Some Key European Charts Starting to Look Quite Scary

Some Key European Charts Starting to Look Quite Scary

It’s not quite Halloween yet, but some important European charts are starting to look pretty horrifying!  (Hat tip Dr. Evil for making significant contributions to this story.)

Let’s start with Italy, our favorite impending disaster, sporting a 120% debt-to-GDP, with enough total weight to take down the entire system.  Italy’s economy has never really been right since joining the EU…some would say because Italy cannot compete with German manufacturing on an even currency basis.

Whatever the reason, this chart is not an encouraging one!

Two year Italian bonds yield chartIt’s becoming a game of hot potato with Italy’s short term paper. (Source: Bloomberg)

Next up is European banking giant UniCredit, based in – you guessed it – Italy.  Hat tip here to Porter Stansberry, who identified UniCredit as one of his favorite “canaries in the coalmine” for gauging the severity of the situation in Europe.  He thinks as goes Italy, so goes UniCredit.  If that’s the case, the market does not like either right now…

Unicredit stock price chart July 2011

Source: Yahoo Finance

The 5-year chart looks pretty bad, too:

Unicredit stock price chart July 2011 5-year

Source: Yahoo Finance

Heading West, Portugal appears to be in serious eminent trouble:

Ten year Portugal bonds yield chart

Source: Bloomberg

Spain yields have just broken out:

Ten year Spain bonds yield chart

Source: Bloomberg

As gold continues to climb with respect to the euro:

Gold priced in Euros

Gold is near all-time highs versus the euro.  (Source: StockCharts.com)

And the British pound, too:

Gold priced in British poundSource: StockCharts.com

The headlines in the financial press can say what they want, but the charts don’t lie – and I couldn’t imagine an uglier lineup of charts for Europe than these!

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