Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stock Option Expiration

 

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.”

George Orwell, 1984

"Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort. And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest mission civilizatrice."

Edward W. Said, Orientalism , 1978

"When a man takes an oath, Meg, he's holding his own self in his own hands. Like water. And if he opens his fingers then— he needn't hope to find himself again."

Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons, 1960

“What I have been trying to say to intellectuals, preachers, scientists - as well as more generally to the public, can be put into one sentence: drop the liberal rhetoric and the conservative default; they are now parts of one and the same official line [prevailing narrative]; transcend that line. 

We must come to understand that the exercise of responsibility is diminishing and in fact becoming organized as irresponsibility. We must hold men of power variously responsible for pivotal events, we must unmask their pretentions - and often their own mistaken convictions - that they are not responsible. Our politics, in short, must be the politics of responsibility.”

C. Wright Mills, The Politics of Responsibility, 1960

"Religion, opium for the people. To those suffering pain, humiliation, illness, and serfdom, it promised a reward in an afterlife. And now we are witnessing a transformation. A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism, New York Review, November 1998


Today was a stock option expiration.

Did you notice?

I'm getting a lot done on my 'vacation.'

What the Western elite have become rings hollow, with a breath of hellfire from the bowels of the abyss.

"The ambition of Caesar and of Napoleon pales before that which could not rest until it had seized the minds of men and controlled even their unborn thoughts.  The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterwards with more awful effect — this beautiful, stupendous creation, terrible in its simplicity, irresistible in its truth ― a world which now trembles before the King in Yellow.” 

Robert W. Chambers, The King In Yellow

Our exceptional moderns do not fall to the irresistible persuasion and promises of Antichrist.  

They throw themselves like wantons at its feet, fawning and flattering for favors before the very incarnation of evil.

As old as Babylon, and evil as sin. 

Pray to see the evil as it is, so that you may save yourselves and your own. 

For many are sliding blindly into the abyss. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals - Gold and Silver to New Highs - A Sign for the Times

 

"What theology, history and common sense have taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie, Le Monde, 5 avril 1956

"You are a sinful nation, weighed down by lawlessness. A race of corrupt and wicked children, you have forsaken your Lord, despised the Holy One of Israel, and turned your backs to him."

Isaiah 1:4

"From the least to the greatest, they are greedy for unjust gains - and from prophet to priest they all deal falsely.  They have treated the suffering of my people carelessly, saying, ‘Peace’ when there is no peace.  They act shamefully, they bring forth abominations.  And yet they are not ashamed, and do not even know how to blush. In the days of judgement they will stumble, and shall be found among those who are fallen."

Jeremiah 6:13-15

"We have learned nothing, and are emboldened by our willful ignorance. We make beasts of ourselves, to avoid the pain of our lack of humanity. We make a private cult out of our own childlike selfishness, sinning shamelessly against the word and the spirit. We lay down with swine, and call it greatness."

Jesse, 8 October 2021

"And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to rise from the dead.’”

Luke 16:30-31


Still on vacation, but these moves in the precious metals are notable.

Enjoyable, but edgy. 

Gold futures closed at a new all time high of 4322.

Silver rallied higher as well, pegging a close above 53.

VIX spiked.

The Dollar continued to slide. 

Stocks traded weakly with a little rally back in the quiet afternoon.

Stocks are one event away from a notable correction. 

"While they were admiring the temple, adorned with costly stones and offerings, Jesus said, 'All that you see here, the days are coming when there will not be left one stone upon another stone, that will not be thrown down.'"

Luke 21:5

And no one could see it coming.

Have a pleasant evening. 

The Winds of Change Are Blowing a Hurricane

"A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately.  Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites.   Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?"

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Harvard Commencement, June 1978

"The US must win, since it has infinite ammunition: there is no limit to the dollars the Federal Reserve can create. What needs to be discussed is the terms of the world’s surrender: the needed changes in nominal exchange rates and domestic policies around the world."

Martin Wolf, Financial Times, 12 Oct 2010

"The historical evidence is overwhelming.  Many societies have done well for a while – until powerful people get out of hand.  This is an easy pattern to see at a distance and in other cultures.  It is typically much harder to recognize when your own society now has an elite less subject to effective constraints and more able to exert power in an abusive fashion."

Simon Johnson, Jamie Dimon and the Fall of Nations, May 31, 2012

“The eye of the commodities storm has not been oil, and peak oil, but rather a collapsing international trade system based on the US dollar.  The heart of the problem is that trading increasingly worthless dollars for hard goods has been a nice protection racket with an amazingly long run under the Pax Americana. The non-G7 countries will stop accepting this arrangement, and the world will adjust.

The markets are searching for a replacement for the Bretton Woods II arrangement of dollars for oil and military protection. Increased demand and peaks in supply will merely accelerate and intensify the storm. The heightened sense of risk and volatility is because the world's markets do not yet see a viable, sustainable solution.

A new equilibrium that will underpin international trade will be discovered. But given the length and breadth of the status quo the seismic shocks of the adjustment may be quite convulsive, taking down more than a few major institutions."

Jesse, The Collapse of Bretton Woods and the Pax Americana, 25 August 2008

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens.  And when you see the wind blowing from the south, you say, ‘It is going to be hot,’ and so it happens.  You hypocrites.  You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky.  Why then do you not understand the signs of the present time?"

Luke 12:54-56

"The regal power of her consuls, the authority of her senate, and the majesty of her people, were now trampled under foot; for those divine laws and hallowed customs, that had been the essence of her constitution–were set at nought, and her best friends were lying exposed in their blood.  

These were surely very dismal times to those who suffered; but I know not, why any one but a schoolboy, in his declamation, should whine over the commonwealth of Rome, which grew great only by the misery of the rest of mankind.  The Romans, like others, as soon as they grew rich, grew corrupt, and, in their corruption, sold the lives and freedoms of themselves, and of one another."

Samuel Johnson, Review of the Memoirs of the Court of Augustus, 1756

“If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it gathers to itself such explosive power that on the day it bursts it will blow up everything in its way." 

Émile François Zola, from Dreyfus: His Life and Letters, 1937


Oh all right, so you were correct in your analysis.  

But so many very important people were saying something else.

So what do I need to do next?

'Learn to serve, and to pray.' 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Precious Metals Come Roaring Back

 

Given the big moves in the precious metals today I am going to be just posting my charts, which I keep updated anyway.

The risks in the market for equities are significantly mispriced.

The correction we just saw was more of a symptom.  It does not qualify for the first step in any kind of a market break or a crash sequence.

It was a reaction to Donnie making retaliatory tariff threats against China, which he quickly walked back, as he is often wont to do.  

He tosses things off the top of his head quite often, in case you have not noticed.  

But consider this a taste of what will happen in the event of a financial or geopolitical shock of consequence. 

Daisy was driving me nuts during the storm. Thunder doesn't bother her but I think she is aquaphobic to the extreme.  I had to give her a bath as well.  What a calamity.  She's little but sneaky and wiry.

Have a pleasant evening.