Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Le Roi S'amuse

 

"We are two of a kind: my weapon is my tongue,
his is a dagger;
I am a man of laughter,
he strikes the fatal blow!
The old man cursed me.
O mankind!  O nature! It was you who made me evil and corrupt!
I rage at my monstrous form, my cap and bells!
To be permitted nothing but to laugh!
I’m denied that common human right, to weep."

Guiseppe Verdi, Rigoletto


"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
doch das Messer sieht man nicht.

Mackie, welches war dein Preis?

Berthold Brecht, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, 1928

It was risk on today as stocks rallied and went out close to the highs.

The Fed's actions for September are probably already baked in, unless the CPI next week shows something extraordinary.

Or something happens.

Gold and silver rallied a bit.  

VIX declined.

The Dollar dropped to just hold on to the 109 handle with its fingertips.

The question most have is if this is another bear market rally, or the beginning of a more determined attempt to set a higher high, to take the Crashtrak model off the table.

Let's see what happens next week.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - This Forgotten Babylon

 

"I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shatter'd visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamp'd on these lifeless things,
The hand that mock'd them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:

'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

 Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias


"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 16:30-31


"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

 

Stocks managed to hold a rally and go out near the highs, despite the usual wobbly day.

The VIX declined.

The Dollar declined a bit.

Gold fell a little, but silver rode with equities.

Some miners I hold now for trade rallied nicely, despite the loss in gold.

Many things are at play now, exogenous events that may be hard to predict.

Equally hard to predict is the madness that overtakes lose who forget who they are, and the place that they hold in creation. 

For what does it profit a man...

Are you not yet entertained?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Financial Dreadnoughts

 

BILL MOYERS: And you say that this oligarchy consists of six megabanks.   What are the six banks?

JAMES KWAK: They are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.

BILL MOYERS: And you write that they control 60 percent of our gross national product?

JAMES KWAK: They have assets equivalent to 60 percent of our gross national product. And to put this in perspective, in the mid-1990s, these six banks or their predecessors, since there have been a lot of mergers, had less than 20 percent. Their assets were less than 20 percent of the gross national product.

BILL MOYERS: And what's the threat from an oligarchy of this size and scale?

SIMON JOHNSON: They can distort the system, Bill. They can change the rules of the game to favor themselves. And unfortunately, the way it works in modern finance is when the rules favor you, you go out and you take a lot of risk. And you blow up from time to time, because it's not your problem. When it blows up, it's the taxpayer and it's the government that has to sort it out.

BILL MOYERS: So, you're not kidding when you say it's an oligarchy?

JAMES KWAK: Exactly. I think that in particular, we can see how the oligarchy has actually become more powerful in the last since the financial crisis.  If we look at the way they've behaved in Washington. 

For example, they've been spending more than $1 million per day lobbying Congress and fighting financial reform.  I think that's for some time, the financial sector got its way in Washington through the power of ideology, through the power of persuasion. 

And in the last year and a half, we've seen the gloves come off.  They are fighting as hard as they can to stop reform.

Bill Moyer's Journal, The Financial Oligarchy in the US, April 16, 2010

It was risk on today, as stocks rallied pretty much until the end of the day, going out on the highs.

VIX dropped as one might expect.

The Dollar gave up the 110 handle and more.

Gold and especially silver rallied hard off the recent price suppression.

Silver was kicking butt with both legs.

Let's see is this was just a flash-in-the-pan bear market relief rally or the beginning of a genuine bottom.

There was intraday commentary Authoritarianism of the Utopias.

Have a pleasant evening.