Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Plague of the Unspeakable

 

"When we are the victims of an illusion we do not feel it to be an illusion but a reality.  It is the same perhaps with evil.  As soon as we do evil, the evil appears as a sort of duty.  Once a certain class of people has been placed by the temporal and spiritual authorities outside the ranks of those whose life has value, then nothing comes more naturally to men than murder. 

As soon as men know they that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles."

Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce, 1947

"Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil.  It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.”

Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate, 1959 

"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 it from lasting. Foolishness 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 exceptional humans: they did not believe in plagues.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be human, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that plagues were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How could they have given a thought to anything like a plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are plagues."

Albert Camus, The Plague, 1947

"The more power a government has the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects."

R. J. Rummel, Death by Government: A History of Mass Murder and Genocide Since 1900

"Cherish therefore, the spirit of our people, and keep alive their attention.  Do not be too severe upon their errors, but reclaim them by enlightening them.  If once they become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress, and Assemblies, judges and governors shall all become wolves...for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor."

Thomas Jefferson, Letter to Edward Carrington, US National Archives, 16 January 1787
 

Stocks kicked into rally mode today, as the ongoing conflict in the Mideast looked like it might give the boys of Wall Street a little breathing room.

They wanted to get back what they lost with the sneak attack on Friday.

And, as a reminder there will be a triple witch stock market option expiration on this Friday.

So they may get a little more time to execute their usual script.

Gold was slammed.  Silver not so much.

Bitcoin rallied back.

It was a day for risky assets to shine.

If you watch something like this analysis by Alastair Cooke, you will get a better idea, in plain language, of how a seasoned diplomat and political observer might perceive what just happened.

It is not a good look for the exceptional.  One never participates in shooting people with whom you are negotiating under a flag of truce and parlay, no matter what distasteful lies and unworthy excuses with which you may choose to rationalize it.

I had thought we were a little better than to be complicit in something sordid and dishonorable like this.

These are the fruits of moral hazard. 

"The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God."

Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: 1933-1945

What are we becoming.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Pandemic of Willful Goofiness - Stock Index Option Expiration

 

“You hypocrites.  You know how to interpret the appearance of the earth and the sky; why do you not know how to interpret the present time?  Why can you not judge for yourselves what is right?"

Luke 12:54-57

"The undeserving maintain power by promoting hysteria."

Frank Herbert

"Demagogues are willing to do or say anything to gain office or to consolidate their power.  Unconstrained by ideology, they have no concern for the consequences of their actions.   Anything that serves to make them more powerful is good enough for them — even if the political system that facilitated their rise should be destroyed in the process.  They wreck the informal rules of civility that democracies require to survive.  Once voters are activated along violent lines and fervently believe the myths propagated by the demagogue, the dam is broken; the ordinary rules of democratic politics no longer apply, and there is no telling what might come next."

Daniel Ziblatt

“Against such foolishness we are defenseless.   Reason falls on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

"Anyone can be misled by a clever person, and no one likes to readily admit that they have been had.   It is a sign of character and maturity to realize this, and admit your were deceived, and to demand change and reform.  But some cannot do this.  It seems as though the more incorrect that the truth shows them to be, the louder and more strident they become in shouting down and denying the reality of the situation.  And anyone who denies their fantasies becomes someone to be feared and hated, shunned and eliminated." 

Jesse, 18 June 2012


 Stocks rebounded strongly today.

Gold and silver rocketed higher after the recent, determined price suppression.

The Dollar slipped back from its recent high.

The VIX continued to move lower, slowly.

It's all about the Benjamins, the stock option expiration today.

Take a good look at the gold futures chart.  Notice any patterns?

The option market is a bucket shop.

Nevertheless, we are one exogenous event from a market meltdown.

Dancing on the rim of a volcano, as it were.

People seem determined to embrace their own destruction out of a fit of unrighteous anger, fear, and willfulness.

We'll try to stay out of their way as best we can, and remember them in our prayers.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And There's the Rinse - Quad Witch on Friday

 

"If I speak with the words of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.  And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have the faith to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything that I have, and if I hand myself over for sacrifice but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited, does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs.  Love finds no joy in wickedness but rejoices in the truth."

1 Corinthians 13:1-7

"Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.   It will be too late then to choose your side.   That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."

C. S. Lewis, 1944

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. They will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

'Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed.'

Mt. 26:24


The headline yesterday here was 'Wax On, Wax Off.' 

The spike rally of the last two days was the 'wax on.'

Guess what today was?

There is a triple witch option expiration on this Friday, based on the calendar I have been posting.

In short, this was a trading setup for the quad witch.  What a surprise.

We even had the usual talking heads muttering about a 100 bp increase by the Fed in September.

What did we say before?   75 bp is baked in, the pivot is an delusion, and 100 bp is highly unlikely.

The Dollar rocketed higher today, slamming gold and silver.  

I didn't think they had much of a shot at moving higher, especially given the dearth of physical in Hong Kong.  They need to scour some coin out of a few of the ETFs. 

I would be a little more constructive on the metals after today, with due caution.

Stock market volume was nothing to write home about.   No real panic.

This is another indication that this was a fairly cynical trading gambit.

And the volatility will get worse, as long as regulation stays so subdued, and the risk reward for cheating is so favorable.

So Jay, how is that 'internal investigation' coming along into that brazen insider trading by the Fed Governors?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We Watched It Coming - Never Say Again You Did Not Know

 

“By means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate.

Sophie Scholl


“Hatred can be nurtured anywhere, idealism can be perverted into sadism anywhere.  The inferno could erupt anew anywhere.  The history of man is the history of crimes, and history can repeat.  So information is a defense.   Through this we can build, we must build, a defense against repetition."

Simon Wiesenthal


"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky. There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise. When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves. In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues."

Albert Camus, The Plague


“You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again that you did not know.”

William Wilberforce


What is surprising is not that we are called to do so much, but rather, so little.  Love and be grateful to God, treat people as you would like to be treated with respect, kindness, mercy and forgiveness.  Do not lie or steal or cheat or act with violence and lawlessness, do not be proud and look down on your fellow creatures, and act with honor and respect for the gifts of His creation.

And when we fail through weakness, we are readily forgiven if we are but genuinely repentant for our misdeeds, by action or omission.

But all too often we bargain away our souls, one piece at a time, rebelling from even these small and reasonable requests to goodness— and for relatively so little in return.  A little more money, some prestige and recognition from the worldly, more than the other guy, and a feeling of being superior to the rest of humanity. 

Those people are fools, but I am smart, and fully deserve of everything that we have been given, owing nothing to anyone, including God.  We are self-sufficient; we are like God.

And we may hold on to that poisonous bargain out of stiff-necked, stubborn pride and a willful blindness refusing to repent and admit our errors, until we allow them to drag us into the abyss, often bringing our family and friends with us.  

Misery loves company, and the sinful insulate themselves from a recognition of the foulness of their hearts by rationalizing their sinfulness by excusing it, and attempting to convert those around them to the same wickedness.

Even now most will gloss over this, or assume I am speaking only about their financial investments, or the markets in general.  Or those other guys.  Because that is where their hearts and minds are, with what they truly love and serve, to get what they want.

The worst may be those who embrace the leaven of the Pharisees, and serve some greater good until they kill goodness incarnate, and make their deal with the powers of darkness with their 'righteous anger.'

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’

Let me be blunt.   In the greater scheme of things the only thing that matters is your soul, for that is what this is all about.  

And most are just letting theirs go, little by little,into accepting anger and hatred, lies and violence and lawlessness.  I have seen it before, in the 50s and 60s.  Every century is like every other, but each think that they are exceptional, and that theirs is the worst.

It is a story old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Stocks took a dive today, as reality continues to puncture the terrific asset bubble that was fomented by the trousered apes and their financial system.

Gold and silver were hammered today, as they seemed to be no haven from the selling except the Dollar.  Not even bonds.

VIX took a jump higher.

The impetus for this latest selling seems to be the notion that has been spreading among the trading desks and their media is the idea that the Fed is going to surprise the markets with a 75 to 100 basis point rate increase on Wednesday.

It's possible, but not probable.

Did I mentions that there is an option expiration on Friday.

Never forget that these jokers have no conscience, and thereby no shame, in their higher priorities.

The CrashTrak model is being updated since we set some new lows today.

I am struggling with a number of probabilities here.   Did we just reaffirm and more firmly set that second low, or are we truly into a failed rally scenario and a deeper decline.

A crash may be a misnomer here.   The average duration from top to break in a 'crash' is generally about 62 days.  We are well beyond that at 190+ days.

The selling is quite orderly.   And the seasonality is all wrong.  The VIX has not yet topped 40.

The dip buyers keep coming back in, dragged by their perverse need to beat the other guy.

Winning...

I am thinking this *could* be a crash in slow motion, thanks to the interference of the Fed at al.

Or maybe more likely the genesis of a grinding bear market as we had seen in 73-74.

I will be thinking more about it.

For most the higher ground is the place to be.

But if your greed drags you out into the deeper waters, well, enjoy.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Shall We Stop This Bleeding? - A Shining City on a Hill

 

"It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue, and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice.  Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character."

Joseph Heller, Catch 22


"Many of our rich men have not been content with equal protection and equal benefits, but have besought us to make them richer by act of Congress.  By attempting to gratify their desires we have in the results of our legislation arrayed section against section, interest against interest, and man against man, in a fearful commotion which threatens to shake the foundations of our Union."

Andrew Jackson, Message to the Senate On the Veto of the Second Bank of the United States, 1832


"Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires.   You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.  We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel


"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.   I do not mean that they may not wish to come out of hell, but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good.   They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

Stocks slumped badly today, purportedly on a warning from SNAP and the economic data from this morning, which fell a bit short on the PMI.

Unsurprisingly, they managed to take back quite a bit of their losses in the afternoon trade. 

The Dollar fell further, dropping into the 101 handle. 

Gold and silver rallied, and held most of it. 

Tomorrow is a not inconsequential option expiration for precious metals on the Comex. 

Dolly will be going in for surgery tomorrow, and her return will most likely happen at the end of the day. 

Old age is no joke, even for good little dogs. 

So unless something unexpected happens, there will likely be no commentary tomorrow night. 

Have a pleasant evening.