Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Treacherous Servants of Mammon

 

“You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind. God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity.   But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason."

Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings, 1963

"All governments suffer a recurring problem: power attracts pathological personalities. It is not that power corrupts but that it is magnetic to the corruptible. Such people have a tendency to become drunk on violence, a condition to which they are quickly addicted."

Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse Dune, March 1985

"The oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power. But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, August 2010

"God and the devil are fighting there, and the battlefield is the heart of man."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, November 1880

""It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, lies, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."

Demosthenes, Philippics


Today looked like the powers that be took a look at the overnight futures, which were decidedly bloody, and decided that this was a good time to exert a 'calming effect' to stabilize the markets.

I mean, they do have an official organization that is well-funded to do just that.

So the Dollar was boosted and the metals were slammed on the New York open.

Stocks found a footing after a wildly fluctuating open, and finally managed to close off the lows with a modest gain from the Friday close.

VIX fell substantially from a sky high opening around 60.  Panic was in the air.

Bitcoin even managed to come back from the worst of its weekend shellacking, but still closed well shy of the 80 handle.

We have some inflation data coming out later this week.

I made some money today, but does that really matter all that much?  A good trader can make money in almost any market.  And if they are not after instant riches, they can make a living of it.

There are plenty of bull market geniuses and unprincipled cheats, but fairly few seasoned traders.  It's not an easy thing to do consistently, and requires self-awareness and discipline.  

And even then, it's not an easy thing.   Honestly in matters of money and power is a rarity.

In the short term activist rulers can exert quite a bit of power over prices.  And people.

“Economic insecurity and deprivation are key components of a hierarchical society.  If they are eliminated, and if literacy and education are widespread, the elites [née oligarchy or establishment] have to deal with a population that is not as easily mesmerized by power and not compelled by necessity to submit to subjugation and exploitation in exchange for material security.”

Aaron Good, American Exception: Empire and the Deep State, June 2022

All is well.   Until it isn't. 

As old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The People of the Lie

 

"Easy is the descent to hell; all night long, all day, the doors of dark Hades stand open; but to retrace the path; to come out again to the sweet air of Heaven - there is the task, there is the burden."

Virgil, The Aeneid

"Malignant narcissism goes beyond mere self-centeredness.  It goes beyond feeling special.  And it goes beyond feeling superior.  Malignant narcissists lack the capacity for empathy and shame.  They also know this makes them different from others.  But they deeply prize these critical differences.  And they hold those not like them in utter disdain.

Narcissism becomes particularly 'malignant' (i.e. malevolent, dangerous, harmful, incurable) when it goes beyond mere vanity and excessive self-focus. Malignant narcissists not only see themselves as superior to others but believe in their superiority to the degree that they view others as relatively worthless, expendable, and justifiably exploitable.

This type of narcissism is a defining characteristic of psychopathy/sociopathy and is rooted in an individual’s deficient capacity for empathy. It’s almost impossible for a person with such shallow feelings and such haughtiness to really care about others or to form a conscience with any of the qualities we typically associate with a humane attitude, which is why most researchers and thinkers on the topic of psychopathy think of psychopaths as individuals without a conscience altogether."

George Simon, Malignant Narcissism, December 27, 2013

“Evil then, for the moment, is the force, residing either inside or outside of human beings, that seeks to kill life or liveliness. And goodness is its opposite. Goodness is that which promotes life and liveliness.

A predominant characteristic of the behaviour of [malignant narcissists] is scapegoating. Because in their hearts they consider themselves above reproach, they must lash out at anyone who does reproach them. Since they must deny their own badness, they must perceive others as bad…They never think of themselves as evil; on the other hand, they consequently see much evil in others.”

M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, October 1983

“You are from your father, the devil, and you choose to carry out your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, and he does not abide by the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks in accord with his own nature, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:44

"What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'  To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or 'damned ghost' – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940


Stocks cratered today, going out on the lows.

The VIX rose to its highest level since the 'banking panic' of 2008. 

There is an old trader's saying: 'Bad Friday, blue Monday, Black Tuesday.'

In case you had never heard it.  There are a lot of bull market geniuses around who have never seen a real bear market, much less a 'crash' that wasn't from their funny papers.

Gold and silver were off, but did managed to find some footing and trade up from the lows.

Bitcoin gained ground.

The Non-Farm payrolls report came in hot, but no one really cared about it.

It was all tariffs all the time.

It took peoples' minds off the wars.

Need little, want less, love more.

For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Rising Lawlessness of Money and Power

 

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

William Roper:  So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!

Sir Thomas More:  Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

William Roper:  Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!

Sir Thomas More:  Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat?   This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's!  And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?   Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!

Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

Aaron Bushnell


The phoniness of that rally yesterday was a kind of a tipoff that the insiders were planning a smash and grab off the depth and breadth of the tariff announcements.

Stocks melted down.

The tariffs themselves and the method by which they were determined was surreal.  But you can go look into that for yourself. 

Gold and especially silver got slammed, even as the Dollar cratered.

The Wall Street insiders made a day of it. 

We don't need no rule of law, for theft, fraud, gross violations of basic rights including due process and freedom of speech, and in some cases murder.  

The problem with lawlessness is that you never know when it turns around and takes you with it.

The madness serves none but itself.

Money and might make right.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wolves in Sheep's Clothing - Payrolls Report on Friday

 

“Fascist politics invokes a pure mythic past tragically destroyed. Depending on how the nation is defined, the mythic past may be religiously pure, racially pure, culturally pure, or all of the above. The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way in which it dehumanizes segments of the population. By excluding these groups, it limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination

For the fascist, schools and universities are there to indoctrinate national or racial pride, conveying for example (where nationalism is racialized) the glorious achievements of the dominant race.”

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them

“Many of the propagandists of Autocracy, Inc., have learned from the mistakes of the twentieth century. They don't offer their fellow citizens a vision of utopia, and they don't inspire them to build a better world.  Instead, they teach people to be cynical and passive, because there is no better world to build.  

Their goal is to persuade people to mind their own business, stay out of politics, and never hope for a democratic alternative: Our state may be corrupt, but everyone else is corrupt too.  You may not like our leader, but the others are worse.  You may not like our society, but at least we are strong and the democratic world is weak, degenerate, divided, dying.  Sometimes the point isn’t to make people believe a lie; it’s to make people fear the liar.”

Anne Applebaum, Autocracy, Inc.

"At its very inception this movement depended on the deception and betrayal of one's fellow man; even at that time it was inwardly corrupt and could support itself only by constant lies. After all, Hitler states in an early edition of "his" book (a book written in the worst German I have ever read, in spite of the fact that it has been elevated to the position of the Bible in this nation of poets and thinkers): "It is unbelievable, to what extent one must betray a people in order to rule it."

If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

Aaron Bushnell


Stocks were in risk on mode today, rallying for much of the day, squeezing the shorts who had taken defensive positions ahead of Donald's pronouncements on tariffs.

I was shorting it with some increasing energy as the day wore on.  It was a joke.

The Dollar slid off the 104 handle.

VIX fell back a little.

Gold and silver rallied.

As a reminder there will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

I have made some major changes to the chart formations on the gold futures daily charts.  You can look at them for yourself as they are simple and straightforward.

"They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into hell."

Job 21:13

It is not too late to ask the Lord to show your sins to you, so that you might repent of them and come back into the light.  

Especially for those who have inadvertently fallen away.

But the skies darken, and the hour grows short.

Have a pleasant evening.