Mr. T on Gold & Mr. Trump on Mortgages

It's time for some light hearted weekend news involving the letter "T". Here's a look at recent developments on Trump Mortgage as well as the Mr. T gold indicator invented by Kevin Depew on Minyanville.

Every Wednesday Minyanville posts a new video on some facet of the economy. This week's video was on the demise of Trump Mortgage.

Click here to play the Trump Video.



The above was poking fun at Trump Mortgage, ‘You’re foreclosed’.

Donald Trump has pulled the plug on Trump Mortgage less than two years after its launch. Plagued by bad timing and the disclosure that the firm’s chief executive had inflated his credentials, the mortgage brokerage never came close to reaching its financial goals.

Mr. Trump downplayed his role in Trump Mortgage. He said that he didn’t have an ownership stake in what amounted to a mere licensing deal. “The mortgage business is not a business I particularly liked or wanted to be part of in a very big way,” he said.

That’s a different tune than the one he was singing a year ago. After a quiet opening in late 2005 at Mr. Trump’s headquarters at 40 Wall St., he officially launched the company in April 2006 at a gala at Trump Tower. Also onstage was chief executive E.J. Ridings, an acquaintance of Donald Trump Jr. who came up with the idea for the company.

Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump told CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo: “I think it’s a great time to start a mortgage company.… [And] who knows about financing better than I do?”

Even though Trump Mortgage is gone, the Trump name will continue to be tied to mortgages. Mr. Trump has licensed his name to First Meridian Mortgage, an established lender that is renaming itself Trump Financial and will be the preferred lender on Trump development projects.

Other entertaining videos can be found on OPEC, Wal-Mart (WMT), Bernanke, Starbucks (SBUX), and Mr. T. With that let's turn our attention to Mr. T as Kevin Depew spills the beans on this as of now vastly underutilized, yet astonishingly accurate measurement of gold sentiment.

Mr. T Gold Indicator 1975 - 1993




(click on chart for a much enhanced view)

Mr. T Gold Indicator 1993 - 2006



(click on chart for a much enhanced view)

Kevin unlocked his big secret about Mr. T in point number 4 of "Five Things" on July 25th 2007 in A Fractal-Based Look at the Mr. T Gold Indicator

As you can see, the Mr. T Gold Indicator is a robust tool for identifying high-probability price exhaustion points in gold, both on the upside and the downside. In the above charts we took a long-term view of gold, using the Mr. T Gold Indicator to identify price exhaustion points on a long-term monthly chart. In addition to the yellow metal, the indicator is also useful in identifying similar exhaustion points in the metals stocks themselves, such as Newmont Mining (NEM), Barrick Gold (ABX), Goldcorp (GG), AngloGold Ashanti (AU) and Gold Fields (GFI).

But what about weekly, daily, even hourly and minute-by-minute charts? Don't give me no back talk, sucka! Naturally, it stands to reason that if the Mr. T Gold Indicator is indeed a robust price exhaustion tool then it should apply to smaller time frames of gold price data. That is, because the gold market is a self-organizing complex system with self-similarity on different time scales, the Mr. T Gold Indicator should be just as useful in these self-similar and subdivided minute time frames as it is on a larger scale.

Unfortunately the Mr.T Gold Indicator turned negative on April 19, 2007 right as gold approached 700. Click on the above link to see the Snickers ad campaign involving Mr. T that gave off a sell signal on gold.

Thanks Kevin!

Here's the Mr. T Gold Indicator Video in case you missed it. Somehow I suspect goldbugs will not take this seriously. And not to be dissing Mr. T but 10 valid reasons to own gold can be found in A Safe Way to Own Gold and Silver. No, Mr. T is not one of them.

Mike Shedlock / Mish
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/