Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Lamentation for the Chastisement of the Lord

 

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder the prophets, and stone those whom God sends to you. As you have willed it, so your house is now yours — but is made desolate.”

Luke 13:34-35

"And some of us who have already begun to break the silence of the night have found that the calling to speak is often a vocation of agony, but we must speak.  We must speak with all the humility that is appropriate to our limited vision, but we must speak."

Martin Luther King, A Time to Break the Silence,  Riverside Church, 4 April 1967

"It is a dark day in our nation when high-level authorities will seek to use every method to silence dissent. But something is happening, and people are not going to be silenced."

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, Riverside Church, 30 April 1967

"But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, But If Not, Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 November 1967

"Now the problem is not only unemployment.  Do you know that most of the poor people in our country are working every day?  And they are making wages so low that they cannot begin to function in the mainstream of the economic life of our nation... If America does not use her vast resources of wealth to end poverty and make it possible for all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, she too will go to hell.”

Martin Luther King, All Labor Has Dignity, 18 March 1968

"We've got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn't matter with me now, because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life — longevity has its place.  But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.

So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything, I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."

Martin Luther King, 3 April 1968

The next day, 4 April 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered by elements of the US deep state in Memphis, Tennessee, exactly one year to the day after his sermon, A Time To Break the Silence.

As a reminder, US bond and equity markets will be closed on Monday January 19th in remembrance of Martin Luther King.

Stocks popped and flopped.

Gold and silver were under pressure, as is typical for a monthly stock market option expiration.

VIX is subdued.

The Dollar was unchanged.  I have expanded the chart so you can see it is in a trading range.

Bitcoin has failed to advance its breakout so far.

We should observe what happens over the next two years carefully.  

It is not often in a generation that we may observe the hidden hand of God as he administers his chastisement to the nations.  

"Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me.  Weep instead for yourselves and your children."
Luke 23:28

And, as always, they never can see it coming.

Have a pleasant weekend.  

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Raging Pride of the Ruling Class

 

"Friday, April 20, was Hitler's fifty-sixth birthday, and the Soviets sent him a birthday present in the form of an artillery barrage right into the heart of the city, while the Western Allies joined in with a massive air raid.

The radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the 'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of Berlin. What a cruel lie! These boys did not volunteer, but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS as a warning that, 'he who was not brave enough to fight had to die.'

When trees were not available, people were strung up on lamp posts. They were hanging everywhere, military and civilian, men and women, ordinary citizens who had been executed by a small group of fanatics. It appeared that the Nazis did not want the people to survive because a lost war, by their rationale, was obviously the fault of all of us. We had not sacrificed enough and therefore, we had forfeited our right to live, as only the government was without guilt."

Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel, The Battle of Berlin, 1966

"When narcissists fail they will falsely claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong. They will try to misdirect us or claim there is nothing to the allegations or circumstances. Any evidence presented, and those that present, it will be attacked aggressively and vindictively. They will seek to have it invalidated or claim that it is false, fake, or a product of vague conspiracies. As they lash out with vindictiveness, the malignant narcissist will trumpet their greatness, their real or imagined achievements, and portray themselves as worthy of being revered rather than reviled.

As circumstances become dire, the narcissist will not take any responsibility — ever. They will seek to find someone to blame for their troubles or downfall, preferably someone that cannot defend themselves. A scapegoat is always useful and when there is not a real one, one will be invented. In the process of casting blame, even the most loyal and stalwart will be discarded and denigrated with reptilian indifference.

Expect lies to increase and to be repeated exponentially. They will, even in light of factual evidence to the contrary, lie more profusely and adamantly. The narcissist will expect supporters, the unethical, and enablers to lie for them. If the narcissist is going to be brought down, they will also seek to bring everyone else around them down to vindictively make them suffer. As the end nears, the suffering of others is paramount to the malignant narcissist. It is their way of elevating themselves by malevolently paying back society with even more suffering.

Joe Navarro, FBI Behavioural Analysis Veteran, When the Narcissist Fails, Psychology Today, 2 January 2024

"The evil in this world is committed by the Pharisees of our own day, the self-righteous who think they are without sin because they are unwilling to suffer the discomfort of self-examination.  The evil hate the light — the light of goodness that shows them up, the light of scrutiny that exposes them, the light of truth that penetrates their deception.”

M. Scott Peck, People of the Lie, 1983
 

Stocks dipped again today, but came back a little bit into the late trading hours.

Gold and silver rallied higher, with silver tagging 93 intraday.

Remarkable.

Bitcoin has broken up and out of its short term trading range.   Let's see if it can sustain it.  It's impressive that it not following along with the NDX. 

It's a tale of two markets.  The overnight global market, and the daylight New York and London markets.

Big moves are coming this year, and big events that may surprise and shock us. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Empire of Lawlesssness

 

"The ultimate purpose of crime is to establish an endless empire. It seeks a state of complete insecurity and anarchy, founded upon the tainted ideals of a world thought doomed to annihilation.

When humanity, subjugated by the terror of crime, has been driven mad by fear and horror, and when chaos has become the supreme law, then the time for the empire of lawlessness will have come."

Fritz Lang, Das Testament des Dr. Mabuse, 1933

"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds: we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

Are we still of any use?  What we shall need is not geniuses, or cynics, or misanthropes, or clever tacticians, but plain, honest, straightforward men."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, After Ten Years, New Year 1943

"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?"

Romans 6:16

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically. They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission. Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941

"To accept that guilt, to admit one's complicity in such a horrendous assault on justice, to humble oneself and ask for forgiveness, would have taken a heroic act of self-awareness, humility and repentance. And worse, for these fanatics, it would diminish their pride, which was at the foundation of the most fervent supporters of such flamboyant excess. And so they lashed out, and killed everything that held up a mirror to their darkness, and showed them their pride was based on a lie."

Jesse, Seth, the Arbiter of Chaos, 15 May 2018 

Tech stocks led the way lower today, with the SP 500 maintaining an anchor to stocks' recent gains.

Gold bounced.  Silver gave some back.

VIX continues to creep up slowly.

Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow, along with the usual additional data.

I have little to no confidence in the economic data coming out of Washington at this point.

What I am watching for are the incongruities that inevitably crop up when one is cooking the books clumsily.  Things like productivity, participation and inflation.

The recent murder of an innocent American woman on her way home from taking her children to school by ICE agents is very troubling.   The bold lies and smears immediately put forward by official sources and the media are troubling.

But seriously, if people will not speak out against a brutal ethnic cleansing and genocide in clear sight, what can we possibly think that they will consider sacred? 

Why should we care about an individual, their risings and fallings, their perplexity and concerns, their fears and sorrows?  Because when the ocean's dry up, and the earth grows cold and dies, as the stars flicker and grow dim in the sky, and creation turns back into dust, their soul will continue, vibrantly alive, and their tears will have long been wiped away, by kindly hands.  And the secret of love is to care for something, someone, some divine goodness, more than you care for yourself.

"Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?”   Maximilian Kolbe

Have a care for your souls, for that is what this struggle is all about.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Emptiness: The Agony of Mammon

 

“We live in a world in which you can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world, in the real world, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”

Stephen Miller, CNN Interview, 6 January 2026

"The dazzling and consuming act of pride that transformed the angel of light into an angel and prince of darkness condemned him to an insatiable, and therefore desperate, need to acquire.  The loss of the wellspring of life gives rise to an essentially inextinguishable thirst.  The entire world can not fill the emptiness which the awareness of having left their rightful place in the world forms in the heart of a creature.

Having fallen from the eternal, Satan's desires are endless and insatiable.  Having fallen from pure Being, he seeks to possess.  But the problem is forever insoluble.  For in order to have and possess, it would be necessary to have life, to Be, and he is connected to life no longer.  All he takes into himself he destroys.

And to be sure, he can have it, since he is called Prince of this World in Scripture— but he will never have anything but the things of this world. He will never regain Heaven, which is properly the soul of this world, and the essence of existence... 

He knows this full well.  This is why his desire and his rabid jealousy fasten on our individual souls. He prowls around like a roaring lion in quest of his prey, says the Bible.  He prowls around us, like a criminal, obsessed by kidnapping.  But his victories will always be sterile.

One does not become a father by stealing a child.  One can steal the child, but not the paternity.  One can steal power, but not authority.  Satan can steal this world, but not its divine essence. And yet we humans can lose all of these things, which are our heritage as children of God.  It is the Devil's only chance.  He does not intend to miss it."

Denis de Rougemont, La Part du Diable, Switzerland, 1944

"The Unspeakable.  It is the void, the emptiness of the end.  Not the end of the world, but a climax of absolute finality in refusal, in equivocation, in disorder, in absurdity, which can be open again to truth only by miracle, by the coming of God."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable, New Directions, 1966

"Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history off the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor. The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business. The feasts of consumption sustain the economy, keep up the volume in the stock markets, employ the unemployable, excite the fevers of speculation, and stimulate the passion for political and sexual novelty."

Lewis H. Lapham, The Agony of Mammon, 1999

"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

Simone Weil, La pesanteur et la grâce, 1947

 

Stocks rallied up to new highs, and then fell, badly.

This foolish and baseless ascent followed by a horrific decline will be the theme for 2026.

 VIX stopped again at its exponential 20 day moving average

Gold and silver were pushed lower in this attempt to reassert the defiance of risk. 

 It will not work.

"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

The wages of sin are death.  And they will be paid. 

Have a pleasant evening.  

Stocks and Precious Charts - The Beast Stirs

 

"There are children of God and the children of the devil.  Those who do not do what is right and who do not love their brothers and sisters are not the children of God."

1 John 3:10

"The never ending alarms, the never ending phrases, it all produces apathy.  There is so much lethargy in the German people, and so much immorality, and above all so much stupidity."

Victor Klemperer, I Will Bear Witness 1933-41

“The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake.  We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.  Power is not a means; it is an end.”

George Orwell, 1984

"He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being. Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"What is happiness?  The feeling that power is growing, that resistance is overcome.  'The weak and the flawed shall perish' is the first principle of our charity.  And one should help them to perish.  What is more harmful than any vice?  Christian love."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist

"Why take a government by force when you can delude the public, energize a vocal minority, eliminate a few key leaders of any effective opposition thereby setting an example for any others, and through coercion and soft bribery simply buy it?"

Jesse, A Corporatist Coup d'Etat, 2 August 2012


Stocks were rallying in celebration of the liberation of Venezuela's oil reserves for the friends of crony capitalism.

Gold and silver rose sharply, buoyed by the increasing risks of lawlessness, rising like a phoenix from the decaying corpse of vanity. 

VIX is mesmerized by the wizards of finance.

The dollar took a nose dive, but retains its seat of power.

Bitcoin is bouncing around the upper bound of its recent trading range.

We will be seeing more serious economic news on Wednesday.

The rich man replied, ‘No, Father Abraham!  But if someone is sent to them from the dead, then they will repent of their sins and turn to God.’  But Abraham said, ‘If they won’t listen to Moses and the prophets, they will not be persuaded, even if someone rises from the dead.’”    Luke 16:19-31

What a man sows, so shall he reap. 

And they never see it coming.

Have a pleasant evening.