Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stand and Bear Witness to the End - Tinderbox

 

“As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer (I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End 1933-1945) noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. 

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. The fascist style depends upon 'endless repetition,' designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. 

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction.  Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason.  Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. 

The final mode is misplaced faith.  It involves the sort of self-deifying claims.  When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience.  What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent.  Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.  At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that 'understanding is useless, you have to have faith.' 

If people feel lost and alone and broken and hopeless today, what will it be like if the world begins to come apart at the hinges?  Jesus was a man for simple people.  He didn't make his messages incredibly complex.  If you were a person that had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, then his message was easily understood. 

Many who claim today with their mouths that they follow Jesus will abandon him then with their lives.” 

Brandon Andress, And Then the End Will Come

 

'What is truth?'  Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing.  Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.  It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. 

Remember professional ethics.  When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.  It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges.  Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor. 

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.  You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.” 

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017

Stocks made another attempt to rally today.

And again the rally failed, and stocks went out near the lows.

This market is a tinderbox, waiting for a trigger event, and that of a diminishing magnitude, which at the end might even seem inconsequential. 

I am still sitting in cash, taking it easy. 

Gold and silver were lower.

They are having a very difficult time breaking out from here.

With the Golden Week holiday over in China I expect the movement of physical may pick up again there in the East.

The Dollar was higher.

The VIX gained back some of last week's decline.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - This Attractive But Deceitful World - Dr Evil Followed Up By Mini-Me

 

"The wealthiest 1 percent of Americans are the nation’s most egregious tax evaders, failing to pay as much as $163 billion in owed taxes per year, according to a new Treasury Department report released on Wednesday.

The analysis comes as the Biden administration is pushing lawmakers to embrace its ambitious proposal to invest in beefing up the Internal Revenue Service to narrow the 'tax gap,' which it estimates amounts to $7 trillion in unpaid taxes over a decade. 

The White House has proposed investing $80 billion in the tax collection agency over the next 10 years to hire more enforcement staff, overhaul its technology and usher in new information-reporting requirements that would give the government greater insight into tax evasion schemes.  The proposals have been met with deep skepticism from Republicans and business lobbyists." 

DNYUZ, The top 1 percent are evading $163 billion a year in taxes

 

"Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.  Moral values are in flux.  The muddy depths are being stirred by new monsters and witches from the deep.  Trolls walk the American night.  Caesars are stirring in the Forum.

To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil. "

Gore Vidal,  Comment, Esquire, July 1961

 

"But there is a sort of 'Ok guys, you're mad, but how are you going to stop me' mentality at the top." 

Robert Johnson, Audacious Oligarchy

 

Gold and silver were hit again today down to trend resistance, but managed to bounce back a bit into the close.

Not a Dr Evil class market swindle as we saw a week or so ago, but maybe a 'mini-me.'

Stocks were lower, even the storied big cap tech stocks.

The Dollar moved a little higher.

Again this looks like a very technical trade.

But we are entering what has proven historically to be a volatile season for stock bubbles.

Let's see what the rest of the week brings.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Slouching Towards Jackson Hole

 

“They (economists) must set aside their contempt for other disciplines and their absurd claim to greater scientific legitimacy, despite the fact that they know almost nothing about anything.” 

Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century 

 

“An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today.” 

Laurence J. Peter

 

“Some student asked if he [Larry Summers] didn’t have essentially the same relationship with Bob Rubin. Wasn’t Summer’s opposition to capital controls just a sop to Wall Street banks, which wanted to recoup their risky investments regardless of how doing so affected the country in which they had invested?

'Summers just lost it,' said one audience member, a business school student. “He looked at the person and said, 'you don’t know what you’re talking about and how dare you ask this question of the president of Harvard?'” 

Richard Bradley 

 

"When the economy was very obviously building towards the financial crisis of 2008, how many economists were ignoring the bubble conditions, preferring to keep their noses in their statistics, a willful condition that I call data blindness. 

It is not safe to see too much, and even less safe for the career minded to speak out against the actions of powerful insiders who control the benefactions of position, and the perks of the privileged class.  It is much more judicious to hide one's nose in a selective book of statistics, ignoring the reality, and relying instead on being data blind or ideologically blind to what is really happening. 

It is easier to say 'I didn't know of this injustice' and afterwards, 'who could see such a thing approaching?'

And then let it happen all over again."

Jesse 21 August 2014

 

And so here we are.

Stocks managed to move higher, with the SP 500 reaching another new all time high.

The tech heavy NDX and the broader Russell 2000 continue to lag.

Gold and silver continued to rebound sharply from the painfully obvious price manipulation of last week. 

The Dollar dropped quite a bit, back down to the mid 92 area.

The equity market is on shaky underpinnings.

Something is going to knock it over, probably by about 10%, or more, most likely  in September, maybe October.

In the end it could be something even relatively trivial in retrospect, as trigger events go. 

A stiff market decline is no sure thing, if never is.  

But if current behavior holds, the probabilities will increasingly favor such an outcome.

The Fed symposium at Jackson Hole starts on August 26^th.

Chairman Powell speaks on the morning of the 27^th.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Worst Day For Stocks Since 2011 - What We Need Is Even More of the Same

"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


"Monetary and regulatory policy encourage asset bubbles to proliferate. Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.  The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.   The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed."

Jesse 5 August 2019, The Men Who Sold the World


"This is going to end badly.  Big changes are coming.  What has been hidden will be revealed. Rough seas ahead, mateys."

Jesse, 22 January 2020, I See It Coming


"It is precisely this — high-powered computers and the swagger of those who operate them — that is causing worries over high-frequency trading’s increasing sway. 'The markets used to be about capital formation,' said Mr. Quast, the consultant. 'Now 80 percent of trading is driven by some form of statistical arbitrage. We are buying into a statistical house of cards that could unravel very quickly.'”

Landon Thomas, Inquiry Stokes Concern over Trading Firms that Shape Markets, 3 September 2009


“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

Stocks were utterly hammered today, with the stock futures going out on the lows, and continuing to fall in selling after the bell.

Let's see, are we going to blame Bernie or the Deep State or CNN today?

Or maybe just the Fed.

The Fed certainly is culpable to a degree, again, because they went all in for not-QE in the 4th quarter, bending to pressure from the White House and the Banks, mostly the Banks.

And after the last crash the Fed held up their hand and kept volunteering for more and more regulatory responsibility.

They and their cronies and paymasters put the cherry on the top of this bubble.  Until it was just a matter of what trigger event was going to set it off.

Despite the spin and narratives, the financial system, like the rest of the economy, was interconnected, over-extended, poorly regulated, and fragile.

And the coronavirus is a big cherry on top, despite the self-serving happy talk being put out about it by the usual suspects in politics and the media.

And who could have seen it coming?

Not you, if you get your news from conmen and spokesmodels for the oligarchy.

We are very oversold here for the short term.  And a bounce, like the ones that they attempted to provoke the last couple of mornings, is possible.  And it might finally stick for a day.

Let's see if the Fed and Treasury step in and tries to save this bubble.  I am sure Trumpolini has Mnuchin and Kudlow on the job.

The longer term damage to the nation is going to tax the future for the working public.

The Dollar finished lower.  Silver was off a bit.

Gold was off $3 per ounce today.  Gold, unleveraged is a safe haven.

Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial.

What is it going to take?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sooner or Later a Crash Is Coming— and It May Be Terrific

"It looks like we might have another blow off top in the works.   The tech sector was rampaging higher today.  When in doubt break glass and recycle the last bubble.  Let's see how much more these jokers can squeeze out of this."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 21 March 2019


"My cyclical calculations and trend forecasts suggest that July 2020 may be a decisive, if not pivotal, period in our time. I think I may have mentioned this once or twice before."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 26 February 2019


"It's probably early days, but now might be the time to start taking precautions against a 2008 class event in the financial markets.   I would suggest it might arrive anytime between now and July 2020.  These sorts of things depend on the magnitude of any 'trigger event,' which is why it is so difficult to forecast with regard to specific dates.  As time goes on the required force for a market moving event decreases until it takes very little to set that ball in motion."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 24 July 2018


"Sooner or later a crash is coming.
And it may be terrific."

Roger Babson, Sept. 15, 1929

The antics in support of the Levi-Strauss IPO in the market yesterday were just begging to be shorted into the close.  And I did.  And cashed in today.  I do not trade short term in size much anymore, but sometimes they do almost ring a bell, and it is hard for an old hound dog to just keep laying on the porch.

The US Treasury Yield Curve inverted today for the first time since 2007.  The talking heads were stumbling and mumbling about it.   They just cannot imagine what is coming.

Timing a big event like this is brutal, since there are so many exogenous variables.  And forecasting a notoriously low probability event is rather difficult, even when the probability becomes relatively more probable.

We may move even higher in this markets asset bubble.  Heck, we could even see a real monetary driven asset inflation before this is over, even if there is virtually no organic inflation because of the skewed and corruption financial system.  

But with respect to timing I still like my longer running forecast, suggesting we will see a genuinely significant downside event in the markets, and perhaps in the socio-political system, by July 2020.  although now that seems like an 'outside' date for it.

If December 2018 was really a market 'break' in the manner of March 1929 then we may not even make it to October of this year.

Gold showed the kind of resilience today that one would look for in a safe haven asset.  It moved higher with the Dollar  But keep in mind that in a liquidation event even gold is likely to take a hit. Likely, but it will recover more quickly than most other assets.  Silver will tag along, weighed down by its industrial component.

It appears as though Theresa May has obtained a Brexit reprieve of sorts from the EU. Let's see if we can reset our counter as the situation clarifies.

Let us remember the poor people along the Missouri River who are being flooded out, thanks to the aging and inadequate levees which have crumbled.  We all know why we can't have nice things like the rest of the developed world.   After all, sacrifices must be made.

I am pleased to let you know that another Englishman will be recognized as a saint.   John Henry Newman has been named for canonization, although the exact date for this has not yet been given.   I have been praying and quietly supporting the cause for this since 1983.   And now it seems as though it is finally here.

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

Have a pleasant weekend.