Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Into the Storm

 

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

H.L. Mencken

"Journalism is one of the devices whereby industrial autocracy keeps its control over political democracy; it is the day-by-day, between-elections propaganda, whereby the minds of the people are kept in a state of acquiescence, so that when the crisis of an election comes, they go to the polls and cast their ballots for either one of the two candidates of their exploiters."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

The invisible government tends to be concentrated in the hands of the few because of the expense of manipulating the social machinery which controls the opinions and habits of the masses.  To advertise on a scale which will reach fifty million persons is expensive.  To reach and persuade the group leaders who dictate the public’s thoughts and actions is likewise expensive.

So vast are the numbers of minds which can be regimented, and so tenacious are they when regimented, that a group at times offers an irresistible pressure before which legislators, editors, and teachers are helpless.   It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to the possibilities of regimenting the public mind."

Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

"Power will achieve its murderous potential. It simply waits for an excuse, an event of some sort, an assassination, a massacre in a neighboring country, an attempted coup, a famine, or a natural disaster, to justify the beginning of murder en masse."

R. J. Rummel

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.”

Garry Kasparov

"Many will become addicted to hateful and malicious thoughts and hateful words. Slaves to their desires, they will be ferocious, angry despisers of what is good and right.   With brutal treachery they will act without restraint, bigoted and blinded by clouds of conceit.  They will demand and find their delight in the pleasures of this world, and ignore their need to serve God.  They may act religious, but they want to serve themselves."

2 Timothy 3:1-5

Is was another 'risk-off' day, or more properly, a 'risk doesn't matter' day.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar rose on expectations of a hawkish Fed.

Stocks rose.

Gold and silver were punched fairly hard.

Tomorrow must be an FOMC day.

The US financial sector is the eye of the storm, the very heart of darkness.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Hurricane of Madness

 

"But in truth the whole course of Christianity from the first, when we come to examine it, is but one series of troubles and disorders.  Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.  The Church is ever ailing, and lingers on in weakness.  Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of Truth dim, its adherents scattered.  The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony, as though it were but a question of time whether it fails finally this day or another.

How long will this mystery proceed?   How long will this perishing world be sustained by the feeble lights which struggle for existence in its unhealthy atmosphere?  God alone knows the day and the hour when that will at length be, which He is ever threatening; meanwhile, thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto,—not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion."

John Henry Newman

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.   Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.   Human beings are so made that the ones who do the crushing feel nothing; it is the person crushed who feels what is happening.  Unless one has placed oneself on the side of the oppressed, to feel with them, one cannot understand.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil

"When the business-sharper is the greatest man in the city, and lords it even in the law courts; when class-magistrates, bidding for high office, deal out justice according to the rank of the criminal; when exchanges are turned into great gambling-houses, and senators and men of title are the chief gamblers; when, in short, 'corruption is universal, when there is increasing audacity, increasing greed, increasing fraud, increasing impurity, and these are fed by increasing indulgence and ostentation; when a considerable number of trials in the courts of law bring out the fact that the country in general is now regarded as a prey, upon which any number of vultures, scenting it from afar, may safely light and securely gorge themselves; when the foul tribe is amply replenished by its congeners at home, and foreign invaders find any number of men, bearing good names, ready to assist them in robberies far more cruel and sweeping than those of the highwayman or burglar — when such is the tone of society, and such the idols before which it bends, a nation must be fast going down hill.

A more repulsive picture can hardly be imagined.  A mob, a moneyed class, and an aristocracy almost equally worthless, hating each other, and hated by the rest of the world; native industry swamped by slave-grown imports; the population decreasing; the army degenerating; wars waged as a speculation, but only against the weak; provinces subjected to organized pillage; in the metropolis childish superstition, wholesale luxury, and monstrous vice.  The hour for reform was surely come.  Who was to be the man?"

A.H. Beesley, The Gracchi Marius and Sulla, 1921

 

The hour for reform has also come to another of the world's unipolar empires it seems.

Who will be the person to effect the reform this time?

Not a soul on the horizon that this political independent can see.

The Republicans have long sold their souls, and the Democrats are happy playing the 'lesser of two evils' while not letting much get in the way of their personal business of getting richer.

It was 'forget about the looming risk' today on Wall Street, also known as a wash in the now familiar wash and rinse cycle of greed and fear.

The Dollar, VIX, and gold all fell.

Silver managed to sustain a rally along with stocks.  

The war in the Mideast is spreading and intensifying, with recalcitrance towards a peaceful resolution firmly set on both sides.

Non-Farm Payrolls report this Friday, along with the usual distractions like the ADP and JOLTS reports along the way.

Be mindful of your souls, and of those you love.  For that is what this is all about— and not cheering on your favorite in this hurricane of madness.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Tail Risks

 

“When you see a cloud rising in the west, you immediately say, ‘It is going to rain,’ and so it happens.  And when you see the wind blowing from the south, you say, ‘It is going to be hot,’ and so it happens.  You hypocrites.  You know how to interpret the appearance of earth and sky.  Why then do you not know how to interpret the present time?"

Luke 12:54-56

"We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children."

Jimmy Carter, Nobel Lecture, December 10, 2002

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Poems, City Lights

"All changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born."

W. B. Yeats, Easter 1916


Are we not exceptional?

Are you not entertained?

Gold and silver rallied higher today out of their coiling patterns, as the war in the Mideast intensified. 

Stocks finished weakly again, grappling with the risks of the fog of war.

VIX rose.

The Dollar chopped sideways finishing largely unchanged.

And so it begins again.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Self-Interest Without Morals - Option Expiration

 

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud.   The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.

This behaviour is criminal.  We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression.   And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way."

Charles H. Ferguson, Heist of the century" Wall Street's Role in the Financial Crisis, The Guardian, 20 May 2012

“Leadership is getting results in a way that inspires trust. It’s maximizing both your current contribution and your ability to contribute in the future by establishing the trust that makes it possible.   A nation’s well-being, as well as its ability to compete, is conditioned by a single, pervasive cultural characteristic: the level of trust inherent in the society.  The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty.  And that can become a vicious, downward cycle.  Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too."

Stephen Covey, The Speed of Trust

"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony.  We are neglecting a torrent of market failures in infrastructure, finance, and the environment. We are turning our backs on a grotesque worsening of income inequality and willfully continuing to slash social benefits.  We are destroying the Earth as if we are indeed the last generation."

Jeffrey Sachs, Self-interest, Without Morals, Philadelphia Fed, April 17th, 2013
 

The economic data came in a little hot this morning, and with the recent earnings report flops, that served to take the equity markets down.

Gold and silver were hit rather hard in honor of an otherwise inconsequential Comex metals options expiration.

It's the spirit, never the substance, of the scam.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

VIX came in high and drifted lower.

The war in the Mideast is smoldering in a most ominous way.

The odor of the moral character of the centers of power is most foul.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Storm Warnings

 

"No one screams against this hell.  No one protests.  And if they abhor what they see, they do not have the courage to damn the damned.  One alone would not have failed us.  Péguy would have spoken, I hope, he would have let loose his scream.  He is not here, and there is no one else."

André Suarès, 1939

“We must always tell what we see.  Above all, and this is more difficult, we must always see what we see.”

Charles Péguy

"Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell, Review of Bertrand Russell's Power, Adelphi, 1939

“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.  There are storm warnings ahead.”

Gore Vidal, Comment, Esquire, July 1, 1961

"Legitimate power always includes attentiveness to justice.  When power is not attentive to justice it cannot endure.  The market ideology is now the new form of imperial power and many of us, without any critical reflection, have signed onto that and organized our lives in that way."

Walter Brueggemann, Truth Speaks to Power, 2013

"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy.  I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."

Jimmy Carter, television interview, September 27, 2015

"The gates of hell are open night and day; the descent is smooth, and easy is the way.  But to return to the open air again, and view the cheerful skies, in this the task and mighty labor lies."

Virgil, The Aeneid

Stocks took a dive today, finishing off near the lows.

VIX rose.

The Dollar climbed a little higher.

Gold rallied a bit while silver flattened after a big intraday drop.

The US apparently has persuaded Israel to hold off on their invasion of Gasa in order to allow the US to deploy more missile defense systems 'to protect US troops.'

I suspect this, and the timeliness for a rinse in the old wash-rinse cycle, was the primary motivation.

There was some positive economic news, but meh, it looks like the markets are a bit jumpy.

We'll be getting another Payrolls report at the end of next week, but really the timing and scope of a Middle East conflict seems to be the primary influence for market sentiment.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Willful Blindness

 

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged against provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad.”

James Madison, Letter to Thomas Jefferson, 1798

“In truth, however, nothing is inevitable and very little is new.  Many of our most vaunted innovations are simply methods – electronic or otherwise – of pulling off some age-old profit-maximizing maneuver by new and unregulated means.”

Thomas Frank, Listen Liberal

“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

"Our country is in a moment of crisis decades in the making, a moment in which America’s middle class has been hollowed out, working people have been betrayed, and democracy itself is under threat.  While it is easy to blame President Trump for our problems, the truth is that our challenges began long before him.  And without serious reforms, they are just as likely to outlast him."

Elizabeth Warren, A Foreign Policy that Works for All Americans ,, American University, November 30, 2018

“The combination of power, optimism and abstract thinking makes powerful people more certain.  The more cut-off they are from others, the more confident they are that they are right.”

Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness, 2012

Stocks wanted to bounce today, and they managed to pull it off, although finishing well off the highs.

VIX fell.

The Dollar rose sharply.

Gold and silver opened lower and pretty much finished up there unchanged for the day.

Alphabet reported after the bell, and the stock was sold.

Microsoft beat warnings and the stock was higher.

Meta, the vanity project formerly known as Facebook, reports tomorrow.

A shockingly large amount of the stock gains in the SP500 are attributable to just a handful of stocks.

Exogenous issues continue to weigh heavily, despite the assurance of the spokesmodels and strategists to just sit tight in equities or buy more. 

Apparently there has been an "unprecedented departure" of the Chinese banks from the LBMA Gold Price auctions.  

You probably have not heard about it.  You can read about it here.

 And in late breaking news after the bell, Trump's former chief-of-staff has accepted immunity from the Department of Justice, and presumably is going to be providing evidence for them.  

This is in addition to the earlier news that another one of Trump's attorneys Jenna Ellis pled guilty to a deal in the state of Georgia elections case.

If the GOP movers and shakers starts publicly distancing on Trump's candidacy you know he is done.   

Have a pleasant evening.