Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Injustice, Perjury, Treachery - Hi Yo, Silver!

 

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, 1925

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, 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, Orations Against Philip of Macedon, 4th century BC

"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

"There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing."

Andrew Jackson, Veto of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832

"Looking at the world as a whole, the drift for many decades has been not towards anarchy but towards the reimposition of slavery. We may be heading not for general breakdown but for an epoch as horribly stable as the slave empires of antiquity.  James Burnham's theory has been much discussed, but few people have yet considered its ideological implications— that is, the kind of world-view, the kind of beliefs, and the social structure that would probably prevail in a state which was at once unconquerable and in a permanent state of cold war with its neighbors."

George Orwell, You and the Atomic Bomb, October 19,1945


Gold and silver rallied with silver hitting a new all time closing high. 

Stocks extended their holiday week rally.

VIX is now fallen steadily back down to relative complacency.

Trump wants a permanently high stock market as he says, and Bessent and his cronies are only too eager to place.

This will end badly.  They do not care.

War crimes are fashionable again, in the cults of bully-worship and apartheid nationalism.

We learn nothing. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Remembering on Thanksgiving Day

 

"We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small, and yet really not so small, blessings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say, rejoice; show patience and consideration to all, for the Lord is always near. Let nothing make you anxious; but with prayer, and by supplication, and with thanksgiving, let your needs be made known unto God; and the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds, in Christ Jesus."

Philippians 4:4-7

"I invite my fellow-citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next as a Day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwells in the heavens.

And I recommend to them that they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners, or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty hand to heal the wounds of the nation, and to restore it, as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes, to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility, and union."

Abraham Lincoln, Proclamation of Thanksgiving, 3 October 1863

Thank you, Lord, from deep in my heart, for another year with my family and friends here and afar, those who remain with us, and those who wait to embrace us again.  

May we always be generous and forgiving with each other, worthy and unworthy, as you have been to us, in your loving kindness and tender mercy.

Happy Thanksgiving. 

Windsor Hotel, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1883

Plaza Hotel NYC 1899

Gettysburg Hotel, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania 1909

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - By Measures a Slow Descent Into Hell

 

"For God will bring to judgment every act and every word, including all we have done in secret, whether it be good or evil."

Ecclesiastes 12:14

"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

"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.  It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island, 1955

"They have ignored the abuses of my people.  'Peace, peace!' they say, where there is no peace.  They have acted shamefully, committing many atrocities.   And they are not ashamed, they do not even know how to blush.  Therefore they will be among the fallen; in their time of judgement they shall fall."

Jeremiah 6:14-15

"A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

Major General Smedley Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935

"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, 26 February 2024

"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 — that is the task, there is the burden."

Virgil, The Aeneid, 19 BC

Stocks were drifting higher on light volumes, in quiet pre-holiday trading.

It is most likely that the trading tomorrow will be light, with some tape-painting, and squaring of positions into the holiday weekend.  The market will be open for half a day on Friday, but the adults will all be on holiday.

So unless Bessent and His Merry Pranksters try to pump up the bubble even more it is unlike we will see anything significant.  The juniors will be operating a fairly simple template.

Gold and silver were hit a bit, and so was the Dollar, which slipped off the 100 handle.

VIX fell back to its 50 DMA.  It may fall a bit further before the correction resumes.

It seems likely that this latest Ukraine peace deal has not been 'written by Russia.'  That was a clever propaganda piece to put some pressure on their to accept it, as the US and Ukraine have already done.

The wheels are starting to slowly fall off the US economy.   It was already dodgy, and the Trump administration has been doing enormous damage to it with their erratic and eccentric decisions.

'America First' is just a slogan, as hollow as any such simplistic formulations designed to move the public as a mob.   It's money and power for the few first and foremost.

Well, this too shall pass.  No matter how inevitable, how powerful some human endeavor might seem at the moment, they are all failing by their own measures.

I probably won't write anything until next Monday, maybe something on Friday if I can restrain myself from braving the crowds for shopping on 'Black Friday.' 

Have a warm and safe holiday with friends and family.

And for the rest of the world, please carry on without us, and have a very pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Comex, and Other Archaic Remnants of Festering Decay

 

“The most ‘worldly’ society I have ever lived in is that of schoolboys: most worldly in the cruelty and arrogance of the strong, the toadyism and mutual treachery of the weak, and the unqualified snobbery of both.  

Nothing was so base that most members of the school proletariat would not do it, or suffer it, to win the favour of the school aristocracy: hardly any injustice too bad for the aristocracy to practice.  But the class system did not in the least depend on the amount of anyone’s pocket money.

I have already lived in a world from which Mammon was banished: it was the most wicked and miserable I have yet known.  If Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter.  But where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his place?  As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm.’

All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety.  But all men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being‘outsiders’: a passion insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story.  When the state of society is such that money is the passport to all these prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation.  But when the passport changes, the desires will remain.”

C.S. Lewis, A Reply to Professor Haldane, 1966

"Moloch: any cause to which a dreadful sacrifice is made or destruction is due."

The Chambers Dictionary, 1872


As a reminder, today was the most significant precious metals options expiration of the year on the Comex.

The good thing one might say about the casino known as the Comex is that it is not as unproductive to an industry as that archaic remnant called the LBMA.

Stocks rallied on the 'good news' that peace is at hand in the Ukraine.

Let us hope that this comes to pass.  It was achieved already, in the Minsk agreement for example where both parties were ready to sign, but the West's elite decided it was worth sacrificing a few million more young Ukrainians and Russia to Moloch. 

War is good for business.  And it doesn't take talent to make money from it.  Shamelessness will suffice.

Gold and silver bolted higher as the option expiration passed.  These jokers don't even try to hide it anymore. 

This Thursday is a national holiday of Thanksgiving in the US.  And so there will be nothing posted here after Tuesday.   Maybe something on the sleepy half day of Wednesday if something notable occurs.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Servants of Blood and Power

 

"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, US Ambassador to Germany, Speech in Berlin, October 5, 1933

"Now that I look back, I realize that a life predicated on being obedient and taking orders is a very comfortable life indeed. Living in such a way reduces to a minimum one's need to think. I may have made an error in judgement — but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up to leader of a people of almost 80 million. His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to him."

Adolph Eichmann, quoted by Hannah Arendt in Eichmann in Jerusalem, 1963

“Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1952

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil.”

Hannah Arendt, The Life of the Mind, 1977

“The last moments before damnation are not often so dramatic. Often the man knows with perfect clarity that some still possible action of his own will could yet save him. But he cannot make this knowledge real to himself. Some tiny habitual sensuality, some resentment, the indulgence of some fatal lethargy, seems to him at that moment more important than the choice between total joy and total destruction. 

With eyes wide open, seeing that the endless terror is just about to begin and yet, for the moment, unable to feel terrified, he watches passively, not moving a finger for his own rescue, while the last links with joy and reason are severed, and drowsily sees the trap close upon his soul.”

C.S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength, 1945


Do not be overly concerned about the coming of the beast.

The beast may yet come or not in time, but his servants are already here, aggressively doing his will in their lust for money and power. 

And they are offering prominent seats at a banquet of everlasting suffering and death. 

Stocks rebounded today, although they faded markedly into the close.

Antics for the stock option expiration.

Risks remain mispriced, and the underpinnings of the risk markets are ephemeral. 

Gold and silver were smacked around into the close. 

This is not the normal action of efficient markets.   

The markets reflect the current power elite of the US, which is unprincipled, unstable, and predatory.

So take this into account as you make your short term investment decisions.  Or better yet, don't make them, and take a longer term horizon.

The most important thing is that, when the time of reckoning comes, that you will not be found standing with them.

So let's see what the next, holiday-shortened week, will bring.

I remain defensive, since there are so many potential exogenous events looming on the horizon, and how capricious in their decisions that the powerful have become. 

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 - Tacitus & Company

 

"Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.”

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Book XI, Chapter 26, AD 166

“But all human efforts, all the lavish gifts of the emperor, and the propitiations of the gods, did not banish the sinister belief that the fire was on imperial order.   Consequently, to get rid of the rumor, Nero fastened the guilt and inflicted the most exquisite tortures on a class hated for their abominations, called Christians by the people.

Christus, from whom the name had its origin, suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilatus, and a most mischievous superstition, checked for the moment, broke out again not only in Judæa, the first source of the evil, but in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world find their centre and become popular.”

Tacitus, The Annals of Imperial Rome, Book XV, Chapter 44, AD 116

"The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power as well. Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Plunder, rape, and murder they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola, AD 98

"Julius Martialis was the officer of the day in the camp.  Terrified by the enormity of the sudden crime, ignorant of the extent to which the camp was disloyal, and fearing death if he opposed, he made the majority suspect him of complicity.  All the rest of the tribunes also and the centurions preferred present safety to a doubtful but honourable course.  And such was the attitude of their minds that the foulest of crimes was dared by a few, desired by more, and acquiesced in by all."

Tacitus, Histories: The Rise of Otho, Book I, Chapter 28

"You have people in power that just don't understand reality. They're delusional, whether it's their own arrogance, whether it's their vain glory, their simple-minded understanding of the world, their greed, whatever it is. They are continuing to pursue a ruinous policy that day by day gets much worse."

Matt Hoh, Judging Freedom, October 28, 2025

"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us."

Chalmers Johnson, Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic, 2006

Stock futures did a moonshot after hours last night, off the better than expected profit news from Nvidia.

Earlier in the day I cautioned on X that Nvidia's 'good news' was going to get seriously reconsidered after the announcement because of some accounting gimmicks.

I stepped in after the market close last night and shorted the Nvidia rocket hard across the board. Added more this morning and then took a nap. And here we are. 

Healthy markets do not move in bipolar swings like this. This is late stage bubble action. We are on the edge.

Stocks went out on lows into the close.

Silver gave up some ground in sympathy with stocks, and gold held steady.

VIX shot up higher.

The Dollar chopped around and closed exactly where it had been last night.

Bitcoin continues to get sold, and is on the kind of support I call the threshold of the House of Pain.

The cascade effect, whether it be margin calls or rules based selling, is the poisoned chalice of bubble tops.

Tomorrow's market action on the stock market option expiration is important.  And we need to see how the markets go into the weekend, and the character of their action on Monday. 

The classic sequence to watch for is Bad Friday, Blue Monday, and then a Black Tuesday. 

But all crashes are always long odds, and multi-week events. 

Greed kills, and FOMO kills absolutely. 

Have a pleasant evening.