Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Victory of the Cross

 

"Christianity is not stoicism. The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling. Detachment is not insensibility."

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, 1958

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society.  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.”

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

"He became as we are, so we might become what he is."

Athanasius of Alexandria, On the Incarnation of the Word, 335 AD

"It is when we attempt to avoid suffering by withdrawing from anything that might involve hurt, when we try to spare ourselves the effort and pain of pursuing truth, love, and goodness, that we drift into a life of emptiness, in which there may be almost no pain, but the dark sensation of meaninglessness and abandonment is all the greater. A distinguishing mark of Christians the fact that they have a future: it is not that they know the details of what awaits them, but they know in general terms that their life will not end in emptiness.”

Benedict XVI, Salvation in Hope, 30 November 2007

"You should not be so sorrowful as those who have no hope."

1 Thessalonians 4:13

"In refusing a relationship with God, a man falls altogether out of the human condition, for the true human condition consists in our ability to hear the word of God, to enter into personal relationship with God.  He who refuses falls from reality into a shadowy, false reality, into the outer darkness.

For Christ did not overcome pleasure and pain by a sort of stoic insensibility, an inability to feel; he mastered them through the strengthening of his spirit, thus at the same time preserving yet transfiguring our full human sensibility to suffering and our tendency to want to escape from it.  His cross means that the spirit is victorious over matter without making matter of no effect, but by transfiguring the material world through the response of a will wholly given to God."

Dimitrios Stăniloae, The Victory of the Cross, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, 1978

"Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal. He dies from preferring the opposite."

Jacques Lusseyran, Poetry at Buchenwald, 1948

"To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is remains.  To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or damned ghost – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940

"The glory of God is the human being, fully alive; and the life of a person is found in the glory of God."

Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, 180 AD


The  public relations parlay didn't take on Monday, so today we had a melt-up short squeeze, the Bessent BubbleUp part deux, based on the fantasy that the US is just going to call it a day, and walk away from the conflict it started with Iran.  And leave Israel to take a pounding.

This is just another opportunity for insiders to continue their looting, which it seems the only thing of which they are capable of doing.

Gold and silver rallied smartly, as the Dollar fell back down to the 99 handle.

Gold and silver speak unpleasant truths, which is why the professional spinmeisters hate it. 

VIX dropped back down to the 20 EMA.

Even Bitcoin bounced back a bit, but still within its managed trading range.

Crypto is an artifact of the bubble in the markets.  

The West is on course for a hard encounter with reality on a number of fronts.

Europe and the UK among others are already feeling it, and it will get worse.  And the US is moving along into a recession, and a severe correction in inflated asset prices.

When the pampered princes come with their hands out looking for another handout bailout, we may wish to consider making that experience severely corrective, and memorable.  Moral hazard and all that considered.

I am not hopeful that a reckoning will happen this time, because the oligarchy and their spokesmodels are audacious.  

And a sizable minority of the public have their captive media's Kool-Aid drip of self-destruction firmly plugged into their arms.

But change will come.

The mighty rise and are fallen, but the Word and the Spirit endure.  

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Way of Illusions, the Way of the Cross

 

“Christianity is not stoicism.  The Cross does not sanctify us by destroying human feeling.  Detachment is not insensibility.  Too many ascetics fail to become great saints precisely because their rules and ascetic practices have merely deadened their humanity instead of setting it free to develop richly, in all its capacities, under the influence of grace.”

Thomas Merton, Thoughts In Solitude, 1958

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children, unwilling to listen to the instructions of the Lord. They say to their seers, ‘Do not see!’ and to the prophets, ‘Say nothing of what is right! Tell us only things that please us — prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:9-10

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil. 

Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action. God marches right in. He chooses people as his instruments and performs His wonders where one would least expect them. 

In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God. Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Nachfolge, 1937

"Love does not make you weak, because it is the source of all strength — but it makes you see the nothingness of the illusory strength on which you depended before you knew it."

Léon Bloy, The Pilgrim of the Absolute

"Since God has accepted you to be among the holy people that He loves, you must clothe yourselves with tender mercy, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.  Make allowances for each other’s faults, and forgive anyone who offends you.  Remember, the Lord forgave you, so you must also forgive others.  Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which brings us all together in harmony.  And let the peace of the Lord rule in your hearts.  For as members of one body you are called to live in peace.  And always be thankful."

Colossians 3:12-15


The first sin was pride, the declaration of the fallen angel,'non serviam.'  All other sin flows from there. 

Stocks came in having recovered overnight from their losses to stage a rally up from a lower open.

But, as we have often seen, the same lies lose their potency with repetition.  And so stocks slumped into the close.  

They are tagging some key support levels that if breached may open the door to a much deeper correction.

Gold and silver were struggling again.

Bitcoin failed to rally from its decline to the lower half of its intermediate trading range.  Let's keep an eye on that.

VIX has been steadily climbing to reflect market risks, setting higher lows.

The Dollar has taken the midpoint of the 100 handle.  This is not such a positive for the real economy, since a stronger dollar makes imports cheaper and exports more expensive.  

People who make real products here are not advantaged.  But the financiers like it.

I am afraid that most people are not yet taking the global risks seriously, preferring to listen to the lies and delusions of those to whom they have declared their loyalties above God and country.

This is not going to end well.  When that realization hits home there may be a rush for the narrowing exits.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Palm Sunday

 

“He became what we are, that we might become what he is.”

Athanasius of Alexandria, The Incarnation of the Word

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Deadly Embrace of Pride

 

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.  They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, April 1956

“An inflated consciousness is always egocentric and conscious of nothing but its own existence.  It is incapable of learning from the past, incapable of understanding contemporary events, and incapable of drawing right conclusions about the future.  It is hypnotized by itself and cannot be argued with.  It dooms itself to calamities that strike it dead."

Carl Jung, Psychology and Alchemy, 1944

“Pride is the beginning of sin. It was pride that changed angels into devils, and it is humility that makes men angels. There never has been, and never can be, any sin without pride."

Augustine, City of God and On Nature and Grace

"Almighty God lets the sinner go his own way, for He has given to man free-will, and does not want a forced obedience, but an obedience springing from love.  In his forgetfulness of God, the sinner squanders his fortune, the natural and supernatural gifts which he has received, using his natural gifts, his health, his physical powers, and his reason, to offend God.

The sinner falls under the dominance of Satan, and becomes the slave of his lowest passions, which are signified by the swine which the prodigal was forced to feed.  But the more he obeys his passions, the more dissatisfied he becomes.  He feels an emptiness and spiritual hunger in his heart which he is powerless to satisfy.  He only knows that he is miserable, and hateful to himself."

Friedrich Justus Knecht, The Prodigal Son, 1910

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944


Stocks were dropping harder today, and have made lower lows, erasing the phony rally triggered by Trump's announcement of a ceasefire.

Will we see another insider trading opportunity set up for Monday.  One can only wonder,

Gold and silver bounced after the drubbing they took in observance of the Comex option expiration.

Bitcoin has fallen back down to the bottom of the trading range it has been in since early February.

Why this back and forth in crypto?  I assume the players on the Street have noticed this, and are banging that back and forth like an ATM.  

VIX climbed but is nowhere near the panic level.

The Dollar latched back on to the 100 handle.

I have marked the 20 and 30 percent decline levels on the SP500 and NDX charts.  There is also an open gap on the SP500 down there.

I would not hazard to make a guess how this weekend will go.  Who was the last person to talk to Donald?

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

Next week is Holy Week. 

Have a pleasant weekend.