Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And Who Then Will Be Able to Stand

 

"They will cry out to me but I will not answer; they will search but will not find me.  For they hated knowledge and chose not to respect their Lord.  They refused to accept my commandments and spurned all my warnings.  Therefore they shall eat the bitter fruit of their ways, and be gutted by their schemes.   The foolish turn away from me — to death.  For fools are destroyed by their own pride and self-satisfaction.  But whoever listens to me will be saved, and live in peace without fear of disaster.”

Proverbs 1:28-33

"The head of the beast seemed to have been wounded, but the wound had been healed. The whole earth was amazed and so followed the beast. And they worshiped the dragon because he had given authority to the beast. They worshiped the beast also, saying, 'Who is like the beast? Who can fight and resist it?' And the beast was allowed to make arrogant claims and boasts which were insulting to God, and he was permitted to exercise power for forty-two months."

Revelation 13:3-5

"Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It’s the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest. Pride is spiritual cancer: it eats up the very possibility of love, or contentment, or even common sense.”

C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, 1944

"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration. The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help. They came from psychiatric clinics and children's hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps. The number of victims is huge, the number of offenders who were sentenced, small."

Commemorative Tablet, Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin

"And then the man of lawlessness will be revealed, whom the Lord will destroy with the breath of His mouth, and bring to nothing with the brightness of His glory.  The coming of the lawless one is according to Satan’s works, with false miracles, signs, and wonders, and with every unrighteous deception for those who are perishing.  They would not accept the love of truth in order to be saved."

2 Thessalonians 2:8-10

Stocks took a hard dive into the close, as the geopolitical risks shaded the allure of another stock option expiration shell game.

Export Import prices were steaming in this morning's economic news. 

Oil was rising sharply.  Hint, hint.

VIX woke from its slumbers.

Geopolitical risks are sending tremors through the global markets. 

And who then will be able to stand?

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder the prophets, and stone those who are sent as messengers to you.  How many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were not willing.  Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate."

Have a pleasant weekend. 

Stocks and Precious Metals and Charts - Tokens and Instruments of Evil

 

"We must scrupulously guard the civil rights and civil liberties of all our citizens, whatever their background. We must remember that any oppression, any injustice, any hatred, is a wedge designed to attack our civilization."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Speech to The American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born, January 9, 1940

"I swore never to be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented. There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest."

Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech, 10 December 1986

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it. Whether this very Apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, as he has already been delayed so long, we cannot know; but at any rate this Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death."

John Henry Newman, The Patristical Idea of Antichrist, 1838

"Laws exist to protect society from the actions of aberrant personalities. It does not shock us when they wield a gun. Why then does it surprise us when they utilize a pen, a glib personal patina, a reckless disregard for others, and a persistent, amoral cunning? Until there is reform and a restoration of justice there will be no sustained and genuine recovery."

Jesse, A Brief History of the Greatest Financial Fraud in History, 15 December 2008

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe."

Frederick Douglass, Speech on the twenty-fourth anniversary of Emancipation, April 1886

"When we join together in serving our local community, we add strength to our national community, we help to fortify the structure of our whole Union. Human kindness has never weakened the stamina or softened the fiber of a free people. A nation does not have to be cruel to be tough."

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Radio Address from Washington, D.C., October 13, 1940.

There will be a minor stock option expiration on this coming Friday.

I did not listen to the news while I was in China for the past couple of weeks.  So I do not have much to offer at this time. 

The primary force that will be driving the markets is the macro conditions proceeding from the ongoing conflicts in Iran and the Ukraine.

The US and much of the West is lurching towards a generational economic crisis. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

There and Back Again

 

"Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive."

Sir Walter Scott

We are back in the States, arriving late last night.

Here are the state of the charts today.

As you know US markets are closed for Columbus Day.

Options expiration (run of the mill) coming up on Friday.

Let's see what happens tomorrow. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Remember, Remember

 

“Persuading the people to vote against their own best interests has been the awesome genius of the American political elite.”

Gore Vidal, Homage to Daniel Shays, 1972

"Nothing is great but truth, and the smallest truth is great.  The other day I had a thought, which I put like this: Even a harmful truth is useful, for it can be harmful only for the moment and will lead to other truths, which must always become useful, very much so.  Conversely, even a useful error is harmful, for it can be useful only for the moment, enticing us into other errors, which become more and more harmful."

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Letter to Charlotte von Stein, 1787

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

H.L. Mencken, The Smart Set, 1922

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.

The minority has discovered a powerful help in influencing majorities. It has been found possible so to mold the mind of the masses that they will throw their newly gained strength in the desired direction. The mechanism by which ideas are disseminated on a large scale is propaganda, in the broad sense of an organized effort to spread a particular belief or doctrine. Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government.

This practice of creating circumstances and of creating pictures in the minds of millions of persons is very common. Virtually no important undertaking is now carried on without it, whether that enterprise be building a cathedral, endowing a university, marketing a moving picture, floating a large bond issue, or electing a president. Sometimes the effect on the public is created by a professional propagandist, sometimes by an amateur deputed for the job. The important thing is that it is universal and continuous; and in its sum total it is regimenting the public mind every bit as much as an army regiments the bodies of its soldiers.

Modern propaganda is a consistent, enduring effort to create or shape events to influence the relations of the public to an enterprise, idea or group. Clearly it is the intelligent minorities which need to make use of propaganda continuously and systematically. In the active proselytizing minorities in whom selfish interests and public interests coincide lie the progress and development of America. Only through the active energy of the intelligent few can the public at large become aware of and act upon new ideas."

Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

"Many will become addicted to hateful and malicious thoughts and hateful words. Slaves to their desires, they will be ferocious, angry despisers of what is good and right. With brutal treachery they will act without restraint, bigoted and blinded by clouds of conceit. They will demand and find their delight in the pleasures of this world, and ignore their need to serve God. They may act religious, but they want to serve themselves."

2 Timothy 3:1-5

As a reminder there will be an option expiration on September 18^th, and it looks like it may be a memorable example of a triple witch in the latter stages of a dodgy episode of egregiously mispriced risk.

Keep a weather eye on the horizon, for the witch of November may come early. 

So, stocks finally bent to the fracas in the Persian Gulf and sensed, as missiles took out various ships and bases and reportedly even struck a carrier, that the risk of war and oil disruptions are in the air.

Stocks fell but in a fairly controlled manner.  No panic yet.

Oil rose again and is pushing up against that trendline for a breakout.

The weather might have to get a little chilly for some to wake up.  Natural gas is sleeping.

Dollar chop.

Gold and silver rallied.  I don't know why Bessent is bothering, since he has his hands full of yen, but it feels like gold is being held down.  

At some point, again, it is going to rocket higher.

Bitcoin is dawdling around a trading range.

Inflation data coming out the next two days.  I am pressed to believe any numbers coming out of the Administration now.  

Bully worship seems to be the trend in the West these days.   It's like a bad relationship that never seems to end. 

Our 'thought leaders' and our politicians are about as bad as I have ever seen, 

This is reminiscent of the days of Senator McCarthy and the Red Scare.   Barely a lick of conscience, courage, or conviction for the Constitution and rule of law anywhere, except for a few shining lights now and then. 

We will have some serious work to do in the days ahead.  I probably won't be here to see it, but I hope you will do yourselves proud.  

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Precarious Propositions

 

“Where is the noble face of modesty, or the strength of virtue, now that blasphemy is in power and men have put justice behind them, and there is no law but lawlessness, and none join in fear of the gods?”

Euripides, Iphigenia in Aulis

“The outstanding negative quality of the totalitarian elite is that it never stops to think about the world as it really is and never compares the lies with reality.  Totalitarianism in power invariably replaces all first-rate talents, regardless of their sympathies, with those crackpots and fools whose lack of intelligence and creativity is still the best guarantee of their loyalty.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

"Even if it were to explode into smithereens today, the fact would remain that [the Party] recently won fifteen million votes.  Its brutality, loud-mouthedness and brainlessness have acted not as a deterrent but rather as an attraction, and have generated unconditional and subservient followers."

Carl von Ossietzky, Die Weltbühne, January, 1933

"If at the start this cancerous growth in the nation was not particularly noticeable, it was only because there were still enough forces at work that operated for the good, so that it was kept under control. As it grew larger, however, and finally in an ultimate spurt of growth attained ruling power, the tumor broke open, as it were, and infected the whole body."

The White Rose, Second Leaflet, Munich 1942

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord', will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only one who does the will of my Father 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 accomplish great things in your name?' Then I will declare to them, ''I do not know you. Depart from me, you who practice lawlessness.”

Matthew 7:21-23

VIX turned higher as the Persian Gulf is turning quickly into a serious shooting match.

AFTER THE BELL: Iran orders a complete evacuation of oil tankers in Kuwaiti and Bahraini ports — warning crews to leave immediately or the vessels will be targeted, potentially triggering a chain reaction across the region, per Tasnim News. The warning applies to tankers at anchor or docked, with an attack reportedly potentially coming within hours. It comes after reported U.S. strikes on Iranian oil tankers, with Tehran now openly signaling immediate retaliation.

During the day Wall Street plays their games, because they don't face many consequences for their duplicity, and have a fine example to follow in Washington.

Things will improve once we revert to the mean on that topic.

Gold got hammered lower late in the day.   Probably wiseguys cleaning up their Non-Farm Payroll bets.

Silver rallied and fell.

Bitcoin drifted lower.

The Dollar is still in its usual chop, but off the 99 handle.

Oil, despite some of the intraday paper games, is starting to break out.

This is going to get very ugly.  

Have a pleasant evening.