Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Woman, the Child, and the Dragon

 

"Then the temple of God, which is heaven, was opened, and the ark of his covenant was seen.  There were flashes of lightning, a loud rumbling of voices, peals of thunder, an earthquake, and violent hailstorms.

And a great sign appeared in the heavens. There was a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon beneath her feet, and on her head was a crown of twelve stars."

Revelation 11:19-12:1

"From the perspective of Jewish ethics, there are few (if any) graver crimes than violating the dignity of another human being. 'In hurting another person I am not just running afoul of the will of God — though I am also surely doing that. At some level, I am also assaulting God, who, Jewish theology insists, is profoundly invested in the dignity of God’s creatures.' Conversely, as R. Abraham Paley teaches, 'being careful with and attentive to the honor of your fellow is the acceptance of the yoke of the kingdom of heaven.'

The Torah wants us to know that Moses is not just offended by injustices perpetrated against his own people. Moses also defends foreigners and strangers, and 'his passion for justice makes no distinctions between nations.'

We are charged never to go along to get along; in the face of injustice, we are challenged by God to speak up.

Most fundamentally, let us call all Americans to repentance for our failure to internalize the simple truth that none of us is more human than any other, and none of us is less so. Then, and only then, will we really be worthy of being considered genuine leaders (and people) of faith. If you want to love God, love those whom God loves. Love the fatherless, the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.

Tanakh (The Hebrew Bible) is in part the story of God’s struggle to subdue the forces of chaos. When all is said and done, religion is, in large part, about softening our hearts49 and learning to care, about cultivating generosity and an eagerness to share one’s bounty."

Rabbi Shai Held, The Heart of Torah,

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all. Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"It was pride that changed angels into devils; and it is humility that makes men angels. There never has been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.”

Augustine of Hippo

"My own Mary received the anointing of the sick earlier this evening. I hope to have some charts for you tomorrow.

May the Mother of God, Θεοτόκος, always hold you, and protect you, and keep you close to her sacred heart."

Jesse, Assumption, 15 August 2017

"And Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart."

Luke 2:19


I was rolling along into the close. And I was searching my blog for an appropriate quote and perhaps a picture for tonight, given that this is the Solemnity of the Assumption of Mary into heaven. 

And I came across the blog entry from 15 August 2017 above, and it just slapped me back on my heels.

We are so restlessly foolish and distracted by the passing things of the world. 

Let us please stop hating, and harming, and abusing our brothers and sisters, if only because He has commanded it, and we are His in the covenant and the redemption of our sins.

We know what is important.   We know what we are to do. 

So let's gather ourselves together in the light of the Spirit, and do it. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Most Deadly Poison of Our Time Is Indifference

 

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, 1947

"Any nation is bound to perish if deprived of bravery, if it pretends that everything is good when it is not, and if it is satisfied with half-truths.  Every day we must be aware that when we are demanding truth from others we must live in truth ourselves, demanding justice we must be just, demanding bravery we must be brave."

Jerzy Popiełuszko, Martyred, Poland, 19 October 1984

“We became aware someone among us in this spiritual dark night of the soul was raising the standard of love on high.  Someone unknown, like everyone else, tortured and bereft of name and social standing, went to a horrible death for the sake of someone not even related to him.  Therefore it is not true, we cried, that humanity is cast down and trampled in the mud, overcome by oppressors, and overwhelmed by hopelessness.

Thousands of prisoners were convinced the true world continued to exist and that our torturers would not be able to destroy it.  To say that Father Kolbe died for one of us or for that person’s family is too great a simplification.  His death was the salvation of thousands.  That’s how we felt about it.  That was a shock full of optimism, regenerating and giving strength; we were stunned by his act, which became a mighty explosion of light in the dark camp.”

Jerzy Bielecki, fellow prisoner at Auschwitz, A Man for Others, 1982

"It is very easy to get drunk with hate.  Hate is like the glass of whisky which is given to the soldiers before a bayonet charge.  Whisky stimulates but does not nourish.  Hate is not creative, only love is creative.  These sufferings will not cause us to crumble but will help us, more and more, to become stronger.  They are necessary — together with the sacrifices of others — so that the ones who come after us may be happy.

The most deadly poison of our times is indifference. The Cross is the school of love. 

No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.

And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe, Martyr for Love 

"Kolbe looked directly and intently into the eyes of those entering the cell.  Those eyes of his were always strangely penetrating.  The SS men couldn’t stand his glance, and used to yell at him, Schau auf die erde, nicht auf uns!  Kolbe was a psychic trauma, a shock for the SS men who had to bear his look, a look that hungered not for bread, but to liberate them from evil."

Bruno Borgowiec, fellow prisoner at Auschwitz


Given the choice between choosing the truth over error, and admitting they were wrong, or doing nothing, most people will do nothing at most, and often become even more vehement and stubborn in their error.

People need the law, guidelines and reminders against straying away from righteousness, or they will just degenerate into a miserable morass of selfishness and disorder and misery.

Stocks wobbled around today, off a much hotter than expected PPI number.

The reversion to the mean is going to be one rough ride. There is a lot of corruption and deception that needs to be discounted and cleansed from the system.

Gold and silver had tough days.   There must be a stock option expiration tomorrow.

I unloaded my short term positions on that last spike, the intermediate measuring objective having been met.  And just started nibbling back positions in the miners this afternoon.

Slowly.  And with strong hedges against a stock plunge,which we may very well see anytime between now and the end of October.

But no matter how difficult the day to day of things may be, we have the light of the saints, of the strong unshakable faith and witness to the truth of people like Maximilian Kolbe. 

And this, these gifts of the Spirit, are what gives us the means to remain standing. 

They say that you are what you eat.   

And you become morally bent and shaped to what you treasure, and by what you read, see, and hear, and say to others. 

If you want things to change, first start by changing yourself.

And if you can, ask God to help you see the truth, to see yourself as you are, to see all your sins.

It may not be easy, but it's better to do it now while you can.  Sooner rather than later. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Temptation of Power and High Places

 

"Hell for all eternity, for so little in exchange.  The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not? The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.  If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2008

"The dangers of fascist politics come from the particular way it dehumanizes segments of the population.  It limits the capacity for empathy among citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, September 2018

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Bully-worship has become a universal religion."

George Orwell, Review of Bertrand Russell's Power, 1939

"What is the good of saying you are on His side, when you see the whole natural universe melting away like a dream.  For it will be God without disguise; so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.  It will be too late then to choose your side.  It will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."

C. S. Lewis, The Case for Christianity, 1944

"And because of the increase in lawlessness, the love of most will grow cold.  But those who stand firm to the end, will be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations. And then the end will come."

Matthew 24:12 -14

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate."

Matthew 23:37-38

Stocks were a bit wobbly today, digesting their recent parabolic gains.

VIX continues to drop into relative complacency.

The Dollar has slipped off the 98 handle.

Silver staged an impressive rally today, gaining back all of its recent losses.

Gold remains political, as it is a genuine currency held by the world's central banks, whose role is evolving.

The hegemon views it unfavorably, because it is beyond its obsessive control.

But the world is now multi-polar, and the times they are a-changin'.

Donnie is meeting with Putin this week.   

I think Putin has a very clear and oft stated set of conditions and objectives.

Donnie is transactional, and wants to come away with a big headline, either with a cash number associated with it, or a peace deal to further his Nobel aspirations.

I don't think he can forge a true peace deal.  Europe and the Ukraine are sticking points in this.

So let's make a deal.  

Anything for a headline that distracts from the ongoing Epstein scandal.

It's most likely worse than you think. 

And the credibility trap demands it is not likely to see the light of day.

But for the cultists, real things don't really doesn't matter.

Each cult forges its own rules.   

For some, murder is not murder, even on a grand and open scale.

And for the cult that enables the grifters, everything is doubt and deflection. 

There is a great temptation to abuse power for those in high places.

These days it is au courant for the superior class to give in, as a validation of their exceptional privilege.  

All the finest people are doing it. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Freedom: To Remain Standing

 

"In post-war Germany, the White Rose was and is revered.  Sophie’s story looms especially large in the history of Ulm, my hometown.  She personifies the importance of acting according to one’s beliefs and of following your conscience, even in the face of great sacrifice.  Her story reminds us to not be silent, and fight for what Sophie wrote on the back of her indictment a day before she was killed: Freiheit — Freedom." 

Tanja B. Spitzer, Sophie Scholl and the White Rose, February 22, 2020

"At just this moment, I learn for the first time of the martyrdom of the Scholls.  I never saw these two young people.  In my rural isolation, I got only bits and pieces of the whole story of what they were doing, but the significance of what I heard was such I could hardly believe it.

The Scholls are the first in Germany to have had the courage to witness for the truth. The movement they left at their deaths will go on, and as is always the case with martyrdom, they have sown seeds which will raise important fruit in time to come.  This young brother and sister went boldly about their work, almost as though they were defying death.  Their betrayal came through a miserable university proctor, who was then so afraid of being beaten or otherwise punished, that he had to be taken into protective custody.

They died in all the radiance of their courage and readiness for sacrifice, and thereby attained the pinnacle in lives well lived.

Their bearing before the tribunal — that of the girl, especially — was inspiring. They flung their contempt of the court, the Party, and the insane, would-be great man, Hitler, into the faces of their judges, and at the end, did something which carries the icy breath of the Eternal about it for us who survive.  

For, with their last words, they repeated the warning once given by the condemned Knights of the Temple to their judges, that those who were persecuting them and those who stood behind them would ‘within a year be called to judgement before the throne of God.’  

But the Scholls departed from this life quietly, and gravely and with wonderful dignity gave their young blood.  On their gravestones let these words be carved, and let this entire people, which has lived in deepest degradation these last ten years, blush when it reads them: Cogi non potest quisquis mori scit — 'He who knows how to die can never be enslaved.'

We will all of us, someday, have to make a pilgrimage to their graves, and stand before them, ashamed. Germany has been sinking deeper and deeper into unreality ever since It is now completely drugged on its own lies. The cure will be more awful than anything ever seen before in history. This people is insane. It will pay dearly for its insanity. The air of this summer is full of foreboding, and fire and iron must heal what no physician can any longer cure."

Friedrich Percival Reck-Malleczewen, Diary of a Man in Despair, 1947 

"The world would undoubtedly be a better place if Sophie Scholl were a household name.  We would have an image of how life can be affirmed by someone who didn’t have to be a victim at all, but chose to be one because others were."

Clive James, Cultural Amnesia, 2007

"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. This is what the ruling class has decided is normal."

Aaron Bushnell, Last words, 26 February 2024

Stocks were rallying hard up to new highs today, on a largely in-line inflation number.

Except for core inflation which came in a bit hot.

This is a bubble.  It has all the hallmarks.

Do not try to get in front of it.  But be mindful when the rest around you go mad.

Gold and silver bounced a little bit, even as the Dollar fell back on the prospect of interest rate cuts in September.

Donnie is going to meet with Putin in Alaska.  He does not have a particularly strong hand to play.

If Trump had been president during the Cuban missile crisis we would be all dead.  

But Putin is a seasoned diplomat and politician.  So we have some nope.

The internal, moral rot and apathy in the US is of much more concern.

We stand silent and complicit in the face of a genocide that matches the viciousness of the worst of the last century.

We stand silent, and therefore complicit, as the structure of our Constitution is slowly being dismantled, clause by clause, amendment by amendment.

We stand silent, as our Congress disgraces itself a bit more every day in the service to greed and power.

What can one say in the face of such complicity with evil? 

Where are we going Lord? 

"Whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.  Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: the struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

Be mindful of your soul.  For that is what this struggle is all about, whether you realize it or not. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Staggering Price of Deceit

 

"With the tools of democracy, democracy was murdered and lawlessness made ‘legal.’  Raw power ruled, and its only real goal was to destroy all other powers besides itself.”

Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer, April 2010

"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, 1985

"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole.  If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."

London Banker, Lies, Damn Lies, and Libor , 2012

"What is most offensive is not their lying — one can always forgive lying — lying can be a delightful thing, for it leads to truth.  What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment , 1866

"You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires.  He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him.  When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."

John 8:43-44

Stocks did one of their signature 'pop and flop' moves today.

Gold and silver were hammered.

There is a stock option expiration coming up at the end of the week, after all.

VIX is just wallowing.

The Dollar chopped around and finished nominally unchanged from Friday.

Economic data and a US-Russia meeting in Alaska may provide some meaningful market news.

Have a pleasant evening.