Constructed by years of fiscal white lies and monetary insanity, the body bags have yet to be filled. Municipal governments in China still depend on increasing real estate values, while European banks holding large debts of failing Southeastern states still stand. The United States Economy has “recovered faster than anyone could have imagined” and the S&P 500 at one time had nearly doubled from it’s lows. But still the whispers; 10 year U.S. Treasuries nearing 3% yields, LIBOR trending higher, market technicals showing a shift towards negative confidence, and this weeks economic data hanging in the balance…

As founder and editor of Diamond Slice I’m proud to announce that The Weekly Spectrum is going to be more “focused”. It’s obvious that you can get a weekly outlook anywhere on the net, so the one you’ll find here is about to become a bit, well, edgy. There’s enough “fair and balanced” out there to kill us all of boredom, I believe that we at DS can give you something much better, something much smarter, and something you can actually profit from. So without any further ado, I give you “The Weekly Spectrum” 2.0…

There are several positions we had been waiting for and on Friday the limits were hit and trades were placed. We are exceedingly confident about these three trades, and we feel that it’s worth our readers’ time to take a peak at where we’re putting our cash. This “trade flash” will target those three trades.

Elliot Wave International chief market analyst Steve Hochberg applies Elliot Wave market timing theory to the current market dynamics. Indicators of sentiment including the S&P 500 put/call ratio, insider trading, and a crashing CBOE Volatility Index are cited as evidence for an eminent sell-off in riskier assets globally.

Click below to see Steve make his case on CNBC’s Squawk Box…

U.S. stocks looked unusually strong on Friday as two major factors concerning short term risk in global markets changed dramatically. The stagnant housing market and uncertainty over a viable path to solvency in Greece, which have been weighing heavily on global markets, seem to be less threatening if Friday’s data were judge. Technicals remain extremely overbought in commodities and equities as markets now face Bernanke and Q1 GDP this week.

U.S. equities have vigorously rallied for the past six weeks to gain +20%, bringing the S&P 500 just above 1200, as Q1 2010 earnings hit the tape. In short, the charts are begging for a pullback, but earnings and economic indicators are giving no reason to sell. Most analysts agree that the good news is mostly baked in stocks, but sellers have left the building and buyers keep coming out of the woodwork.

Here we’ll focus on a few indicators related to the S&P 500, and tell investors why they should be taking profits at these levels.

The VIX is the CBOE (Chicago Board Options Exchange) metric of volatility regarding S&P 500 futures (SPX).Currently, the VIX is trading near it’s lowest levels since 2008, allowing bear traders and bull hedgers an attractive entry point for some risk or insurance in their portfolios.

Bernanke and the crew will get started bright and early behind the collasal locked mohagany doors of the FOMC board room Tuesday morning, while traders will ernestly focus on the information at hand. A slew of earnings from Ashland (ASH) (0.71 EPS est.), Corning (GLW) (0.42 EPS est.), Delta Airlines (DAL) (-0.24 EPS est), DuPont (DD)
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The January 18 – 22 business week will begin one day late, due to Martin Luther King Jr holiday, leaving only Tuesday to Friday for market action to be staged. The most notable economic data releases will be the Housing Market Index (HMI) and Housing Starts numbers; while Treasury International Capital data, the Producer's Price
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Crude Oil The oil issue has been speculative to this point. It's hard to argue against 90 dollar oil when we saw 145 in July 2008, but the fundamentals aren't congruent with the price growth we've seen and this trader finds it easier to argue FOR $60/ barrel oil. Crude supply in the U.S. remains
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