Stocks and Precious Metals and Charts - Tokens and Instruments of Evil

 

"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech to The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, January 9, 1940

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, 10 December 1986

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it. Whether this very Apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we cannot know; but at any rate this Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death."

John Henry Newman, The Patristical Idea of Antichrist, 1838

"Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities. It does not shock us when they wield a gun. Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning? Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery."

Jesse, A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History, 15 December 2008

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Frederick Douglass, Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation, April 1886

"When we join together in serving our local community, we add strength to our national community, we help to fortify the structure of our whole Union. Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Radio Address from Washington, D.C., October 13, 1940.

There will be a minor stock option expiration on this coming Friday.

I did not listen to the news while I was in China for the past couple of weeks.  So I do not have much to offer at this time. 

The primary force that will be driving the markets is the macro conditions proceeding from the ongoing conflicts in Iran and the Ukraine.

The US and much of the West is lurching towards a generational economic crisis. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

There and Back Again

 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive."

Sir Walter Scott

We are back in the States, arriving late last night.

Here are the state of the charts today.

As you know US markets are closed for Columbus Day.

Options expiration (run of the mill) coming up on Friday.

Let's see what happens tomorrow. 

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.