Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Do Not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

 

"Do not be afraid little flock, for your Father delights to welcome you into His kingdom."

Luke 12:32

"Why do you fight and argue among yourselves?  Isn’t it because of your sinful desires?  They fight within you.  You want something, but you don’t have it.  So you kill.  You want what others have, but you can’t get what you want.  So you argue and fight.  You don’t have what you want, because you don’t ask for it from God.  When you do ask for something, you don’t receive it.  That’s because you ask for the wrong reason.  You want to spend your money on your sinful pleasures.

You are not faithful to God.  Don’t you know that to be a friend of the world is to hate God?  So anyone who chooses to be the world’s friend becomes God’s enemy.  Don’t you know what Scripture says?  God wants the spirit in us to belong only to him.  God caused this spirit to live in us.  Don’t you think Scripture has a reason for saying this?  But God continues to give us more grace.  That’s why Scripture says, 'God opposes those who are proud. But he gives grace to those who are humble.'

So obey God, and stand up to the devil.  He will run away from you.  Come near to God, and he will come near to you.  Wash your hands, you sinners.  Make your hearts pure, you who can’t make up your minds.  Be full of sorrow.  Cry and weep.  Change your laughter to mourning.  Change your joy to sadness.  Be humble in front of the Lord.  And he will raise you up.  

James 4:1-10

"Have we learned nothing?  Have we sunk so low that we no longer fear the reproach of civilized people, or the judgement even of God?  We seem to have no shame, no sense of history, no compunction about lying and wallowing in lies, and relatively little enough decency left in our public life.  It is all about power and money."

Jesse, Political Power and the Virus of Fear, 10 October 2018

“You should do something great, you should become resigned to the fact you will seem ridiculous to a race of janitors and bureaucrats if you are to enter into the service of Splendor.  Then you will know what it means to be a friend of God.  The Friend of God!"

Léon Bloy, Le Désespéré, 1887

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God. Trust also in me."

John 14:1


Wall Street, with Washington, is pushing the public and traders to shorten their horizons and the focus of their thought and reactions to today, just the here and now.

This leaves you without an anchor in reality, to be tossed here and there by greed and fear spurred by their latest lies and headlines, like short term day traders.  This is how a con man bamboozles his victims.  

Resist this.  Maintain your observations and plans to more than a day. 

Think about the next seven days for trading purposes, and perhaps the next thirty days at least for planning your strategy.  And think about what you need to do to prepare for the future. And then you may not be blindsided. 

So we had another Trump Bump, in which he threatens war almighty, and then announces a peace deal in time for the weekend futures to fun with it.

The claims of peace talks are risible, with Iran launching a missile at a tanker attempting to sneak through the Strait, and then plainly attesting that all these claims of POTUS are rubbish.

Wall Street does not care.  They read this as a signal to simply buy, with the strength of the government ESF functionality at their backs.

"They shall eat the bitter fruit of their ways, and be gutted by their schemes. The foolish turn away from me — to death. For fools are destroyed by their pride and self-deception.” Proverbs 1:31-33

The US is becoming a grand game of three card monte, with nothing sacred to a cult of the stubbornly self-deluded. 

Gold and silver were of course hit, and then recovered a bit.

Bitcoin managed to gain back a little, but well within its trading range.

SpaceX managed a limp bounce.  It still looks to be in a distribution after the initial IPO pump.

The emptiness of words moves nothing but the hearts that are already bound and pledged to the emptiness of the world. 

Not one thing has changed.  Nothing.  

But what matters the most is well within your ability to control - with repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness.  

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You trust in God. Trust also in me."

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - To Be A Man Among Beasts

 

"Serve the Lord and be at peace with him, so his goodness will flourish in you. Hear the words from his mouth, and keep his wisdom deep in your heart."   Job 22:21-22

“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 beholds you.  He calls you by your name.  He sees you and understands you as He made you.  He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses.  He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow.  He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations.  He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms.  He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears.  He looks tenderly upon you.  He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.

You do not love yourself better than He loves you.  You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another. I have my mission — I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.  I shall do good, I shall do His work.  I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him.  Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away.  If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him.  If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.   He does nothing in vain.  He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends.  He may throw me among strangers.  He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me — still He knows what He is about.

Let us feel what we really are — sinners attempting great things.  Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come.  He can turn all things to our eternal good.  Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.   The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.  Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

Stocks are defying gravity and riding a wave of last gasp liquidity it seems.

The Trump Administration rejects the reality of the conflict in the Middle East, and substitutes its own.

VIX of course fell.

SpaceX continues to undergo the distribution phase of a 'pump and dump.'

The Dollar chopped sideways, just shy of the 100 handle.

The adults in the room, those who follow the bond markets closely, are making whimpering noises as they see the 10 and 30 year US Bonds climbing in yield to significant levels.

Uncle Sam is running a temperature.

Crude is bouncing up against resistance after its recent paper smackdown.

I think we will be looking back at these prices with nostalgia, in the not too distant future.

Bitcoin is very much in a trading range, and I fail to see anything that it going to be providing it any sustained lift.

To the contrary, if selling in the tech sector intensifies, as I suspect it will, then Bitcoin is going to be retracing and seeking support somewhere south of 50k.

It will be nice to finally have the midterm elections behind us.  Narcissists and oligarchs can become quite volatile when they sense the possible collapse of their fever dreams.  

A person who does not read, who has not explored and reflected upon the thoughts and experiences of those from other lands and times, those gone before us, is left stumbling through life, lacking navigable lights in the darkness, afflicted with what the Buddhists call the three poisons: greed, hate, and delusion. 

And many grow quite comfortable with that impairment, with the notion that their cravings are the principal laws of the world.  And they will destroy all that is the truth, and offends their hollowness. They raise their flags on fields of barbaric self-absorption, and attempt to fill the great hole in their being with things and structures and people whom they consume.

This is where we are today. 

"Those who have faith had better keep in the state of grace, and those who have neither had better find out what they mean, for in the coming age there will be only one way to stop your trembling knees, and that will be to get down on them and pray.  The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."

Fulton J. Sheen, The Day of the Beast, 1947

You may wish to diversify your exposure to unfolding events, from the usual biased outlets and mouthpieces, because otherwise what is coming it going to hit you square in the face.

This reminds me so much of the early 2000s it is almost unnerving— tech bubbles and war drums fed by lies and deceptions and contrived narratives of hatred and fear.

Who could have seen it coming?

It is now as it was then, and has always been.

We are called to be a man, among beasts. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Crumbling Edifice

 

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse."

Charles Kindleberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes, 1978

"It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.”

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan, April 17, 2007

"The whole edifice of modern financial theory is, as described earlier, founded on a few simplifying assumptions.  It presumes that homo economicus is rational and self-interested.  Wrong, suggests the experience of the irrational, mob-psychology bubble and burst of the 1990's.  A further assumption: that price variations follow the bell curve.  Wrong, suggests the by-now widely accepted research of me and many others since the 1960's. Well, the Efficient Market Hypothesis is no more than that, a hypothesis. Many a grand theory has died under the onslaught of real data.”

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets, 1997

"And such was the attitude of their minds that a shocking crime was dared by a few, with the blessing of more, and the passive acquiescence of all."

Tacitus, The Murder of Galba, Histories: Book I, XXVIII

"Complex systems that have artificially suppressed volatility tend to become extremely fragile, while at the same time exhibiting no visible risks. In fact, they tend to be too calm and exhibit minimal variability as silent risks accumulate beneath the surface. These artificially constrained systems become prone to 'Black Swans' — that is, they become extremely vulnerable to large-scale events that lie far from the statistical norm and were largely unpredictable to a given set of observers.  Indeed, the longer it takes for the blowup to occur, the worse the resulting harm in both economic and political systems."

Nassim Taleb, The Black Swan of Cairo, Foreign Affairs 1 June 2012


Stocks were in rally mode today.  

VIX fell sharply.

The Dollar dropped.

Gold and silver rallied.

Bitcoin bounced.

SpaceX is flopping around after a long distributional decline.

Crude oil back off a bit.

The wars in the Middle East and the Ukraine continue to worsen, badly.   If these do not concern you greatly you need to change your news habits.

The global impact of energy disruption in petroleum products and natural gas is going to impact the world economies very hard later this year.

We are heading to a major conflagration.  And it will leave a mark.   

US GDP came in light of expectations in the second quarter.

Inflation is looking more pernicious, and will probably continue to build.

It looks like we are heading for stagflation, which is the product of bad governance and blowback from inept fiscal policy.

Today was a 'technical rally.'   We will be getting snap back rallies like this going forward. 

But the markets are skidding on a slippery slope that is likely going to hit us all very hard.

If the power elite come back to the public with their hands outstretched for yet another bailout, just saying 'no' is probably not going to be enough to correct this appalling state of moral hazard. 

As Hermann Hesse wrote in Journey to the East, "His suffering became too great, and you know that when the suffering becomes acute enough, one moves forward." 

We are heading for the killing floor.  And it will try our hearts and our minds—  and perhaps put steel in our hearts for meaningful reform, equality under law, and for justice.

Have a pleasant evening.  

"Hard times is here and everywhere you go,
Times are harder than ever been before.

You know that people they are driftin' from door to door
But they can't find no heaven, I don't care where they go.

People, if I ever can get up off a-this old hard killin' floor,
Lord, I'll never get down this low no more. 

You know you'll say you had money, you better be sure,
'Cause these hard times goin' kill you, just drag on slow."

Skip James, Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues, 1931

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Snakes and Ladders and Beasts

 

“Every single empire in its official discourse has said that it is not like all the others, that its circumstances are special, that it has a mission to enlighten, civilize, bring order and democracy, and that it uses force only as a last resort.  And, sadder still, there always is a chorus of willing intellectuals to say calming words about benign or altruistic empires, as if one shouldn't trust the evidence of one's eyes watching the destruction and the misery and death brought by the latest 'mission civilisatrice.'”

Edward W. Said, Orientalism: Preface, 2003

"The tongue of the little one sticks
       to the roof of its mouth with thirst;
the children beg for bread,
       but no one will feed them."

Lamentations 4:4

"Through his first year in Germany [1933], Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest.  Dodd continued to hope that the murders would so outrage the German public that the regime would fall, but as the days passed he saw no evidence of any such outpouring of anger.  The controlled press, not surprisingly, praised Hitler for his decisive behaviour."

Erik Larson, In The Garden of Beasts, 2011

"It can only be hoped that American democracy will thoroughly realize, before it is too late, that fascism is not confined to any one nation or any one party; and it is to be hoped that it will succeed in overcoming the tendency toward dictatorial forms in the people themselves.  Only time will tell whether the Americans will be able to resist the compulsion of irrationality, or whether they will succumb to it.”

Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1933

“Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.  Weep for yourselves and your children."

Luke 23:28

"I am not so optimistic that this reform is possible, because there has in fact been a soft coup d'etat in the US, which now exists in a state of crony corporatism that wields enormous influence over the media and within the government.  To be clear about this, the oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own ends and unslakable will to power.

This is the contempt in which they hold the majority of American people and the political process: the common people are easily led fools, and everyone else who is smart enough to know better has their price.  And they would beggar every middle class voter in the US before they will voluntarily give up one dime of their ill gotten gains.

But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

Jesse, The Fall of the American Republic, 8 August 2010

"You believe in the one God, and that is good. But even the demons believe this, and tremble."

James 2:18-19

"Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.  These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs.  As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1991

“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, London 1952

The conflict in the Middle East turned hot last night, and an effort to pump the futures higher in a rather deliberate attempt at the mispricing of risk failed— badly.

The FOMC left interest rates unchanged.  

There was a significantly larger drawdown of over 7 million barrels in US oil reserves reported by the EIA this morning. 

Stocks flopped badly and went out near the lows.

We have set a series of failed rallies that are putting us on 'crash trak' to see if the rest of the dominoes fall. It is a system I developed some years ago.  It was pretty good in calling the 2002 and 2008 declines.

Gold and silver rallied quite a bit, but then were smacked down ruthlessly into the close.

The premiums being paid for physical bullion are becoming rather large in some parts of the world.

The gold and silver 'pool' being used to manipulate the price is going to collapse.   It has been a long time coming. 

Keep an eye on the bonds.   The Dollar not so much because the DXY index is a bit of a joke, since it is primarily the obverse of the Euro and the Pound.  No value safe havens there.

No, the canary in the coal mine is gold, and they keep throwing a blanket over its cage.  But cutting off the alarm does not put out the fire.

Oil was smacked lower to a ludicrous level by very heavy-handed short selling the other day.  It was a screaming buy at 80.   Almost shocking.

So I stepped into the oil patch. Years ago I played oil and natural gas quite a bit in the futures.  Now I just putter around looking for big fat targets.  Voila.

There is a remarkable seasonality in natural gas.  I think this year it could be rather pronounced.

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

Have a pleasant evening.