Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And on Earth, Peace to Men of Good Will

 

"The Lord did not come to make a display.  He came to heal and to teach suffering humanity.  For one who wanted to make a display the thing would have been to appear and dazzle the beholders.  But for Him Who came to heal and to teach, the way was not just to appear here, but to place Himself in the service of those who needed Him, and to be made known to them as they could accept it, not diminishing the value of His Divine presence by overwhelming their capacity to receive it.

He became as we are, so we might become what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word, 335 AD

"Now there were shepherds in that region, living in the fields, and keeping the night watch over their flock. The angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them.  And they were struck with great fear."

And the angel said to them, 'Do not be afraid.  For behold, I bring you good news of great joy for all people.  Today in the city of David there has been born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a babe, wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.'

And suddenly there appeared with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among men of good will.'

When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, 'Let us go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.'  So they left in haste, and found Mary and Joseph and the baby, who was lying in a manger.

After they had seen the Child, they spread the message that they had received about Him. and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them. And Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart."

Luke 2:10-19

"The glory of God is the human being, fully alive; and the humanity of a person is found reflected in the glory of God."

Irenaeus of Lyons

VIX, the measure of potential market volatility and thereby 'risk', has fallen to its lowest level of the year.

This is remarkable complacency, in a boiling morass of potential exogenous events including the expansion of existing wars to other fronts.

Fear of Missing Out, FOMO, is a powerful factor of the greed that extinguishes fear.

If the market went up today, despite all these problems, it can certainly go up tomorrow.

And so we go into Christmas.

The tech heavy NASDAQ 100, which has been the lead sled dog for this latest phase of the tech bubble, is failing to make a new high, in a sharp divergence from the SP 500. 

Gold and silver continued powering higher.

Their breakouts, from a long period of artificial price suppression, is uncoiling decades of mispricing.

The Dollar is hanging on the 97 handle.  A look at the long term DXY chart does not suggest that this is so far out of bounds as to be hard to rationalize.

The US is busily engaged in undermining the confidence of the world in the full faith and credit required to sustain a fiat currency, even one which has long enjoyed the status of the reserve currency of choice.

And the times, they are a-changin'.

A number of our growing extended family is coming over tomorrow.  And le Propriétaire will be the sole Maître d'hôtel, in the absence of his sous chef, the young man, who is rejoicing in the presence of his bride and her family in beautiful Hangzhou.

Daisy, I am sad to report, is of little utility in practical matters.  Like most small dogs, her major competency is a careless presumption based on 'cuteness'.   And here we thought this was only the qualification for corporate spokesmodels, and certain positions of government.

His simple creatures are often an instrument of His loving kindness towards us.  Yesterday evening, I was updating my financial plans, and feeling satisfied about the returns on my investment portfolio this year.

And little Daisy jumped up on my recliner and onto the blanket, pushed my computer aside, and threw her dinner up in my lap. She ate too much too quickly.

Surely a tender mercy from God, a caution against pride, in remembering my place in life. lol

So I made a donation to a charity that my goddaughter devotes much of time to, that will help  feed and shelter the poor in eastern Pennsylvania this winter.  And I filled the bird feeder, and put out something for the foxes and other critters that come around at night.  

Message received, Lord.  No need for any more reminders.

At this time of year old men remember lost loves and old friends.  I have a surprising number of those.  But I am even richer in new friends, many of whom I speak with often, but have never met!  Such are the times.   

These friends often give me, as I hope to give to them, the kind of comfortable encouragement and examples to remain standing against the tides and winds that blow at us through the long halls of history.

I won't name them all but they know, I should like to think, who they are.  Joe, Matt, Dave, Leigh, Jason, Peter, Sheila, Bruce, Lars,  Ducky, Andrew, Carlos, Tony, Bill, Victor, Henry, Philippe, Christopher, Doug, Steve, 'Elvis', John, Ronan, Doug, Vitaly, Prakash, and so many, many others.

And as things happen you often lose touch, and quietly drift away.  And sometimes when you try to regain contact, you find they are no longer with us.  And you may wonder when you will join them.

But the examples and memories remain, strengthening and encouraging one another to do their best..  And there is the opportunity to remember them fondly, in both your thoughts and your prayers.

May you and all your families have a joyous and peaceful Christmas day.

See you briefly on Friday.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - That City of Pride, Crime, Wickedness, and Lust for Power

 

"Our Lord has no body now but yours, no hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on this world, yours are the feet with which He walks to do good. Yours are the hands, with which He blesses all the world."

Teresa of Avila

“God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them. God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken. The celebration of Advent is possible only to those who are troubled in soul, who know themselves to be poor and imperfect, and who look forward to something greater to come."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

“Love endures everything, love is stronger than death, love fears nothing. Help me,  Lord, that my eyes may see all with mercy, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look deeper for what is good and beautiful in others' souls, and then come to their aid.  Let all my nothingness be drowned in the ocean of your mercy.”

Maria Faustyna Kowalska

"Lost friend, lost child, lost parent, sister, brother, husband, wife, we will not so discard you. You shall hold your cherished places in our Christmas hearts, and by our Christmas fires; and in the season of immortal hope, and on the birthday of immortal mercy, we will shut out nothing."

Charles Dickens, What Christmas Is As We Grow Older, Household Words, 1851

"And Peter understood that neither Nero, nor all his legions, could overcome the living truth — that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning. He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road to Rome. That city of pride, of crime, of wickedness, and of a lust for power, was beginning to be His city."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero

Where is Nero now, what remains?   A piece of dirt, perhaps, under the fingernail of a little child, to be wiped away by their loving mother. 

The Dollar attempted to rally, but slipped back off the 98 handle in the closing hour.

Gold and silver continued to rally higher, setting new closing highs.

This has been a remarkable year for the precious metals, as they finally broke free of the bounds of sustained price suppression by the Western governments and their banks, for a variety of self-serving reasons.

I tip my hat for all who stood the long watch, patient while being derided and discouraged by the mouthpieces of the financial establishment, waiting with hope even against sharp reversals and abuses.

We have been proven right.  Enjoy it.  

Remember that this is the time of year for giving and mercy.  Bear in mind the message of Matthew 25.

There are too many suffering needlessly from hunger, and hate, and oppression, and a campaign of hate and greed by the foolish and the damned, unrighteous before the nations gathered by the hand of God. 

This is the time of year when we remember our most wondrous victory,the greatest gift beyond all compare that we have been freely given, in the mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God.

So do not be discouraged by those who seems formidable to us now.  

They too will fall, and be forgotten.   Sooner than they might even imagine.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gold and Silver rally to New Highs

 

“Power does not corrupt. Fear corrupts, perhaps fear of a loss of power?”

John Steinbeick, The Short Reign of Pippin IV, 1957

"Most of those who consciously want war and accept it, and so help to create its 'inevitability,' want it in order to shift the locus of their problems."

C. Wright Mills, The Causes of World War III, 1960

"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

"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas, Canadian MP

“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion. Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree. Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you. Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it. Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism.”

John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it. People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it. Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status.

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 4, 2016

VIX is now in the very complacent range as noted in the chart below.

Santa Claus staged a little equity rally today.

The Dollar dumped.  

Gold and silver soared higher.

 Impressive performance for the year.  

Silver is a beta monster of volatility.

There will be a gold futures option expiration for the January contract tomorrow. 

We'll get some economic data tomorrow.  

But this should be a fairly quiet week, barring some exogenous event.

The markets will be closed for Christmas on Thursday.

The young man is in China with his bride.  

Daisy and I abide. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Only Love Creates

 

“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 most deadly poison of our times is indifference. Only love creates."

Maximilian Kolbe, Martyr for Love, Auschwitz, August 14, 1941

"Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.”

Theodore Roosevelt, The Progressive Platform, April 19, 1906

“Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.”

Edward Bernays, The New Propaganda,

"We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over. The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day. And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh."

John Henry Newman

"We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed."

2 Corinthians 4:8-9


We lost power and the internet this afternoon.   A somewhat vigorous line of thunderstorms ripped through the area.

Daisy and I curled up with a book by the fire.   It was certainly no hardship.  We are creatures of leisure.

Silver it must be observed, seems to have no problem putting physical foot to bullion banker behinds these days.

The young man is leaving for China next week, to spend the holidays with his bride who is a well-respected professor at a prestigious university.  Their quest for a spousal green card is failing to gain traction.  This may be for the best, all things considered.  Such are the times.  

But Christmas approaches and the extended family will all be here, with their growing horde of little ones.  They are growing in both size and energy.  Remarkable.

So just the charts for now.

Have a pleasant weekend

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - No Best Case Scenario

 

"The common refrain is that war is a breeding ground of unintended consequences.  It is greater than that.  War is a super-human force that will make an agent of those who foolishly and recklessly believe in their own agency.  That truth will be revealed again in the coming war in Venezuela.

The last two years, I have been affected by the intersection of the biblical Massacre of the Holy Innocents with the genocide in Gaza.  It is the story of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, their lives as refugees and as strangers in a foreign land, and the persecution of refugees and immigrants in our land today that possesses me this Christmas season."

Matthew Hoh, No Best Case Scenario, December 17, 2025

A third approach, the one dominant among economists and policy pundits, is based on the notion that the rulers of Egypt simply don’t know what is needed to make their country prosperous, and have followed incorrect policies and strategies in the past.  If these rulers would only get the right advice from the right advisers, the thinking goes, prosperity would follow.  To these academics and pundits, the fact that Egypt has been ruled by narrow elites feathering their nests at the expense of society seems irrelevant to understanding the country’s economic problems.

Egypt is poor precisely because it has been ruled by a narrow elite that have organized society for their own benefit at the expense of the vast mass of people.  Political power has been narrowly concentrated, and has been used to create great wealth for those who possess it. The losers have been the Egyptian people, as they only too well understand. Whether it is North Korea, Sierra Leone, or Zimbabwe, we’ll show that poor countries are poor for the same reason that Egypt is poor.

Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities.

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail, 2012

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right,"

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977

"Pride, and a love of self and of power, makes families homeless — and in its rage murders innocents, as it was then and it is now.  The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustained recovery."

Jesse, The Holy Innocents, 28 December 2018


We know what is the best case scenario.  We were given it, in some detail, over 2000 years ago.  But it involves the veneration of the light of the Holy Spirit among us — and goodness has its enemies.

Without meaningful reform, freedom will continue to diminish in the encroachment of fraudulent abuse, the financial system will falter with malinvestment, and the general prosperity of the nation will narrow, until it fails.

As a reminder tomorrow is the stock option expiration for December.

I suspect the big drama about Trump's speech last night, based on 'leaks' from supposedly informed government representatives, was pretty much a setup for a wash and rinse.

Stocks popped a bit and then faded into the close a bit.

The economic news on inflation this morning was positive.  Most people positively did not believe them because their discounting of inflated items was there to see.

Gold and silver popped up to new highs overnight, with silver topped $67 for the first time.

But as is customary, the wiseguys sold them in the London-NY trade.

They'll keep playing this scenario until there pools collapses of exhaustion.

VIX fell of course.

The Dollar chopped around in the mid 98 area.

What happened to German soldiers who refused to follow the order to murder innocent civilians and unarmed prisoners?   Sometimes the law prevailed. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Is Truth? The Consequence of Corruption

 

“What happened to Kennedy is what nearly happened to me. His story is the same as mine. It looks like a cowboy story, but it’s only an OAS story.  The security forces were in cahoots with the extremists.  All of them together will observe the law of silence.  They will close ranks.  They’ll do everything to stifle any scandal.  They don’t want to know.  They won’t allow themselves to find out.”

Charles de Gaulle, President of France, to Alain Peyrefitte, 1963

“What is unrecognized about JFK's presidency, which then makes his assas­sination a false mystery, is that he was locked in a struggle with his national security state.  That state had higher values than obedience to the orders of a president who wanted peace.  It’s unbelievable—or we’re supposed to think it is—that a president was murdered by our own government agencies because he was seeking a more stable peace than relying on nuclear weapons.  It’s unspeakable.  For the sake of a nation that must always be preparing for war, that story must not be told. If it were, we might learn that peace is possible without making war.

When we become more deeply human, as Merton understood the process, the wellspring of our compassion moves us to confront the Unspeakable.  There is nothing so threatening to systemic evil as those willing to stand against it regardless of the consequences."

James W. Douglass, JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters, 2008

"It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth - as opposed to only believe the truth - is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility."

E. Martin Schotz, History Will Not Absolve Us, 1996


There will be a stock option expiration for December on Friday.

President Trump has announced that he will be making an announcement to the nation this evening at 9 PM EST.

Speculation on what this will be about is all over the board, but much of it centers on the Administration's provocative confrontation with Venezuela.

It's difficult to forecast what will happen, because we are dealing with a group of people who live in an alternative reality of lies and purposeful imaginings designed to manipulate public opinion, and the outsized looting of the nation by wealthy, willful sociopaths.  

Whatever happens, let us not overlook or excuse the terrible responsibility that is being laid upon those who watch all this unfolding and ask, 'What is truth?', and then cynically turn away from it.  

May they never rest. 

Gold and silver are moving higher in a flight to safety, with silver showing a particularly powerful bullishness driven it seems by a short squeeze on physical supply.  

All the things we have been saying about this ongoing fraudulent manipulation of silver, and gold, seems to be harder to dismiss now.  Not that the usual suspects will not try.  Fraud discovered has no resort but audacity.

VIX ticked higher.

The Dollar is hanging on the 98 handle, helped by the peculiarly outdated composition of the DXY index. 

Remember, in this time of adverse weather and troubled conditions, to feed and care for the birds and animals of His creation, and the innocent souls among us, the little ones, the least of these. 

"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age.  His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words.  During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.'  The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?'  He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"

Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 4th century

And this includes caring for the state of your own soul, with faith and prayer and acts of kindness, because that is what this is all about.

Have a pleasant evening.