Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dead People, Seeing Only What They Want to See

"I was being called to surrender the very citadel of my self. I was completely in the dark. I did not really know what repentance was or what I was required to repent of.  It was indeed the turning point of my life.

God had brought me to my knees and made me acknowledge my own nothingness, and out of that knowledge I had been reborn. I was no longer the centre of my life and therefore I could see God in everything."

Bede Griffiths


"Do you not know that to whom you give yourselves as servants, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?"

Rom 6:16


"I see dead people.  Walking around like regular people.  They don't see each other.  They only see what they want to see.  They don't know that they're dead."

Cole Sear: The Sixth Sense

People love the sentimentality of their beliefs, the traditions and tribalism and forms of a self-conception, the good feeling that they get from believing that they are better than and different from the great body of mankind.  Religions do this  Even atheists and political parties and schools of economics and philosophy do this, since theirs constitutes a belief as well.  We can be wonderfully profane.

But when it comes to applying those higher principles of  belief in their daily lives, most people are highly selective, and in general want nothing to do with them, except as it is convenient, and serves their purposes without sacrifice.   For many religious faith is at most a moderate restraint on their willfulness. And so they become spiritually dead, dried husks of souls that have slowly starved the love from their hearts.

These are among the most difficult to persuade, because everything that comes to them is turned into a justification of their own wicked, lifeless souls. They view themselves as superior, and therefore victims of their inferiors.  They cling to their hypocrisy like a drowning man might cling to an anchor, down to the depths of the abyss.

And in these days of increasing wickedness, this is most of us.  Misery loves company, even if it is only to have someone else to despise, someone lower on the ladder to kick in the face.

Stocks were plunging again today, with the Dow Industrials finishing down over 1,000 points (4.15%), and the SP 500 down over 100 (3.75%).   Index futures went out on the lows, but are rebounding a bit after hours.  I will sort out any discrepancies and later action tomorrow.

The Dollar was largely unchanged, with gold and silver up a bit.   Gold and silver are interesting to say the least.  They seem to be coiling.  The gold registered for delivery has fallen quite a bit again on the Comex.  Silver remains an almost cornered supply with one large bank dominating identified physical supply.  As to the character and quality of that supply, who really knows but them?

Most of the pundits continue to urge the public to stay fully invested,   This is just some passing phase, a 'healthy correction' in a still vibrant bull market.

Americans are not immune to the pressure of living under a lie created by their elites.   US life expectancy has had an 'alarming drop.   The primary causes are drugs, alcohol, and suicide.

How are the mighty fallen, and broken their instruments of oppression.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Tendency Is To Push It As Far As You Can

the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unfaithful

"What will you do on the day of reckoning, and in the time of desolation which follows?  To whom will you flee for relief?   Where will you safeguard your riches?"

Isaiah 10:3


"Since the earliest stages of human history, of course, there have been bazaars, rialtos, and trading posts—all markets. But The Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning, other 'gods.'

The Market operated within a plethora of other institutions that restrained it. As Karl Polanyi has demonstrated in his classic work The Great Transformation, only in the past two centuries has The Market risen above these demigods and chthonic spirits to become today's First Cause...

Does anyone doubt that if the True Cross were ever really discovered, it would eventually find its way to Sotheby's?   The Market is not omnipotent—yet.   But the process is under way and it is gaining momentum."

Harvey Cox, The Market As God: Living In the New Dispensation


"Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as servants to obey, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?"

Rom 6:16

Today was another whippy day in the markets.   The usual suspects juiced the SP 500 markets higher in an attempt to reassert the exceptionalism of the American economy.

Alas, it was not to be.  After European markets closed and before Asia opened, the powers of big money withdrew their support, and the gains of the day were mislaid.

I do not want to make too much of it, but just watching the action on the futures seems to show a series of fingerprints all over the tape.

And why not, when the stock market has become the equivalent of the economy, and of empire?  Stocks are the mother's milk of inequality.

The US Dollar, la douleur du monde, rallied higher today, in what seemed to be a further technical gain from a deeply oversold condition.

Gold put in what may prove to be a tradeable bottom at 1311 today. Silver has been lagging, but at some point will act like the beta rabbit which it is and catch up in a furious pace.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.  This is far from over, and the story continues to unfold.   It is engaging to watch the confusion over the deflation of yet another bubble in financial assets is causing. It seems so obvious you have to wonder why even people sitting in the best seats in the house don't seem to understand it.

I am afraid that true believers in false idols will be drinking the koolaid of their own desires to the very end.

"Once you get locked into a serious drug collection, the tendency is to push it as far as you can.”

Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

Who could have seen it coming? 

Have a pleasant evening.

The US Tax System: How It Works and What It Does and The Greenspan Betrayal

"Today the United States is by far the most unequal rich democracy in the world...Inequality is associated with more frequent and more severe boom-and-bust cycles that make our economy more volatile and vulnerable.”

David Cay Johnston, Divided: The Perils of Our Growing Inequality

Although this video was made in 2015, it describes the recent 'tax reform' bill with some precision in respect to its methods and purposes.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Intervention in the Overnight Futures Market Turns the Tide on Stocks' Wild Ride

“In a world where success is the measure and justification of all things the figure of Him who was sentenced and crucified remains a stranger, and is at best the object of pity... Worldly history appeals in its own cause to the dictum that the end justifies the means. The figure of the Crucified invalidates all thought which takes success for its standard.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer


“These people honour me with their lips,
but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
they follow rules of their own making.”

Mark 7:6-7


“Compassion asks us to go where it hurts, to enter into the places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish. Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears. Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen

Stocks were swooning overnight. Early in the morning hours buying started turning the tide, with the SP 500 futures leading the way.

As we know from the past crises and statements, buying the SP 500 futures was the remedy recommended by Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

But we did have a significant correction, and it may not be over. One day's bounce does not a bull market make.

The problem was that the underpinnings of the market were so thin that it  took very little to set the market spinning on a wild ride as volatility, long suppressed, began to revert to the mean.

Trump said he would love to 'shut the government down' if the Democrats do not give him what he wants on immigration, and that 'the world is laughing at the US.'   Yep, but maybe not for the reasons he thinks.   His act is getting tired.

The Dollar managed to get a little boost higher and hang on to it, but silver and especially gold were methodically sold. Gold was smacked into the close, but bounced back three dollars after the close.

The XIV inverse to volatility ETN, marketed to retail investors by Credit Suisse, was incinerated in the market drop, and is said to be in liquidation.  Other funds were suspending redemptions.

Nothing has really changed. Arrogance and a disregard for the proper treatment of risk has once again been reinforced.

I am afraid that this is just a taste things to come.

Have a pleasant evening.