Hot Links For a Terribly Cold Tuesday

STOCK MARKET

Here's the story that goes with that.

One respected analyst thinks the bull market has years left to go. Here's why.

One thing to consider: The Fed's quantitative easing program fueled corporate buybacks. You could take that as the view that companies would rather buy their own stock than invest in expanding their businesses.  Do you think that trend will continue?

GOLD

Hedge funds raised their bullish gold bets to a six-week high. I'm pretty sure nothing good will come of this. Meanwhile, another analyst came out with a $1,000 gold target. Meanwhile, Barclays has a $1,310 target on gold, which is downright optimistic compared to most. And in general, gold analysts are the most bullish that they've been in a year.

Idle speculation aside, yesterday saw a very suspicious flash crash in the price of gold. Gold quickly recovered, which is actually pretty bullish.

What caused the flash crash? Fat fingers? Outright manipulation? Liquidating Hedge Fund? Who knows.

Since no one was punished last time this happened, don't hold your breath waiting for the  U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission to investigate and try to actually enforce its regulations.

Holdings in gold-backed exchange-traded products fell 0.3 metric ton to 1,755.3 tons yesterday, the lowest since October 2009, data compiled by Bloomberg show. And here's more food for da bears.

A list of "7 Reasons Why Silver Investments Look Better Than Gold" recycles old talking points and talks about historical ratios as if they mean anything -- as if they've meant anything in the past 5 years. There are REAL reasons why silver could outperform gold this year; I'll try to get to them in a  post later this week.

INDONESIA, COPPER, GOLD AND NICKEL

Winners and losers in Indonesia's upcoming ban on raw metal ore exports ...

Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold and the Indonesian government should reach an agreement before Indonesia’s ore export ban materially affects FCX’s 2014 earnings, according to a new report from Cowen Research. And that explains why Freeport's price has remained trending higher recently.

Meanwhile, Ibris Nickel has temporarily stopped operations at its 2-million-tonne-per-year nickel mine in Indonesia as it waits for the impact of the unprocessed-ore ban.

CHINA

China and Russia are close to a ground-breaking deal on a pipeline. The idea is to ship Russian gas into four dispersed Chinese entry points along the 2,500-mile route of a new pipeline called the Power of Siberia

By the way, economists polled by Reuters are expecting China's economic growth to slow, but that call has been consistently underguessing, so ... eh. In other news, GM just sold a record number of cars in China. Does that sound like an economy that is slowing down?

SHINING MOMENTS IN JOURNALMENISM

The New York Times spreads lies about the housing crisis.

And reposting from my twitter account:  You don't expect 60 Minutes' Leslie Stahl to do real research and real reporting, do you?

AN EARTH-SHATTERING KA-BOOM

Is it freezing in your neighborhood? are you hearing loud bangs or other inexplicable noises. It's probably "frost quakes," also known as cryoeisems. Go back to sleep and wait for the inevitable SyFy Channel movie.

TODAY'S MOOD LIFTER: Dogs taking selfies.