jay (JAY). On that basis....

Hello, Share Turners. Recently I’ve been buying shares. This was partly because of the buoyant mood of fund managers I met at the UK Global Group Investor Show. But that was in the Spring and since then,it has become all too clear that Boris Johnson could be our Prime Minister. That has caused a change of mind and I will soon redirect into cash, partly at least. 

For some time now I have been talking about what I think may unfold over the next decade. The term I often use is The Great Reset, but in my mind it’s more than just resetting global debt

Hello, Share Cats. Yesterday, I commended Centamin (CEY) to your further research. But I have to admit that buying shares in gold miners is not the safest way to invest in the glittery metal. For one thing, the production of the yellow stuff is notoriously difficult to predict. And Centamin saw a big share tumble last year when it announced that its quality of gold was not as high as hoped. But with world fears about a forthcoming recession growing, gold, silver and platinum remain useful fallback positions...

To be charitable, you could say the euro has proved itself merely by surviving until its 20th birthday this January. That is a low bar. Monetary union has otherwise failed as an economic and political endeavour...

A year ago, I wrote a piece comparing and contrasting Lloyds Bank (LLOY) and the challenger financial Metro Bank (MTRO). Well that worked out well from a long-short perspective: Lloyds - with dividends - lost a touch whilst Metro Bank has absolutely bombed, down over £10 to under £25. I was thinking about Metro Bank again today as it came out with another set of numbers which showed more deposits, more lending, more profit...but still the shares are down 10% odd today. Why such further pain?

Hello, Share Changers. I know a lot of you worry about this Wall Street mini-crash. But your fears are probably unfounded. We’ve had a bull market lasting eight years. A correction was necessary. But it’s not been as bad as some writers on this magnificent website have been predicting. Neither will the big sell-off last.

There are serious economic challenges coming in the near future, and they are going to change all of our lives in ways that we  haven’t even considered yet. Some good, others bad.

Governments will not warn investors or consumers. They never do. Banks won’t warn consumers because they need consumers to spend and take up loans and invest money in markets. Institutions won’t warn people for precisely the same reason. And certainly central banks won’t warn consumers. They are all in the confidence game.

All investors wish that they had a crystal ball to predict when a recession is coming in the US. But there’s one thing, says David Rosenberg, chief economist at Gluskin Sheff that has predicted imminent recessions...

There were spectacular gains in gold and silver last year and that has affected people’s expectations since most of those gains have now been given up. In the near term we will likely test support at $16 silver and $1200 for gold - that is the warning from gold guru Brad Cooke. But... The Fed has set a course of quarterly rate increases that is faster than economic growth which is a formula for stagflation and recession, when this happens investors holding gold and silver investments will do well.

Mark Carney isn’t willing to take the blame for the state of the global economy any longer. After months of criticism directed at him and his fellow central banking colleagues across the world for low interest rates and the sluggish pace of growth, the Bank of England governor told U.K. lawmakers in the week that it’s time for them to face up to their role.

From Gary Newman, Nigel Somerville, Steve Moore and myself there are 14 new investment ideas in the July UK Investor Magazine which is out now. I discuss the spirit of insurgency which caused Brexit and which is powering Donald Trump to the White House and its long term implications as well as the Global Recession which will hit the UK soon and it is nothing to do with Brexit! That and much more is free to read now just click on the link below.

You know that libertarian gold bug Peter Schiff is a major hero of mine. In his latest video he shows how real GDP growth is negative, it is collapsing. And that has profound implications for all of us on both sides of the pond. This is cracking stuff from Schiff. Yes we really are in recession already!

I have said for a long time that accommodative monetary policy completely removes the burden from politicians that would require them to actually make difficult decisions around fiscal reforms, and now Standard & Poor's is saying the same thing.

 Friday's U.S. jobs numbers on close inspection are a hot bed of contradiction and to some a sign that even the US (just as the Chinese do with their GDP numbers) will manipulate official numbers if the stakes are high enough. Officially this month the unemployment rate plunged from 5.0% to 4.7%, the lowest since August 2007- on the surface very attractive. But only 38,000 new jobs were created, as the working age population rose by 205,000 and as the two previous month’s numbers were revised significantly downward, giving evidence that 484,000 people who were unemployed last month are no longer unemployed this month.

After the stock market crash of 1987, The US Federal Reserve sowed the seeds of the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world and this is now starting to unravel. Protecting wealth is now the order of the day and those who are not positioned for the unfolding events will see their net worth fall sharply and substantially, with very little prospect of a sharp bounce back.

No longer able to convince the world it’s got China’s economy under control, the government in Beijing is now using ever do more desperate measures. China’s economic weaknesses have been well documented. Among other things, there are significant amounts of bad debt, a rapidly ageing population, fanciful “official” statistics, growing labour unrest, and a host of inefficient, bloated state-owned enterprises. Of course much of this has been known for years,

Thoughts of Oliver Cromwell have come into mind as they - and many other unrelated things - sometimes do. Where are we going was the questioned my mind asked itself? And the once famous but now largely forgotten observation of the great Oliver introduced itself to my thoughts: ‘He goest further who knows not where he goest.”  Or in the words of John Lennon, ‘Life is what happens when you are making plans’. Exactly!