Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great Emptiness of Worldly Pride

 

"The thing now is to live in the world in which you are, not to think or dream about the world you would like to be in.  Look at people’s sufferings, physical and mental, you have them close at hand, and this ought to be a good remedy for your troubles.  Another way is to take a rest whenever you ought to take one and collect yourself.

As to religious thoughts I do not think the craving for placidity is religious; I think a religious person regards placidity or peace as a gift from heaven, not as something one ought to hunt after.  Look at your patients more closely as human beings in trouble and enjoy more the opportunity you have to say ‘good night’ to so many people.  This alone is a gift from heaven which many people would envy you.  And this sort of thing ought to heal your frayed soul, I believe.  I think in some sense you don’t look at people’s faces closely enough."

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Letter to Maurice O’Connor Drury, February 1938

"If you are wise and understand God’s ways, prove it by living an honorable life, doing good works with the humility that comes from wisdom.  But if you are bitterly jealous and there is selfish ambition in your heart, don’t cover up the truth with boasting and lying.  For jealousy and selfishness are not God’s kind of wisdom. Such things are earthly, unspiritual, and demonic.  For wherever there is jealousy and selfish ambition, there you will find disorder and evil of every kind.

But the wisdom from above is first of all pure.  It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds.  It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.  And those who are peacemakers will plant seeds of peace and reap a harvest of righteousness."

James 3:13-18

"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 so we had another cooked up triple witching stock option expiration.

America is no longer a market capitalist country.   It is an oligarchy, and the veneer of democratic civility is growing increasing thin.

So stocks ended up in the green.

Oil fell (lol).

VIX fell.

Bitcoin rallied.   I don't have much optimism for Bitcoin, as I think it is being 'farmed' by insiders who are content to keep reaping the trading range.

Gold and silver rallied.

I think we are in for a difficult autumn and a brutal winter.

Remember to love one another, as the Lord has loved you.

I will be going on a real vacation (without my laptop) at the end of September, and I doubt I will be posting anything here at that time.   

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocked and Precious Metals Charts - The Proud Chains of Hell

 

"That one finally becomes the thing he violently fights is a fact that Hitler understood, in 1933, when he said, 'The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it.'"

Bayard Rustin, In Apprehension How Like a God, William Penn Lecture, 1948

“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

"Our hearts are continually prone to wander from Him; prosperity and enjoyment all too easily satisfy us, dull our spiritual perception, and unfit us for full communion with Himself.  It is an unspeakable mercy that the Father comes with His chastisement, makes the world round us all dark and unattractive, leads us to feel more deeply our sinfulness, and for a time lose our joy in what was becoming so dangerous.  Though He has indeed no pleasure in afflicting us, He will not keep back even the most painful chastisement if He can but thereby guide His beloved child to come home."

Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ, 1895

“There are only two kinds of people in the end— those who say to God, 'Thy will be done,' and those to whom God says, in the end, 'Thy will be done.'  All that are in Hell choose it.  Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.”

C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce, 1945

"For to admit that the Reich was a lie, and a mistake, that they were fanatical fools, and Hitler an incompetent creature of evil would be to admit that one was wrong, a failure, and worse, 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, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess.  That, and a desire to become beasts, to lose themselves in their mindless fanaticism, and escape the pain of being men.  And so they struck out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkened souls, and showed them their pride was based on a lie."

Jesse, Seth the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018

"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 rallied today ahead of the big quad witch option expiration tomorrow.

Oil fell.

VIX fell.

Gold and silver rallied.

The Dollar rallied to the 100 handle, but still in a sideways chop.

What are the limits of vanity?   The deadly allure of the pride is that the proud lose sight of their limits.

Until they encounter reality.

Not one stone will be left standing on another when proud consequence is reaped.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A World Split Apart

 

“A decline in courage may be the most striking feature that an outside observer notices in the West today. The Western world has lost its civic courage, both as a whole and separately, in each country, in each government, in each political party, and, of course, in the United Nations. Such a decline in courage is particularly noticeable among the ruling and intellectual elites, causing an impression of a loss of courage by the entire society.

There remain many courageous individuals, but they have no determining influence on public life.  Political and intellectual functionaries exhibit this depression, passivity, and perplexity in their actions and in their statements, and even more so in their self-serving rationales as to how realistic, reasonable, and intellectually and even morally justified it is to base state policies on weakness and cowardice.

And the decline in courage, at times attaining what could be termed a lack of manhood, is ironically emphasized by occasional outbursts of boldness and inflexibility on the part of those same functionaries when dealing with weak governments and with countries that lack support, or with doomed currents which clearly cannot offer any resistance.  But they get tongue-tied and paralyzed when they deal with powerful governments and threatening forces, with aggressors and international terrorists.

Must one point out that from ancient times a decline in courage has been considered the first symptom of the end?

I have spent all my life under a Communist regime and I will tell you that a society without any objective legal scale is a terrible one indeed.  But a society with no other scale but the legal one is also less than worthy of man.  A society based on the letter of the law and never reaching any higher fails to take advantage of the full range of human possibilities.  The letter of the law is too cold and formal to have a beneficial influence on society.  Whenever the tissue of life is woven of legalistic relationships, this creates an atmosphere of spiritual mediocrity that paralyzes man’s noblest impulses.

Thus we mix good and evil, right and wrong, and make space for the absolute triumph of absolute evil in the world."

Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, A World Split Apart, Harvard University, 8 June 1978

"Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. Aristotle tells us 'At the Olympic games it is not the finest or the strongest men who are crowned, but those who enter the lists — so too in the life of the honorable and the good it is they who act rightly who win the prize' I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.

For the fortunate amongst us, the fourth danger is comfort; the temptation to follow the easy and familiar path of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who have the privilege of an education. But that is not the road history has marked out for us. There is a Chinese curse which says 'May he live in interesting times.' Like it or not, we live in interesting times. They are times of danger and uncertainty; but they are also the most creative of any time in the history of mankind. And everyone here will ultimately be judged  — will ultimately judge himself — on the effort he has contributed to building a new world society and the extent to which his ideals and goals have shaped that effort."

Robert F. Kennedy, Day of Affirmation, Cape Town, 6 June 1966


The Fed raised rates as expected.

It will make little difference,   Macro events are going to negate most of their standard tricks.

Stocks flopped and then rallied back.  Gold and silver rallied and then fell back down,

There will be a quadruple witching stock option expiration on Friday. 

There is a certain inevitability settling over the markets.

They are trying to hide it, talk about it, draw a fog around it, but it is there.

I imagine they would like to keep this up until after the midterm elections in November.

I seriously doubt they are going to make it.

They are running out of a number of implements of their warfare, including even mildly credible lies.

Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked.  As a man sows, so shall he reap.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - First They Come For the Weak

 

"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. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola, circa 98 AD

"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems ot that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves.

The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system. The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious hypocrisy.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery."

Jesse, Empires of Illusion: First They Come for the Weak, 31 December 2012

"Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

John Harrington, Epigrams: Of Treason, 1618


Risks remain dangerously mispriced.

There will be a major stock option expiration on Friday.

The veneer of normalcy which they seek to maintain is growing increasingly thin and unstable.

Have a pleasant evening.