On Vacation

And I'm off.   Back the latter part of October.

“The world is being ravaged by a handful of tyrants.” — Pope Leo XIV

 

Just Charts - Pictures of an Historic Moment in the Markets

 

I thought it might be useful to capture the moment in charts and share it with you before I leave. 

We may be seeing an historic moment, a kind of high water mark in US financial markets, and the beginnings of a slide into the teeth wrenching downfall.  The willful act of greedy, lawless men. 

Comex option expiration tomorrow.  Probably the most shenanigans already, with a gut punch maybe next week early.

May God have mercy on us.

Have a pleasant evening.

Just Charts for Tuesday - Market Capitalism Falls into Vanity and Greed

 

It is sad to see the global markets become increasingly irrelevant as the rule of law falls into vanity and greed. 

"My warning to subscribers remains the same: do not confuse the price blinking on your screen with some immutable statement about economic reality.

This isn’t the stock market of the 1980s or 1990s. We now have zero day options, enormous passive vehicles, algorithmic strategies, volatility products, dealer gamma hedging and trillions of dollars responding mechanically to price.

After more than a decade of zero rates, QE and monetary intervention, I increasingly think we’re staring at a financial mirage, a fiat driven, QE induced hallucination where price temporarily becomes its own justification.

Nothing feels particularly real anymore.

But that’s the funny thing about a mirage, it all looks perfectly real right up until you try to drink the water."

QTR Research

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Lone and Level Wastes Stretch Far Away

 

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed:
And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Percy Shelley, Ozymandias

"The Son of Man will depart as it is written of him, but woe to the one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed. It would have been better that he had never been born.”

Matthew 26:24

"While some of the crowd were speaking about how the temple was adorned with costly stones and offerings, he said,  'All that you see here, the days will come when there will not be left a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.'  

Then they asked him, 'Teacher, when will this happen?   And what sign will there be when all these things are about to happen?'  And He said to them, 'Where death is, there a gathering of vultures will be.'”

Luke 21:5-7, 37 

Since they didn't even bother to provide a plausible reason for the aggressive strike on another country while in the midst of peace negotiations, it should not surprise that they did not bother to provide a plausible rational for today's record breaking rally in stocks, and slamming of the price of crude oil.

Regarding the stock market action today Jason Goefpert observes:

There are 2 days in history like today, when the S&P 500 $SPY rallied at least 1% to within 1% of a new high, and more of its stocks fell to new lows than highs.

• Jul 23, 1929
• Dec 21, 1999

This is a dangerous narrowing of a highly stretched Index valuation without a base of more general growth in the broader market.   It is a sign of a topping secular mania.

The witch of November is waiting. 

There will be an option expiration for the precious metals futures option expiration on the Comex this week on Thursday the 24th.

The SP futures set a new high.  The NDX tried its best but could not quite do it. 

Bitcoin rallied sharply today breakup out of its short term trading range.   Let's see if they can build on this.

Volatility remains subdued,  remarkably.

I will be leaving on vacation later this week and will not be checking emails or posting items here, except perhaps on a hit or miss basis. 

I have not been to Asia in a very long time, and I am looking forward to sharing what I see there when I get back.    

Have a pleasant evening.