Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Follow Me - End of Second Quarter

 

"From the moment Christ named Peter the rock he was so steadfast in faith, so courageous, such a confessor, so brave, so expressive, that among the Apostles, he was the first in faith.  When our own faith diminishes, let us run and mentally fall at the feet of the Apostle Peter, and beg him to add to our faith, to increase our faith, and to help us.

He easily forgave those who repented because many times he himself had 'stepped in it.'  Why don't we all do this?   How many times do we also falter and deny our God-man Christ?  Our loving Lord?  This was Peter, in a few words.  May we have his blessing."

Archimandrite Ananias Koustenis, Summer Synaxarion, Volume I.

“'Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift all of you like wheat. But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail. And once you have regained yourself, strengthen your brethren.'  Simon said to him, 'Lord, I am ready to go with you to prison and to death.' And Jesus said, 'Peter, amen I say to you, before the cock crows today, you will deny that you even know me, three times.'”

Luke 22:31-34

"When they had finished breakfast Jesus said to Peter, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me more than these?'  And he answered, 'Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.'  He said to him, “Feed my lambs.”  Jesus then asked him a second time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?'  And Peter answered, 'Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.'  And He said, “Tend my sheep.” And Jesus asked him a third time, 'Simon, son of John, do you love me?'

Peter became distressed that Jesus had asked a third time, 'Do you love me?'   And he said to him, 'Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you.'  Jesus said to him, 'Feed my sheep.  Amen, amen, I say to you, when you were young, you used to dress yourself and walk where you liked.  But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you, and lead you where you do not wish to go.'   Jesus said this to show by what kind of death Peter would glorify God.  And when he had said this, he said to him, 'Follow me.'”

John 21:15-19

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth — that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning. He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road to Rome. That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His city."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero

Today was the last day of the second quarter.  And the champions of the austere rigors of capitalism in its disciplined allocation of capital were busy painting the tape.

This kind of pool buying to pump up stocks on increasing levels of margin debt is very reminiscent of 1929. We might expect this to end in a similar manner.

And of course we can thank the Trump Administration, including Scott Bessent and his cronies, and the stock traders in the Congress, for this mistreatment of our financial system.

Gold and silver attempted to rally and gained a little ground.

Bitcoin dropped back down to the lowest level of its intermediate trading range.   I was a little surprised to see this.  

The Dollar didn't do anything.

And it turned out that Trump's Truth Social post and all that about Iran were the usual market pumping baloney.  

Although as it turns out Iran is making good use of this period to move a great deal of oil to China. 

"Iran has exported 50 million barrels of crude oil, generating $3.5 billion, since the US blockade was lifted two weeks ago, equating to 3.4 million barrels per day or double Iran's pre-conflict export rate of 1.7 million bpd, with most going to China, per TankerTrackers. Iran is rapidly extracting as much oil as possible beyond the reach of the US blockade line, building a revenue buffer before any potential US blockade reimposition or Iranian reclosure of the Strait of Hormuz."

All the risks are still there, the risks of war and the collapsing of the house of cards that is the global equity markets and the AI new era shiny thing.

It looks like the pampered politicos of Europe are going to keep poking the Russian bear, until they get a poke in the nose back.  

Donald is very annoyed that Iran does not seem to be falling into line, given the amount of equipment that has been on the move from the US to the Mideast for the past couple of days.

Iran's chief negotiator Ghalibaf in a new interview declares Iran is 'ready for war' and 'our negotiations with the US are now finished' until Iran gets its frozen funds, Israel fully withdraws and ends all operations in Lebanon 'we will not proceed to the other issues. Ghalibaf adds recent US strikes on Iran were a pure 'violation of the ceasefire.' 

And there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Stock up while you can.  Madness is in the air. 

Remember your souls and each other, for that is what this is all about. 

Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hope for the Faithful, Desolation for the Damned

 

“We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

Are we still of any use? What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, and straightforward men. Will our inward power of resistance be strong enough, and our honesty with ourselves remorseless enough, for us to find our way back to simplicity and straightforwardness?”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1951

"The Lord did not come to make a display.  He came to heal and to teach suffering humanity.  For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been to appear and dazzle the beholders.  But for Him Who came to heal and to teach, the way was not just to appear here, but to place Himself in the service of those who needed Him, and to be made known to them as they could accept it, not diminishing the value of His Divine presence by overwhelming their capacity to receive it."

Athanasius, On the Incarnation of the Word,  Alexandria 335 AD

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist, and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life.”

Léon Bloy, Le Pèlerin de l'absolu, Bourg-la-Reine, 1914

"All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action. All souls must admire and respect one another, walking along our path to the same goal, united in purpose and with the help of God's plan which, in its great variety, is in us all. To escape the pain caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, and give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace.”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, L'Abandon a la Providence Divine, France, 1861

"Christ has no body but yours,
     No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
     Compassion on this world.

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
     Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
     Yours are the eyes, you are his body.

Christ has no body now but yours,
     No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks
     compassion on this world.
Christ has no body now on earth but yours."

Santa Teresa de Ávila


These are very confusing times indeed. 

And yet our calling for those who follow the Word remains the same.  Perhaps even more strongly put than in easy times of overabundance where the temptations to complacency harden some hearts.

I addressed the spark for today's stock rally earlier today here:  Why Are Stocks Rallying?

And stocks indeed rallied, with a single pause and backstep, into the close.

Non-Farm Payrolls report this Thursday, the last business day before the great 250th American Anniversary.

The Dollar fell a bit.

Bitcoin continues bouncing along the bottom of its intermediate trading range.

VIX fell.  All is well.

The first chart below compares the AI stock phenomenon to prior phenomena in the markets. 

The world's Banks have offered a word of caution.

"Debt-fueled spending on AI is driving up the risk of a global financial crisis, central bankers have warned. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) said on Sunday that 'excessive' spending on new AI data centres and opaque transactions risked a financial meltdown similar to the global credit crunch nearly two decades ago.

The BIS, known as the bank for central banks, said there was growing 'peril' in financial markets from the complex web of financial ties between AI giants, shadow banks and data centre builders unraveling.  'Financial stability could be at risk in the event of an AI bust,' the BIS said.  'Should hyperscalers slow or halt the aggressive pace of capex deployment, many borrowers across the supply chain could struggle to replace lost revenue and service their debt. The opacity of AI-sector financing compounds these vulnerabilities.'”

Matthew Field, AI Boom Risks Global Financial Crash Say Central Banks, 28 June 2026

SpaceX bounced almost back to where it began its IPO journey.

There are a number of things worth watching this week.  

In particular the geopolitical developments in Iran and the Ukraine. 

Europe has taken up the mantle of trying to provoke Russia from a safe distance.  The EU leadership is anaemic and uninspiring, at times almost craven.  But they would yet be kings and queens, even of smoking ruins.

But we all have our burdens, and the US certainly has its own.

In Iran, the US government is continuing to engage in enormously expensive lengths to impose a secular Pax Zionica on the Near East, in its global and never ending quest for oil, minerals, and beachfront property development worldwide. 

But at the end of the day, we are held responsible for what we do, and for the love we bring with us when we come home to the Father.  

We are to be in the world, but not of it.  And the temptation to let our love grow cold is powerful.  

It is sad to see so many Christians fallen way,  abandoning Christ for the world, with a piety worthy of the Pharisees.

In the end, the only real tragedy is not to have been a saint.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Why Are US Equities Rallying This Monday?

 

Is this just another 'Market Pumping Monday? 

I find it hard to believe the claims that an Administration could be blatantly manipulating the US stock markets for their own profit under a guise of controlling oil prices.  It's very base and greedy behaviour unbecoming of any leader of a Western democracy.  

Let's see if Iran's claims are false.  This is tiresome and very bad for the economy.

=======

Barak David from Axios on Sunday night an hour before the futures market opened announced a news 'scoop' that Iran has requested a peace talk at Doha.  The only other mentions of this in the media I saw were quotes of the Axios story. 

The stock futures rallied and oil fell.

And Iran denied it. Here is the latest.

The Hormuz Newsletter on X says again just now:

BREAKING: Iran's Foreign Ministry has directly rejected Trump's claim that Tehran requested a meeting in Doha—stating no negotiations at any level are scheduled with the U.S. in the coming days, per Fars News.

Foreign Ministry Spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei clarified that U.S. representatives traveling to Qatar—including special envoy Steve Witkoff—have no connection to the Iranian delegation's movements.

Trump had posted on Truth Social: "IRAN HAS REQUESTED A MEETING. IT WILL TAKE PLACE TOMORROW IN DOHA!"

Iran says otherwise. No request. No talks. No schedule. Trump is either lying—or trying to manipulate the market.

Very frustrating to see these opaque developments moving markets.

Let's see what happens.  Then we may know.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great American Swindle

 

Personal Copy From My Library

"There was time when average Americans could be counted upon to know correctly whether the country was going up or down, because in those days when America prospered, the American people prospered as well.  These days things are different.

If you look at the middle of the 1930's (the Depression) up until the year 1980, the lower 90 percent of the population of this country, what you might call the American people, that group took home 70 percent of the growth in the country's income. 

If you look at the same numbers from 1997 up until now, from the height of the great Dot Com bubble up to the present, you will find that this same group, the American people, pocketed none of this country's income growth at all.

Our share of these great good times was zero, folks.  The upper ten percent of the population, by which we mean our country's financiers and managers and professionals, consumed the entire thing.  To be a young person in America these days is to understand instinctively the downward slope that so many of us are on."

Thomas Frank, What to Make of the Age of Trump, Kansas City, 6 April 2017

“Based on the value of the stock market compared to GDP, with modifications, this is the most expensive market in American history."

Jeremy Grantham, CNBC Interview, 26 June 2026

"I would say that practically all the financial journals were on the take.  This includes reporters for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Herald-Tribune, you name it.  So if you were a pool operator, you'd call your friend at The Times and say, "Look, Charlie, there's an envelope waiting for you here and we think that perhaps you should write something nice about RCA."  And Charlie would write something nice about RCA.  A publicity man called A. Newton Plummer had canceled checks from practically every major journalist in New York City.

Then, they would begin to — what was called painting the tape. Now, what's happening is the stock goes from 10 to 15 to 20 and now, it's at 20 and you start buying, other people start buying at 30, 40. The original group, the pool, they've stopped buying. They're selling you the stock. It's now 50 and they're out of it. And what happens, of course, is the stock collapses."

Robert Sobel, The Crash of 1929,  PBS Frontline, April 24, 2012

"An investigation later discovered that business journalists for at least eight papers promoted stocks in their writing in return for bribes. The most embarrassing were at the Wall Street Journal. The revelations about the Journal reporters came out during hearings by the Senate Banking and Currency Committee in 1932, more than three years later, when Congressman Fiorello LaGuardia produced cancelled checks written to the Journal reporters from publicist A. Newton Plummer. The stories based on the bribes had gone as far back as 1923."

University of North Carolina, History of Business Journalism: 1920s

"I have come to realize that the vast majority of decent, wonderful people, have no idea how they are being hoodwinked day in and day out by the scum of this world. We are lied to, misled, bamboozled, suckered, cheated, misrepresented, conned, manipulated and royally screwed. They take us to the cleaners day in and day out in every way possible. We, the people, pay the price of their cheating, their folly, their lying and their sheer stupidity."

Pierre Rinfret, Parida.com, 2004 (before he passed on in 2006)

"Control frauds in the financial markets are by their very nature conspiratorial in that they involve the suborning of regulators, ratings agencies, exchanges, the media, and legislators to ignore and facilitate misrepresentation that enable white collar crime. They are difficult to prosecute because by their nature they involve twisting the legal into the extra-legal on a broad basis to achieve a particular financial effect, while limiting many specific aspects to the letter of the law, or at least the gray areas. By and large they operate in the shadows, hiding behind secrecy and a general mindset towards short term greed and lapses in ethics. Investigations following the Crash of 1929 and the S&L crisis demonstrated that the existence of such pervasive lapses in stewardship do exist."

Jesse, Control Frauds Extend Bubbles Maximizing Damage, 27 April 2010

"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself. To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality.  It is to disguise the reality."

John Kenneth Galbraith, Power and the Useful Economist, 1973


Stocks wobbled around today, as the geopolitical risks raise their ugly heads over the official proclamations and celebrations of peace.

Gold and silver bounced around as usual, finishing higher on the day.

Bitcoin in also bouncing around, stuck for now on the lower end of its intermediate trading range.

VIX of course fell.

We can't have any disappointments for Donnie's big 250th anniversary celebration of himself. 

Iran and Russia may not have gotten the memo.

Breaking News after the bell:  US forces struck Iranian missile and drone storage locations and coastal radar sites today as a response to Iran's drone attack yesterday on a cargo ship in the Strait of Hormuz, per CENTCOM.  These are the first US strikes since the MOU was signed.

If you are getting your news from the ideologically/financially aligned mainstream news channels, you may have no idea what is going on, and what is coming your way. 

I can remember an online acquaintance telling me in the aftermath of 9/11 and the aggressive campaign for waging war on Iraq that he could not bear to watch anything but Fox News.   

I made a promise to myself that if the whole WMD agitprop turned out to be false, I would never watch the mainstream media channels again.  And it was false, and I no longer watch them.  

It is not news, it is not journalism.  It is performative art for pay.  

So we move forward into the holiday-shortened trading week to come.   

What the Epstein files need now is a new Daniel Ellsberg.  They really are that bad.  They will never be willingly released by either party.  Insiders take care of their own and don't criticize each other, as they say in the halls of power. 

Have a pleasant weekend.