Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Idylls of Mammon

 

"If you’re not willing to react with equanimity to a market price decline of 50% you’re not fit to be a common shareholder, and you deserve the mediocre result you’re going to get compared to people who can be more philosophical to market fluctuations.”

Charlie Munger

"You should thank God for bank bailouts— absolutely required to save your civilization.  So I think when you have troubles like that you shouldn't be bitching about a little bailout.  You should have been thinking it should have been bigger.  You should thank God the government saved the big banks and their investors.  

Now, if you talk about bailouts for everybody else [e.g homeowners], if you just start bailing out all the individuals instead of telling them to adapt, the culture dies.  There's danger in just shoveling out money to people who say, 'My life is a little harder than it used to be.'   At a certain place you've got to say to the people, 'Suck it in and cope, buddy.'"

Charlie Munger, Event at the University of Michigan, September 14, 2010

"Why couldn’t the banks 'suck it in and cope' Charlie?  But then again that wouldn’t have been so hot for the Berkshire portfolio, which includes TARP recipients: American Express, Bank of America, M&T Bank Corp, US Bank, and Wells Fargo.  And of course there was that $5 billion loan to Goldman Sachs in September 2008 when Wall Street was melting down.  Then Goldman received $10 billion in TARP the following month.  Charlie and Warren must be clairvoyants.  Forget the injustice and long-term damage of bailouts, if it’s good for Munger and Buffett we are supposed to thank God for it."

Douglas French, Warren Buffett's partner: Bank Bailouts Saved Civilization, Christian Science Monitor, September 30, 2010

"Inequality is a euphemism for all the things that have gone to make the lives of the rich so much more delicious for the last three decades.  And for the things that have made the lives of working people so wretched and so precarious.  You catch a glimpse of inequality every time you hear about someone that had to declare bankruptcy because a child got sick.   Inequality is about the way in which speculators, and even criminals, get a helping hand from Uncle Sam, while the Vietnam Vet down the street loses his house."

Thomas Frank, Listen Liberal

Stocks managed to put together another rally, with even the tech sector along for the ride.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar declined.

Gold and silver held a good push into their breakouts and put a spike near the highs at the close.

Wow.

There will be a non-farm payrolls report next week.

The problem with powerful organizations and people is that they lose focus on the bigger picture and eventually see only themselves.

Power and possessions will invoke  in their adherents a kind of moral astigmatism.

And over time these elite often foster and advance some rather cruel and unusual economics and domestic policies which their academic and media sycophants are only too happy to rationalize and support.

Such are the ways of the worldly, and the allure of the abyss.  As old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gold Speaks Uncomfortable Truths

 

"For the game had never been fair, the dice were loaded. They were swindlers and thieves of pennies and dimes, and they had been trapped and put out of the way by the swindlers and thieves of millions of dollars."

Upton Sinclair, The Jungle

"Gold has worked down from Alexander's time. When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."

Bernard Baruch

“Absolute power does not corrupt absolutely, absolute power attracts the corruptible.”

Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

“Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong.  When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted.  It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn't fit in with the core belief.”

Frantz Fanon

"The press is the hired agent of a monied system, and set up for no other purpose than to tell lies where their interests are involved."

Henry Adams, The Letters of Henry Adams

The equity markets were divergent today, with the SP500 moving higher, but the tech heavy NDX finishing decidedly lower.

Gold fell, as the Dollar rose sharply.

Silver rallied once again, in step more with the SP 500.  It has the appearance of a short squeeze.

VIX fell.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Apparitions of Prosperity - The Foolish Rich

 

Then he told them a parable: “There was a wealthy man whose land yielded an abundant harvest. He thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I do not have sufficient space to store my crops?’  Then he said, ‘This is what I will do.  will pull down my barns and build larger ones, where I will store my grain and other produce, and I shall say to myself,  “Now you have an abundance of goods stored up for many years to come.  Relax, eat, drink, and be merry.” ’

“But God said to him, ‘You fool!  This very night your life will be required of you.  And who then will get to enjoy the fruit of your labors?’  That is how it will be for the one who stores up treasure for himself yet fails to become rich in the sight of God.”

Luke 12:16-21

“Religion used to be the opium of the people. To those suffering humiliation, pain, illness, and serfdom, religion promised the reward of an after life.   But now, we are witnessing a transformation: a true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

And when He had called the people and His disciples, He said to them, “Whoever will come after Me, let them deny themselves, and take up their cross, and follow Me.  For whoever will save their life shall lose it; but whoever shall lose their life for My sake and for that of the good news shall save it.   For what does it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his soul?

Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? Whoever shall be ashamed of Me and of My words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also will the Son of Man be ashamed when He comes with holy angels in the glory of His Father.”

Mark 8:34-38

Stocks staged a remarkable failed rally today.

Gold and silver marked time as they digested their recent breakout. 

Let's see if they can hang on to it.  Overhead resistance calls.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Risks remain underappreciated.

We have a pronounced habit of sanctifying worldly success.

It is a phantom and often a thin facade of deception.

In the end, the only real tragedy is not to have been a saint.

Have a pleasant evening.