BITCOIN BTC/USD	LT-M	MT-W	ST-D
8700 (8198)
Trend	↓ (↓)	↑ (↑)	↓ (↑)
% Risk Weight	44 (43)	43 (27)	84 (75)
Allocation	0% (0%)

January so far has shown a bit more volatility in Crypto and BTC with most markets showing a fair bit of strength. Where these markets belong is the bigger financial space is still an unknown. Given our reference to an article by Sovereign Man on the USA’s policy of protecting USDollar supremacy as the World’s ONLY reserve currency can also mean that CRYPTO remains in the Spec space and could end in tears for many until this market grows up and can become fully regulated. The latter is necessary for Crypto to be a success and we believe that Bitcoin is likely to need a big hit first for its acceptance as a payment currency in World Trade. We stay out until dust settles which may still be a few years in the making.

Last week: The 15% rally since Year-end has done little in terms of risk weight. The big wedge made up from connection the 3 year highs and lows is narrowing to a range of ‘just’ $6000. trading smack in the middle. No change for us. This remains a very high risk market dominated by a few players without a clear understanding how source of funds are controlled. Speculators trading through the various exchanges are numerous but relatively small in size. No Change
Remaining ‘Gap open’ (July 2017) still to fill at 2828. We exclude weekend action to determine opening gaps as major players are(were) not participating in size during weekends.
If this market is poised to turn from extremely overbought (Dec 2017) to completely oversold, it doesn’t appear to be finished.

Standard & Poor 500	LT-M	MT-W	ST-D
3330 (3265)
Trend	↑ (↑)	↑ (↓)	↑ (↑)
% Risk Weight	97 (97)	99 (95)	96 (86)
Allocation	0% (0%)

This Stock Index is Up, Up and Up. Not participating in a market means one cannot win or lose. High risk, and if anything that risk goes up to further extremes every week, means we stay out completely. Our asset allocation management approach limits risk further by not allowing short positions. That is for a minimum speculative allocation only. Getting High risk markets wrong hurts too much if the allocation is too large and thus leveraged. S&P500 and with it virtually every stock market index in the world is lead by cheap money, so it seems for most. It shows very high risk and pushing the extremes in overbought conditions in every time frame, from daily to quarterly. This is Log scale or inflationary territory. No Change.

Last week: Everything Stocks is high risk. Every timeframe from Daily to Quarterly is at a serious high risk overbought level with another bearish divergence developing in the Daily timeframe. No Change.

We are keeping last week’s chart in just to remind of the high risk of enetering or even participating in a long trade as part of the Long term asset allocation.

Is S&P500 worth the risk???

Brent	LT-M	MT-W	ST-D
64.85 (66.03)
Trend	↑ (↑)	↓ (↑)	↑ (↓)
% Risk Weight	45 (45)	65 (77)	12 (15)
Allocation	30% (0%)

This market cannot make up its mind and the technicals give no strong indication that something big is in the making. Short term signals however do call for a slightly stronger market this week and with LT trend being up and Weekly mixed we will allocate a relatively small position of 30%. Crude Oil needs to break out or settle into an oversold condition before our analysis can call for a stronger entry into this market.

Last week: The events leading up to the explosive reactions in Oil prices in early January must have been hard on traders. The market closed slightly below the Year-end level last Friday and we see no technical evidence to change our ‘Stay out’ analysis. The explosive brief price expansion to 71.75 basically created a new high in a narrowing Triangle with support at 58.00 and resistance now at 71.75. Technically the Oil price can develop in either direction and an investment therefore would wisely be delayed until we see a breakout from the narrowing consolidation of the past 16 months. No Change