SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Days

The markets were surprisingly quiet today despite the rally back up in the tightening loop in US stocks.

The news was a snooze, except for China and Greece.

China is enjoying a bit of a bounce, which is highly consistent with the comparison to the Nasdaq dot com bubble graph which I compared it to last week.

As for Greece, I think the progress of the talks is about what one would expect.

Next week will be more of the same.

Have a pleasant weekend

 

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Some Group Is Sitting On These Markets

"Gold is looking like the dog that just did not bark -- but not uniquely so. Most safe-haven assets are looking distinctly lackluster, including the VIX index. Either 5,000 years of safe-haven buying has just become bunk, or there is a desire to portray what is evidently a financial and economic crisis as nothing to be concerned about."

Ross Norman, Sharps Pixley


“In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

At least in my judgement, the precious metal markets are being consistently rigged.

I believe the reason that they are being rigged is that the financiers have convinced the political class that this is a necessary action in order to prevent a panic, a run on the dollar and the bonds, and a seepage of critical funds into an unproductive investment as compared to equities for example.

We are just defending what is ours, right? And what is ours is the global dollar hegemony.

This is really just another excuse for looting, picking both the global public pockets and the Treasury's.

This sort of thing seems to happen periodically, at least once per generation, and the system generally has to get washed out badly, and then reform may come. You can see a clear trend back to the early Reagan years for this particular dalliance with the overreach and madness of the moneyed interests.

Protracted market rigging tend to distort supply profoundly. And there should be no doubt that the distortions and excesses of our current round of economic quackery have caused an historic imbalance of wealth and power.  And the rigging of the gold and silver markets have badly affected the ability of supply to meet demand.

Oh well. Interesting times.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Taking Profits, Holding More Cash

 

As I mentioned the other day, this is now the kind of market where it makes sense to take profits if you have them, and hold more cash until the mispriced risks resolve themselves.  I am holding mostly cash and precious metals for myself, and am looking carefully at a couple equity plays along the lines of the precious metals, but not with any particular conviction.  This market crisis needs to resolve.

 

The biggest drivers of global risk are the collapsing China asset bubble and the inherently unstable governance of the Eurozone, manifesting as it is now in Greece, and all the uncertainty that this brings.

 

But Spain, Portugal and Italy face similar challenges.   German hubris is destroying the Eurozone which itself is not a particularly durable model of organization economically and politically. 

 

One of most difficult issues is the unreliability of the media and the political and economic class to tell the truth, particularly as the quadrennial power struggle called the Presidential elections approaches.   Spin and deception are flying hot and heavy.   And unfortunately most of the captains and crew of the ship are busy packing goods into their personal lifeboats.

 

Speaking of unsustainable, take a look at the spike in new unemployment claims and the high continuing claims number in the US economic data.   And the Fed is still biased towards raising rates, and continuing to pump the top down stimulus into a broken system.  Madness.

 

As for the Congress and the Administration, politically the US has not been this badly led for quite some time, and I vividly remember the Nixon years.  

 

So, let us protect ourselves, both financially and spiritually, with an eye towards the things that really matter.  This is really all one can do for now.

 

Have a pleasant evening.