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Gold is weaker this morning…as of 5:50 am Pacific, the yellow metal is down $22 an ounce at $1,707…Silver is 55 cents lower at $33.35…Copper is off 9 pennies at $3.87…Crude Oil has slid $1.66 a barrel to $98.18 while the U.S.Dollar Index has jumped half a point to 79.10…

Stock index futures in New York, as of 5:50 am Pacific, are pointing to some weakness today which is not surprising given the recent run-up…we have been expecting this, so there’s no reason to panic…European markets are down as well…the TSX Venture Exchange has been up against short-term resistance lately and likely needs to back off a little and unwind a temporarily overbought condition as shown by its daily chart…any pullback would have to be viewed as a buying opportunity, so we like this kind of a day…

China Numbers – Look Beyond The Headlines

China’s trade in January fell the most since the depths of the financial crisis, raising concerns among some analysts that Lunar New Year factory shutdowns do not fully explain a slump in imports and may instead be evidence of a further faltering in demand…a careful look behind the headlines, though, shows that we really need to see February’s data before drawing any conclusions…Chinese imports sank 15.3% in January versus January 2011 – the lowest since August 2009 –  while exports fell 0.5% over the same period, the worst showing since November 2009, customs data showed this morning…it’s important to point out, however, that this may have been more calendar-related as there were fewer official working days in China in January of this year compared to January 2011…we really need to wait for the February data and lump the two months’ together before jumping to conclusions…nestled amid all the gloomy figures were some surprisingly upbeat data points…a January survey on China’s factory sector was brighter than expected…the country’s crude oil imports surged 7.4% in January to the third-highest level on record, which doesn’t mesh with a severe economic slowdown…copper purchases were up as well…money supply has been growing significantly in China recently and the government is now more focused on economic growth than fighting inflation, so China is not about to collapse as some pundits are suggesting…

Greece – The Circus Continues

Euro zone finance ministers dismissed as incomplete a reputed 3.3 billion euro package of Greek budget cuts presented to them in the hope of securing a 130 billion euro bail-out and sent the country’s finance minister back to Athens with a fresh set of demands and an urgent deadline…in exchange for signing off on the loan, which Greece is depending on to avoid a potentially chaotic default next month, its lenders are demanding further cuts to this year’s budget (330 million euros), parliamentary approval of a sweeping reform package and a pledge from the country’s political leaders to ensure they will maintain their commitment after April elections…Greece’s political leaders can be trusted with a pledge?????…

With its bloated bureaucracy, powerful unions, corruption, government dependency, the list goes on – Greece obviously needs some help on the political front…here’s a suggestion…how about we trade them Dalton McGuinty and Alison in Wonderland (Alison Redford, the new premier of Alberta) for future considerations?…with their ability to cook the books they could bamboozle everyone and turn the Greece situation around in a heartbeat…McGuinty could also consult with his friend David Suzuki and revive the Greece economy with a massive green energy program…Alison in Wonderland was magically able to find billions and billions of new dollars in Alberta yesterday (rainy day fund, lofty projections, etc., think what she could do for Greece!) to throw at all sorts of programs that liberals cherish and live for…what a great example of how taxpayers’ money to a government is like heroin to a drug addict…

Okay, back to reality – let’s look at a couple of charts…as we mentioned off the top, a minor pullback in the markets seems likely (this would also be healthy from a technical standpoint) and this morning John examines the leader of the pack which is the Dow…

Below is another chart of the Dow showing its supporting daily EMA(20) and a close correlation with commodities, the TSX and the Venture Exchange…in otherwords, any weakness in the Dow will likely spill over into these other markets…

There are many situations we like in this new bullish cycle for the Venture Exchange and one of them is Huldra Silver Inc. (HDA, TSX-V) which is working on advancing its Treasure Mountain Property (Silver, lead zinc) in British Columbia toward production…John’s 2-year weekly chart below shows increasing “big picture” momentum and a stock that has broken out of a downtrend…it closed yesterday at $1.37 for a current market cap of $43 million…any weakness in the coming days (for example, a pullback to around $1.20 or so) would make for a very good entry point…

Note: John, Jon and Terry do not currently hold positions in HDA.