RADIATION STORM IN PROGRESS: Solar protons accelerated by this morning's M9-class solar flare are streaming past Earth. On the NOAA scale of radiation storms, this one ranks S3, which means it could, e.g., cause isolated reboots of computers onboard Earth-orbiting satellites and interfere with polar radio communications. An example of satellite effects: The "snow" in this SOHO coronagraph movie is caused by protons hitting the observatory's onboard camera.
ALMOST-X FLARE AND CME (UPDATED): This morning, Jan. 23rd around 0359 UT, big sunspot 1402 erupted, producing a long-duration M9-class solar flare. The explosion's M9-ranking puts it on the threshold of being an X-flare, the most powerful kind.
Mercury left the sign of Sagittarius today. We expect big moves in Gold and Silver when Mercury moves through this sign. Gold went higher, but it was Silver that had the big move.
High-tech stocks have been enjoying a great party, lately. The Nasdaq composite has been up 2.8 percent for the week and 7 percent for the year. Popular stocks have fared even better for the year: Apple (AAPL) is up close to 12 percent; Salesforce.com (CRM) up 10 percent; Microsoft (MSFT) up 9 percent; Oracle (ORCL) 15 percent, Xilinx (XLNX) 18 percent, and Netflix (NFLX) 45 percent!
We do hate to spoil this party, but we do believe that high-tech stocks are ripe for a correction for the following reasons: Read....