Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - False Gods And Their Graven Images

 

“As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End 1933-1945, noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.  

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts.

The second mode is shamanistic incantation.  The fascist style depends upon 'endless repetition,' designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable.

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction.   Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason.  Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today.

The final mode is misplaced faith.   It involves the sort of self-deifying claims.  When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience.   What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent. Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.  At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that 'understanding is useless, you have to have faith.'

If people feel lost and alone and broken and hopeless today, what will it be like if the world begins to come apart at the hinges?   Jesus was a man for simple people.  He didn't make his messages incredibly complex.   If you were a person that had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, then his message was easily understood.

Many who claim today with their mouths that they follow Jesus will abandon him then with their lives.”

Brandon Andress, And Then the End Will Come, April 2013


Today was an option expiration day for precious metals December contracts. 

A classic wash and rinse for a big contract month.  Take it up, and then smack it down hard.

Everything else is commentary.

If you have been following along here, you know what is likely to happen next.

How many times do you have to see this, to finally see it? 

And yet this is far from the worst thing happening in plain sight, that few are willing to see.

Gradually, and then all at once.

Are you not yet entertained?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - This Attractive But Deceitful World - Gold Hits 50% Fibonacci Retracement

 

“Only the humble believe him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that he does wonders where people despair, that he takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.  And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.  God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.  God marches right in.  He chooses people as his instruments and performs his wonders where one would least expect them.  God is near to lowliness; he loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak and broken.” 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Reflections on Advent 

 

“Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction."

Simone Weil

 

"These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world.  What have we to do with its gifts and honours, who, having been already baptized into the world to come, are no longer citizens of this?  Why should we be anxious for a long life, or wealth, or credit, or comfort, who know that the next world will be every thing which our hearts can wish, and that not in appearance only, but truly and everlastingly?  

To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, are as types and figures witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God.  All that we see is destined one day to burst forth into a heavenly bloom, and to be transfigured into immortal glory." 

John Henry Newman 

 

Gold and silver had a follow on hit this morning, but they took much of that back into the afternoon.

Gold in particular hit its 50 percent Fibonacci retracement support level intraday. 

This was a buy point in the metals for me, fwiw.

Silver rebounded with a vengeance.   Bought that on the slump too.

It does look to me like the usual wash and rinse action we see around a big contract month expiration, and is often a multiday event. 

There is no bigger contract month for gold than the December contract.   

And this does seem to be an annual event.  Especially with the regulators asleep at the switch.

Stocks were week, most likely for the end of the month profit-taking and rebalancing. 

The election seems to be a done deal, except for some fantastical stories from snake oil salesmen and the purveyors of clickbait.

The COVD pandemic is still kicking, and taking a toll.  

The talking heads were whining that the VIX remains elevated.   How dare it see risk in these markets.

 Let's see how the rest of the week goes.  

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Who is the father of this ugly financial system?

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sloppy Trade for an Options Expiration - Thanksgiving in Sight

 

"When a man takes an oath, he is holding his own self in his own hands, like water. And if he opens his fingers then, he need not hope to find himself again." 

Thomas More 

 

"Nemesis, the goddess of retribution and vengeance, the punisher of pride and hubris, waits impatiently for her meeting with us." 

 Chalmers Johnson 

 

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." John Kenneth Galbraith 

 

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.” 

Søren Kierkegaard

 

Stocks attempted to rally but went out on the lows. 

Gold and silver rallied, but then gave some of it back in the afternoon. 

Let's see if their support holds next week.

Today was a stock option expiration, and the market action seemed to be heavily influenced by that.

Next week is the December contract metals option expiration on the Comex. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On! - Rattling Nonsense in Full Volleys Breaks

"The Lord is my light and my salvation –
     whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the refuge of my life –
     of whom shall I be afraid?"

Psalm 27


"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;

But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And, never shocked, and never turned aside.
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide."

Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

Stocks were in a boisterous, risk-taking mood today on a much better than expected Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

The report was boosted by over 40,000 GM workers coming back onto the payrolls after a long strike.

The Dollar was slightly higher, but gold and silver were smacked down hard, as is traditional for a strong payrolls report in the heavily held December contract period.

But this all serves the purposes of the worst, who are loud and proud.

And so let all the worldly rejoice.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Chasing Beta On Light Volumes - Metal Prices Slump on an Option Expiration

"Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage.  And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been [or could be] passed.  Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater


"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horrors?  I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator.

Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.  It often seems they may drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy.  But I have realized they will not succeed.  And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.”

Sophie Scholl

The saddest words in any language are those of irreparable regret, that come to haunt us in our last hours, 'If only...'

It was a risk on day in a big way today, as all the major stock indices ran up and out on new highs.

Optimism about China, and trade, and impeachment, and the economy all drove 'money on the sidelines' to try and 'catch up by investing' in risk assets at these bloated price levels.

If you were buying today it was not so much investing as banking on the greater fool theory and the quiet low volume markets in a trade-shortened week.

Gold and silver were lower, as befitting a major Comex option expiration.

We may get another gut check in the metals, given the quiet trading this week and the size of the December metals contracts.

On the brighter side, I have begun sous vide part deux today. The target this time are baby back ribs. Cooking time is about 24 hours at 155°. The ribs were vacuum sealed with a dry rub, a little brown sugar, a dash of liquid smoke, and a dash of bourbon early this morning and left in the fridge.  After they are done they will be quickly seared under the broiler or on the grill.  I'll let you know how it comes out.

The time grows short, shorter for some of us. And the powers of this world are never at rest, but prowl like ravening wolves, seeking to devour us.

Do not spend so much time looking at the other fellow and judging them harshly. First look to yourselves, and practice putting your own hardened hearts and foolish desires aside, for His sake.

The night approaches, and it is almost time to come home.  Do not be left out in the dark.

Have a pleasant evening.