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The market seems to be waiting. But waiting for what?

We keep paying attention to what gold is telling us. And gold keeps turning up the volume on the message.

That seems to be the theme in a number of markets this week – short-term uptrends moving into longer-term price resistance.

Gold continues to be the most interesting market I follow.

I am increasingly convinced that the monetary efforts of the central banks are overriding the natural cycles and whatever other forces normally determine the course of financial market prices. My own proxy for this central bank “money pump” is  a smoothed sum of the FED’s balance sheet and 20% of the ECB’s balance sheet converted to cdollars. This pump proxy is shown below compared to both the S&P 500 and gasoline futures prices for the past six plus momths.

One gets the feeling that the cost getting gas prices to come down for the election might be a stock market collapse. It appears that the Barry & Bernank show will have to make a choice; do they want lower gas prices, or an inflated stock market?

I’m going to show this proxy money pump chart regularly for subscribers, as I now think this is critical information for guaging the trend of the market now.

click chart to enlarge

click chart to enlarge

Most markets have fallen asleep within small trading ranges.

Here are the Case Shiller housing index chart and table, through February 2012.

click chart to enlarge

Many markets are pinned between support and resistance here. It’s watch and wait until prices break one way or the other.