Unless a speculator is into checking Congressional members’ Facebook updates for trading purposes, there is not a whole lot happening.

“It is very rare that any top-performing sector in a given year can repeat that market-leading performance in the year that follows.”  (Reformed Broker)  And 2012 Commodity Performance (Bespoke).

S&P Up 14% YTD…..Patience is Investors Best Tool and a quite optimistic outlook:  Value Plays.

The homebuilders ripped in 2012 (Bespoke).  I completely missed it.  But I do know this type of move creates fortunes.  How about the refining complex! (Ycharts).

January is an important month at by J.C. Parets.

Natural Gas Watches the Weather (WSJ) with supply and demand seemingly in balance.  Unfortunately, storage is quite high and winter looks unlikely to chew at the overhang.  Natty and the derivative stocks could be dead money until next withdrawal season.  November 2013.  We’ll keep watching and waiting.

The year in Europe centric charts at the Economist.

“Home prices are on track to notch their first yearly gain since 2006, the
strongest performance since the housing bust and a development that could accelerate the real-estate rebound even as the broader economy stutters.”  WSJ

Chart of the Day has been periodically updating this chart for a decade.  I remember suggesting a man could sell his house, put the equity in gold, and be able to repurchase the house for cash years into the future.  The future arrived.  Buried in a shoebox I still have printed out versions of this chart from before my wife and I living in the Philippines.  Does this mean the gold bull is longer in the tooth than otherwise thought?  Or does the chart leg lower again?

Japan Is On The Verge Of A Watershed Moment In Central Banking at Business Insider.

Gold ad in Barron’s from 1973.

Enjoy the weekend.