Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Black Thursday - The Crash of 2020

“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky.  There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.'  But though a war may well be 'too stupid,' that doesn't prevent its lasting.  Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.  In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were human: they disbelieved in pestilences.

Albert Camus, The Plague


"Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial.   What is it going to take?"

Jesse, 27 February 2020


"Now is a good time to prepare, if you have not already done so, and to begin engaging in those simple procedures that may help us weather this."

Jesse, 28 February 2020


"This is going to end badly. Big changes are coming. What has been hidden will be revealed.  Rough seas ahead, mateys."

Jesse, 22 January 2020, I See It Coming

The market crashed today, or at least put the finishing touch on the first phase of the crash of 2020.

As you may recall I have been talking about the significance of this year, specifically the period before July, since 2018.

And away we go.

The Fed is coming in with the money spigot flush open tomorrow, to try and save the debt markets from locking up, thereby seizing the financial system.

I hope they succeed, at least temporarily.

The media pundits are talking again about the V shaped recovery, and buying up these bargains.

This is not over yet.  It will not be done until the virus has nearly run its course, and the economic impact has become known.

But the Merry Pranksters of Wall Street are rarely encumbered by conscience or shame.

I saw something remarkable today.  They were emptying the shelves at the local grocery store.  Not the usual bread-milk-water storm provisions.  No, they literally emptied the meat and poultry sections and the restocking from inventory as well, before 2 in the afternoon.

It looks like El Presidente shook up his comfortable Republican constituency in our 'hood last night. No one was saying 'media hype' today.

Ironically enough it appears that he was exposed to an infected person, but is not concerned enough to take a test.   I'll bet Melania is not so blasé about it, especially with regard to their son.

Dolly and I are 'social-distancing' as they say.   The young man is still in Oxford, England, and won't be returning for a little while.  I miss Mary, my best friend, especially on days like this.  But I am glad that I do not have to be concerned about her. 

Read the first quote from Camus above, and think hard about it, what it is saying.

Losses in the stock market are one thing, although sometimes it seems that this is the biggest concern here in these United States.  

The loss of friends and loved ones makes paper money losses pale by comparison.  Things can be replaced, people can't.   And that is what we are facing in this, at the end of the day, even as we choose to ignore it.

Repentance, forgiveness, thankfulness.

Have a pleasant evening.

The Dollar and Gold Diverging

"People can die from an excessive dose of the truth, you know.”

Ariel Dorfman, Death and the Maiden


“Your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others.”

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness


"It's probably early days, but now might be the time to start taking precautions against a 2008 class event in the financial markets. I would suggest it might arrive anytime between now and July 2020."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 24 July 2018


"My cyclical calculations and trend forecasts suggest that July 2020 may be a decisive, if not pivotal, period in our time."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 26 February 2019

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Worst Day For Stocks Since 2011 - What We Need Is Even More of the Same

"It is not possible to found a lasting power upon injustice, perjury, and treachery. These may, perhaps, succeed at first, and limp along on hope for awhile with a flourishing appearance. But time betrays their weakness, and they eventually fall into ruin of their own designs."

Demosthenes


"Monetary and regulatory policy encourage asset bubbles to proliferate. Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.  The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.   The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed."

Jesse 5 August 2019, The Men Who Sold the World


"This is going to end badly.  Big changes are coming.  What has been hidden will be revealed. Rough seas ahead, mateys."

Jesse, 22 January 2020, I See It Coming


"It is precisely this — high-powered computers and the swagger of those who operate them — that is causing worries over high-frequency trading’s increasing sway. 'The markets used to be about capital formation,' said Mr. Quast, the consultant. 'Now 80 percent of trading is driven by some form of statistical arbitrage. We are buying into a statistical house of cards that could unravel very quickly.'”

Landon Thomas, Inquiry Stokes Concern over Trading Firms that Shape Markets, 3 September 2009


“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby

Stocks were utterly hammered today, with the stock futures going out on the lows, and continuing to fall in selling after the bell.

Let's see, are we going to blame Bernie or the Deep State or CNN today?

Or maybe just the Fed.

The Fed certainly is culpable to a degree, again, because they went all in for not-QE in the 4th quarter, bending to pressure from the White House and the Banks, mostly the Banks.

And after the last crash the Fed held up their hand and kept volunteering for more and more regulatory responsibility.

They and their cronies and paymasters put the cherry on the top of this bubble.  Until it was just a matter of what trigger event was going to set it off.

Despite the spin and narratives, the financial system, like the rest of the economy, was interconnected, over-extended, poorly regulated, and fragile.

And the coronavirus is a big cherry on top, despite the self-serving happy talk being put out about it by the usual suspects in politics and the media.

And who could have seen it coming?

Not you, if you get your news from conmen and spokesmodels for the oligarchy.

We are very oversold here for the short term.  And a bounce, like the ones that they attempted to provoke the last couple of mornings, is possible.  And it might finally stick for a day.

Let's see if the Fed and Treasury step in and tries to save this bubble.  I am sure Trumpolini has Mnuchin and Kudlow on the job.

The longer term damage to the nation is going to tax the future for the working public.

The Dollar finished lower.  Silver was off a bit.

Gold was off $3 per ounce today.  Gold, unleveraged is a safe haven.

Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial.

What is it going to take?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brood of Vipers - Stock Option Expiration Tomorrow

“Although I say that wisdom is better than strength, nevertheless the common wisdom is despised, and its words are not heard. A wise man speaking quietly is worth more than the shouts of a tyrant commanding fools. Wisdom is better than weapons of war, but one sinful man can destroy much that is good."

Ecclesiastes 9:16-18


"The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too. He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc


"‘Woe to you, you hypocrites!  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  On the outside you appear righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  You snakes, you brood of vipers.'"

Matt 23: 23-33

The truth can sometimes hurt. It is not always to see what we have become. But the truth will set us free.

Stocks rose to a new high today.

Gold and silver finished slightly lower, with the Dollar slightly higher.

The impeachment 'trial' of Trumpollini is now proceeding in the Senate.

Politicians are for the most part not admirable at their best.  But courage and integrity are scarce commoditities in this current crop of Senators and executives.

The GAO released its report today, finding that Trump and his administration broke the law.

I still believe that we will see a major change in the US political and economic scene by July.  

Tomorrow is a stock market options expiration.

There will be a three day weekend for the US markets because of Martin Luther King observance on Monday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Poisoned Chalice

“In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.

Even an empire cannot control the long-term effects of its policies. That is the essence of blowback.”

Chalmers Johnson, Blowback


"...we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor: this even-handed justice
Commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice
To our own lips."

Shakespeare, Macbeth


"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you.  The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy...

Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed.   Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God.  The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way.”

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free

Stocks were a bit wobbly today, and the expectation of another push higher dissipated fairly early on.

Gold and the Dollar and silver all moved higher today in what appeared to be a 'risk off' move to safer waters.

The spokesmodels on financial TV had their pom poms out and were leading the cheers, but the crowd seemed as listless as the cheerleaders seemed to be desperate.

We may have reached that phase in the market rally where the insider money is looking to complete the hand off of the inflated assets to the public.

Don't worry though. There is an Internet of carnies and con-men who will gladly tell you whatever you wish to hear, and especially whatever message that their handlers and self-interests wish them to deliver.  Until their true believers get knee-capped by reality.

If you have profits lingering from the stock market rally from last year, now might be the time to trim your sails, and put profits aside in some safer places.

The Fed was enormously generous, even to a fault, in opening the floodgates and smothering the Wall Street Banks in piles of newly 'printed' money, sparking a late stage blowoff top in financial assets late last year.

But for all the obvious reasons this cannot last. And the consequences of this may be inbound, along with those from other follies of our elite.

I continue to believe that many things will be revealed and made clear by July of this year. The cards seem to be falling that way.

But for now, let's just be watchful and waitful.

Get right and sit tight.  And keep your eyes and ears open.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Banquet of Consequences

"My cyclical calculations and trend forecasts suggest that July 2020 may be a decisive, if not pivotal, period in our time."

Jesse, Le Cafe Americain, 26 February 2019


"Sooner or later a crash is coming.  And it may be terrific."

Roger Babson, Sept. 15, 1929


“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people's bones and all manner of uncleanness. So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness."

Matthew 23:27


"My heart is restless until it rests in you my God."

Augustine of Hippo

Stocks managed to turn around early weakness, and squeezed out a minor gain.

The Dollar was up, gold was down, and silver was off doing its own breakout thing.

I do not know exactly how it might unfold, but I suspect that 2020 may be a significant time in our recent history.

And I will be surprised if we get out of this year without another major market correction on the order of 10 perent or more.

Trump is slowly imploding.  And he may cause our lawmaking elite to rethink the terms of the imperial Presidency.  I don't think he will be re-elected in 2020 if he runs.   And I believe that there is a real possibility that he may not finish this full term.

But that's just my opinion, and I could be wrong.

Take comfort in knowing that while life exists, it is never too late to be what you might have been.

Repentance, forgiveness, thankfulness.

Have a pleasant evening.