Blog Posts by Jeff Macke

If you're looking to buy the dip on gold, Charles Nenner says an opportunity might be in the offing but the rally won't last.

"The cycle is still down," Nenner says in the attached video, dismissing the idea that the yellow metal is making more than a temporary low. Nenner works with price cycles and time frames. From that perspective we're getting close to what he sees as a late-April bounce that can be traded, but he isn't going to make a call in the middle of a downward move. You just have to wait.

Nenner also incorporates emotion into his trading. Towards that end, he warns investors not to seek justification for staying long with a hope for better days. Nenner says the human instinct is to hold on far too long. He says he's been warning gold bugs to sell for the last $500 price slide, but the advice went largely unheeded.

Related: Gold Getting Hammered- Watch $1,340, Says Najarian

"It's very hard for people to get educated against staying in for the long run," Nenner notes. Human emotion being what it is, the instinct is to hang onto to their buy and hold thesis until the panic hits. Now that gold has had 1/3 of its value lopped off, those long-term players are getting scared out of their positions.

Apple (AAPL) has spent the last 20 years "unveiling" new devices at cutesy, invitation-only mystery events. Where once such showcases dazzled, they have now become as tired as iTunes or the form factor of the iPhone. The Apple of old had both substance and sizzle. Today, Apple is just an old company with great cash flow.

Gene Munster, senior analyst at Piper Jaffray, is a longtime Apple bull who cut his price target for the stock yesterday. He now sees the shares capped at $688, down from his prior top end of $788 and well below the $910 forecast of a year ago. In the attached clip Munster says Apple bulls who are looking for a more predictable product release cycle or insight into where the company's muted R&D spending is going better get used to some disappointment.

Secret labs and razzle-dazzle are in Apple's DNA. Munster says Apple is "not going to be like Google (GOOG) or Samsung when they tell you in advance that a product is coming... in Apple's case we'll probably get an invitation a week before." That puts shareholders in the position of a lovelorn Charlie Brown, rushing to their inboxes everyday hoping the Little Red Hair girl has sent them a Valentine.

As tapped in as he is to the company, Munster is still forced to check in with component makers and supply chain companies to come up with theories as to what's really going on at Apple's HQ. From those checks, Munster says there's a "high probability" of an iPhone 5S sometime this summer. There's also likely to be a sub-$400 iPhone to address the low end of the market. Such a product would most likely hurt margins, but it's anyone's guess as to how much or when such a phone would come into the marketplace.

According to Gene Munster, senior research analyst at Piper Jaffray, traders aren't likely to see any fireworks when Google (GOOG) reports earnings after the bell on Thursday, but that shouldn't deter investors from buying the stock for the long haul.

Joining Breakout from Minneapolis, Munster says Google is managing to position itself to lever the company's competency of search in ways that seemed like sci-fi fantasy just a few years ago. In particular Munster says the search king's efforts in wearable technology and self-driving cars aren't just ahead of the game but are defining the space for the competition.

Munster says products like Google Glass, clunky and dorky though they may be for now, are going to one day replace smartphones. If that just meant the best hardware in a crowded space the opportunity would be too small to move Google's bottom line. Think Microsoft (MSFT) and the minimal bang for the buck its gotten with the wildly successful Xbox console.

Google Glass is a whole different game because of the information about you and your environment the company has been accumulating for the last decade. That information gives Google the edge even after competitors manage to catch up on the hardware side. As Apple (AAPL) has been proving since the release of the first iPod, the real money is in creating an ecosystem. Google knows who you are what you want and where you can get it. The form factor of the glasses can be improved but no one is going to be able to replicate Google's information about you.

The other innovation getting hyped by Google bulls is self-driving technology. Munster says it sounds crazy but self-driving cars could be only a decade away from mass production. If and when that happens Google is going to have a monopoly on licensing the technology to the auto makers. The auto industry will continue to make the hardware but Google will make the software that shapes the driving experience.

Last week IDC announced that PC shipments dropped a whopping 14% worldwide last quarter --the worst yearly decline since 1994. It was the fourth consecutive quarter of declining year-over-year sales and much worse than the 7.7% decline IDC had expected. In slightly better news, competing technology consultancy Gartner group said the number of PCs shipped for the quarter was the lowest since the second quarter of 2009.

Some of the blame is being laid at the feet of Microsoft's (MSFT) widely anticipated then quickly forgotten Windows 8 release. Others say the quarter was a result of the long decline in PC sales in favor of Apple (AAPL) software and tablets. Whatever it is driving the slowdown, Jon Najarian, co-founder of OptionMonster.com, says Microsoft is going to be fine.

Noting the truly horrible numbers out of Dell (DELL) and Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), which both lost dramatic share to China-based hardware leader Lenovo, Najarian puts forward the notion that the Windows indifference is being overstated.

"Maybe people are buying some Windows 8 even if it's just Lenovo selling it," he suggests. Windows came to the tablet market late, barely getting a toe-hold into the market stealing the most share from desktops and laptops.

If you want a gauge of where the stock market is headed, the best place to look might be housing data. At least that's the view of Fred Cannon, chief equity strategist at KBW. Cannon says good housing prices and starts lead to jobs, which in turn lead to a virtuous cycle of more home buying and more jobs.

"The issue is U.S. home prices," explains Cannon in the attached video. "If those continue to move higher, that's a good backdrop for the U.S. economy and a good backdrop for the stock market."

On that front, today's housing data seems bullish at first glance. In March housing starts exceeded 1 million units — the fastest clip since 2008. Within the data, apartment construction rose 31% to levels not seen since 2006. Single-family home starts fell 4.8%. If you're a bear, that last piece of data is more than enough proof that the economic recovery isn't all it would seem, leaving the stock market vulnerable to shocks.

While Cannon picks through select markets for evidence of pricing improvements, the fact remains that most individuals are having a hard time securing loans anywhere near the endlessly hyped record-low rates. A surge in multi-family dwellings creates construction jobs but isn't a sign of a sustainable housing recovery.

Individuals don't pool resources and decide to build an apartment. As Cannon notes in the video, private equity groups like Blackstone (BX) don't need to secure financing the way individuals do. As of the middle of last month, Blackstone had purchased more than $3.5 billion worth of homes. That's not a housing recovery, it's Mr. Potter snapping up all the houses after Bailey Savings and Loan goes belly up.

Goldman Sachs (GS) became the latest big bank to beat earnings estimates today on improvements in underwriting stocks and bonds. The original member of Wall Street's unofficial secret handshake club reported net income of $4.29 a share, handily above carefully managed estimates of $3.87.

The challenge for investors is making heads or tails of what exactly is being reported. With the number of discretionary items on the average bank's income statement it can be all but impossible for the lay-person to know which banks are the real deal and which are pushing earnings with a bit of legal corporate monkey business.

Related: Despite Earnings Beat, Citigroup Has a Long Road to Recovery

Fred Cannon, chief equity strategist at KBW, has created an honor roll of banks he says are delivering earnings per share on a consistent basis since the financial crisis. Though JP Morgan (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC) made the 47 member list, most members are smaller regional operations that Cannon says "stuck to their knitting" during the crisis and have continued to grow earnings and produce for their shareholders year after year.

Like a proud parent, Cannon is reluctant to pick favorites, but when pushed, he offers up Prosperity Bancshares Inc (PB) and CVB Financial (CVBF) as two small operations with transparent earnings and histories of delivering value for shareholders.

This morning Citigroup (C) reported adjusted EPS of $1.23 on revenues of $20.5 billion. The results were well ahead of Wall Street estimates of $1.17 and $20.1 billion, respectively, but as we saw with JP Morgan (JPM) and Wells Fargo (WFC), big banks can report almost anything they want depending on the assumptions they choose to make. Items like loan loss reserves and how they choose to adjust their hedging book at the end of a quarter makes apples to apples comparisons all but impossible.

Yahoo! Finance senior columnist Mike Santoli says Citi's results were cleaner than JPM or Wells, but the real question is where the company is headed under new CEO Michael Corbat. Corbat took over Citi almost immediately after the company reported earnings for Q3 2012, then "cleaned the deck" in Q4 by including a $1.3 billion legal expense in numbers. Now he's got a clean slate to start putting a stamp on the company.

Corbat has two choices. One is break the company down and turn it into what amounts to the old Citibank; a retail model with a corporate kicker. The other alternative is clinging to the current model of trying to be everything to everyone. The latter would be somewhat ironic given that it was Citi under Sandy Weill that cobbled the model together in the first place, but obviously much has changed in the decade plus since those moves were made.

What's it mean for Citi shares as the company stands today? It's hard to make more than an educated guess in terms of valuation on a company that could be in a different business by this time next year. "In terms of a value play, I feel it's kind of like the other banks in that it's going to trade based on return of capital, yield curve, all that stuff that they don't control."

The sell-off in commodities is getting serious in early trading on Monday. Word of Chinese GDP coming in at 7.7% against 8% expectations last night is being blamed, but today isn't the start of the selling. Brent crude is down 3%, but was already 15% lower that where it traded in February. Copper is near 18-month lows, aluminum is near 3-year lows and silver is down double-digits today alone.

Yahoo! Finance senior columnist Michael Santoli says a confluence of negatives are weighing on commodities as a whole. The accelerating flight out of funds playing emerging market growth can't be ignored as a significant anchor on prices.

"The commodity funds that were riding this trend, big money raisers in the past several years to play the supposed super cycle, clearly are in liquidation on some level." says Santoli. "I think it was underestimated exactly how much strong growth and therefore a lot of wealth creation in China and India was directly fueling gold and silver purchases."

Related: Gold Getting Hammered- Watch $1,340, Says Najarian

With would-be industrial buyers of the goods pulling back their orders, at the same time aggressive redemption of trading funds is happening, a double-whammy for prices. Taking but one example, the SPDR Gold ETF (GLD) saw more than 2% of its assets under management walk out the door in just the week ending April 11th. Once the largest ETF in the world with nearly $80 billion AUM, the GLD has shrunk by more than 25% since 2011.