Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Storm Warnings - Iran Cancels Peace Talks

 

"Federal regulators are proposing changes to bank capital requirements, potentially reducing them for many U.S. institutions by altering risk-weighted asset calculations and G-SIB surcharges. While proponents argue this simplifies regulations and frees up capital for lending, rating agency Moody's warns of potential risks.

Moody's emphasizes that lower capital requirements could lead banks to increase shareholder payouts, take on more risk, or operate with thinner capital cushions, rather than genuinely strengthening their balance sheets. The agency highlights that revised calculations might make capital ratios *appear* stronger without actually improving a bank's loss-absorbing capacity."

Mayra Valladares, Moody’s Is Warning Investors, 15 June 2026

"Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wants to rewrite the post-financial crisis rulebook for the nation’s banks. And he’s using government regulators themselves to loosen many of the rules they put in place. Bessent is increasingly steering independent agencies to relax oversight of lenders, usher digital assets into the banking system, and reduce costs for megabanks that trade in U.S. government debt. In doing so, he is redefining the relationship between the administration and federal agencies, which have long enjoyed significant autonomy in supervising banks."

Allen Reiter and Victoria Guida, Scott Bessent has a plan to free the nation’s banks, 24 January 2026

"You know what banking system Scott Bessent wants? The one we had right up until 1933...The alternative is to say we need better regulation over the private credit market."

Elizabeth Warren, CNBC Interview, 18 June 2026

"This worsening macroeconomic environment supports Fitch's shift of the North American Sovereigns outlook from neutral to deteriorating.  The U.S. general government deficit is now forecast to expand to 7.9% of GDP in 2026, compared to 7.1% in 2025, driven by the fiscal consequences of tax cuts in the U.S. tax and spending legislation and lower tariff revenues...  General government debt is predicted to surpass 120% of GDP by 2027."

IndexBox Market Intelligence, U.S. Credit Outlooks Deteriorate, 18 June 2026

"Iran warns of cancelling all upcoming negotiations, re-imposing the full Hormuz blockade and responding with missiles over the direct violation of the US-Iran MOU's first clause, with Israel continuing military aggressions in southern Lebanon, including last night, despite explicit commitment from the first clause to end the war and guarantee Lebanese sovereignty, per Tasnim.

Iran explicitly rejects any 'theater from Trump' about Netanyahu being rogue, and now Friday's Geneva meeting to launch the first round of 30-day technical talks between Vance and Ghalibaf is on hold over the violation, as no trip has been confirmed or scheduled just 24 hours after the MOU was electronically signed."

Breaking news after the bell:  Iran has suspended its entire 60-day negotiation period with the US over the direct violation of the MOU's first clause, with Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon constituting a breach less than 24 hours after the MOU was electronically signed, per Fars and Al-Mayadeen.  Iran's negotiating delegation had already been preparing to depart for Switzerland to launch the first round of talks before Iran made the decision to suspend the entire trip.

Iran will also not unilaterally fulfill its commitments, and until Iran is fully assured Israeli attacks on Lebanon have stopped and the US has practically adhered to the first-clause obligations, talks remain cancelled."

The Hormuz Letter, X, 18 June 2026

 

Let's hope that cooler heads seeking an end to this war will prevail.   This cancellation of talks was predictable based on all the previous 'ceasefires.'  And so what will Trump do now.

The US risk markets are engaged in a stunning mispricing of risks. 

I do not believe this is some accident, or act of God, or excess of animal spirits, which are the usual explanations for the busts and bubbles that have brazenly characterized the US financial market since at least 2000.

This is willful looting.  And it has shown its face in almost every aspect of the activities of the moneyed interests and their courtiers and enablers.

And there will be a banquet of consequences, covered with more lies, scapegoating, and misdirection aimed at punishing the innocent.

Gold and silver were smacked lower as the Dollar gained a little more and is touching the top of its trading range.   

I think this is more 'technical trading' post-FOMC and ahead of the triple with option expiration in equities tomorrow.   Target gold and silver miners.

VIX has fallen back into complacency.

I have been watching the SpaceX IPO, its introduction, ascent, and falling back.

The official and financial corruption in the US has become a pandemic of malfeasance and mismanagement that I do not think many here would have seen in their lifetimes. 

It will take the people a long time for correct this, because the 'establishment' is caught in a credibility trap in which they can admit no wrongs in order to correct them, because of their deep and ongoing complicity.

It will be hard, but with God all things are possible.  And even the mighty and the powerful have fallen, while the word and the spirit endure.

My recovery proceeds.  The greatest obstacle is my own sense of recovery overreaching my required convalescence.  

The young man has as steadfast and responsible and kind a man as any.   His personal sense of integrity and duty is remarkable. The Queen raised and formed him well. 

This is God's loving kindness and tender mercies.  

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All's Well That Ends Well

 

"Our wagon is prepared, and time revives us.
All’s well that ends well. Still the fine’s the crown.
Whatever the course, the end is the renown."

Wm. Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well Act 4

No comments, just charts.

It was an FOMC day. 

The usual shenanigans in the precious metals.

Other than that, I did not pay much attention. 

A triple witch stock option expiration on Friday. 

See you tomorrow, painkillers and ice packs in hand.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - It's Such a Splendid, Sunny Day

 

"Edge, Jeffrey Epstein's favourite intellectual salon — was sold to me as a gathering of the world's finest minds. The files reveal it was something far darker: a decades-long project that cloaked eugenics, race science and sexual misconduct in Ivy League respectability.

Whatever Edge was supposed to be, it became something sinister. The salon played yenta to billionaire money and alpha-male minds, and together, over decades, they all converged on a master philosophy: they were apex predators ordained by nature to exploit and subjugate others. This creed allowed the Edge set to steer intellectual history into its current fascist dead-end.  Billionaires really like thinkers who see their exploitation of the weak as a good and natural thing.

With the Epstein files, we’re confronted with exactly what all the Edge men did with the intellectual territory they seized.  With their Ivy League posts, their billions, and their blue-ribbon DNA, the would-be intellectuals in Epstein’s circle converged on nothing less than the ideology of Mein Kampf."

Virginia Heffernan, The Billionaire's Eugenics Project, 13 February 2026

"The children of elites will not succeed because they are born with a silver spoon in their mouth, and an automatic ticket to the Ivy League.  They will succeed because they have inherited the talent, energy, drive, and resilience to overcome the many obstacles they will face in life.  Life is still a struggle for all who hope to have economic and social success.  It is just that we can predict who will be likely to possess the necessary characteristics from their ancestry."

Greg Clark, The Economist, 13 Feb. 2013

"To admit that the Reich was a lie and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools and Hitler an incompetent creature, would be to admit that they had become an accomplice to an unimaginable evil.  To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance. And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride.  Pride is the mother of all sin.  This is the slow descent into hell.  This is the unwillingness to let go of the lie, for the sake of pride and its power, and cling to evil as it draws them into the abyss."

Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018

"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."

T. S. Eliot, The Hollow Men, 1925

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace.  But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom.  The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3 

 

So we toddle on to the first FOMC decision under the new Chair Kevin Warsh tomorrow, and a triple witch option expiration on Friday. 

And of course, the signing of the big, beautiful Memorandum of Understanding between the US and Iran, which has yet to be publicly disclosed, later this week.

I hope it holds and that the interested parties will honor it.  But I have to confess that my outlook is cloudy with a chance of false flags and spoilers.

Stocks popped and flopped, with the NDX futures hitting what may prove to be a significant high, barring hyperinflation.

Gold and silver continued to bounce off the recent lows from last week.  Let's see how they make it through the FOMC and the triple witch.

I am in gold and silver for the longer term.  Nothing has changed since I first made this calculation around 2001.  

The dominant parties in the financial wars are evolving, and so the currency wars are ongoing.  It seems a lot easier to forecast now in retrospect, than back then, when the wall of worry in precious metals looked more like climbing the Eiger than a walk through Muir Woods.

It's funny how you remember things.    I recall a bright sunny spring day with the Queen in Grindelwald I think, many years ago in the late 1980s.  We were on our way by car with some friends to visit a restaurant called Piz Gloria on top of the Schilthorn.  You may recall having seen it in one of the James Bond films, On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

We were standing and watching the towering Jungfrau and the Eiger, when a terrific avalanche came crashing down the mountain.  We could hear its roar after a long delay.  

The Alps were majestic, and she was so beautiful. 

It is so easy, so convenient to forget who you are, and what it means to be human.  And to allow your love to grow cold.

"It is such a splendid, sunny day, and I have to go."  Sophie Scholl, Munich, February 22, 1943.

See you on Thursday.  There is a great deal of work to be done.

Have a pleasant evening.   

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Darkest Hour

 

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious.  But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly.  But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself."

Taylor Caldwell, A Pillar of Iron, 1965

"If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle with the unforeseen, two qualities are indispensable: first, an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth; and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead.”

Carl Von Clausewitz, On War, 1832

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretense; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.  Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, New Year's Day 1943

"In the last days there will be difficult times, for people will be lovers of themselves and of money, boastful, proud, disrespectful to God, disobedient to parents, ungrateful, profane, lacking all natural affection, harsh, implacable, lying, unrestrained, brutal, despising what is good, traitors, reckless, arrogant, and lovers of their own pleasure rather than lovers of God." 

2 Timothy 3:1-4

"Arise and shine, for the light has come,
     and the glory of the Lord shines upon you.
Though darkness covers the earth,
     and total darkness shrouds the people;
but the Lord will shine over you,
     and His glory will appear with you.
Nations will walk by your light,
     and kings to the brightness of your dawning."

Isaiah 60:1-3

Stocks were in rally mode on the weekend news that the US-Iran have agreed on a 'Memorandum of Understanding' to achieve a new ceasefire in their conflict.

While I hope that this resolution is real and lasting, I see many flaws in it, and gaps in the narrative.  It is not a proper treaty, and can be dispensed with in the same way that Trump 'ripped up' the more substantial JCPOA when the mood struck him.

In summary, it is likely to be a bulltrap, a canard purposely engineered by those seeking to cash in on the SpaceX IPO.  

Let's see what transpires. 

Gold and silver and Bitcoin popped a bit.

The Dollar chopped lower.

VIX fell hard.

I will be unavailable on Wednesday.   The doctors at a local hospital are going to repair something that has gone amiss.

Old age is no joke. 

I have no idea what the surgery and the 'recovery' will be like, given my geezerly tendencies, so be advised that there is a triple witch on Friday.

At some point the MOU narratives will converge into something in writing, or they will not.  And the opponents to the ceasefire in the US and its 'closest ally' are determined and formidable.

I doubt Trump has the resolve to stand up to them.  But we can hope. 

Have a pleasant evening.