Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wanton Hearts - Reaping the Whirlwind

 

"Be not deceived, for God is not mocked.  Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap."

Galatians 6:7

“Then the rich man said, ‘I beg you, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father’s house. For I have five brothers for him to warn, so that they also will not come to this place of desolation and torment.’ But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets.  Let them listen to them.’

But the rich man again said, ‘No, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead comes back and speaks to them, they will repent.’ And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they listen if someone tells them who has risen from the dead.’”

Luke 16:27-31

"And they treat the wounds of my people falsely saying peace, peace, where there is no peace."

Jeremiah 8:11

“'You that are cursed, depart from me into the eternal darkness prepared for the devil and his angels; for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'

Then they will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?' Then he answered, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’”

Matthew 25:40-46

"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

Apparently the Bank of England's grand gesture to stabilize the gilt markets did not have sufficient carry over to help out equities.

Stocks slumped, fairly hard.

The Dollar dropped, just barely hanging on to the 112 handle.

Gold finished flat.

Silver lost ground in sympathy with stocks.

VIX rose.

Stocks are hanging on to a must hold support level.

Bank of America issued a rare downgrade of tech darling Apple.

More and more tech companies are instituting capex cuts and hiring freezes.

The sabotage of a key Russian natural gas pipeline to Europe is a shocking escalation in the proxy war in the Ukraine.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Broken Hearts

 

The Penitence of Peter

"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy.  Those who do not want mercy never seek it.  It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."

Thomas Merton

"To enter heaven is to become more human than you ever succeeded in being on earth; to enter hell, is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.' To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or 'damned ghost' – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will.

The real problem is not why some pious, humble, believing people suffer, but why some do not. Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn to God when everything is going well for us. We 'have all we want' is a terrible saying when 'all' does not include God. We find God an interruption.

You can have no greater sign of confirmed pride than when you think you are humble enough.

Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world. No doubt pain as God's megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion. But it gives the only opportunity the bad man can have for amendment. it removes the veil; it plants the flag of truth within the fortress of the rebel soul.

Mental pain is less dramatic than physical pain, but it is more common and also more hard to bear. The frequent attempt to conceal mental pain increases the burden: it is easier to say 'My tooth is aching' than to say 'My heart is broken'.

Pain provides an opportunity for heroism; the opportunity is seized with surprising frequency. But if suffering is good, ought it not to be pursued rather than avoided? I answer that suffering is not good in itself. What is good in any painful experience is, for the sufferer, his submission to the will of God, and, for the spectators, the compassion aroused and the acts of mercy to which it leads.

I have seen great beauty of spirit in some who were great sufferers. I have seen men, for the most part, grow better not worse with advancing years, and I have seen the last illness produce treasures of fortitude and meekness from most unpromising subjects.”

C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist— and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life.”

Léon Bloy

"Suffering is a means by which God saves us, afflicting us so we do not lapse into vain self-sufficiency, a pride and a perverse individualism that gathers us blindly into ourselves, and separates us from His own creation. 

To suffer is how we grow in humility, and conform ourselves to do what He commands, rather than as we may will.  Prayer is how we sustain ourselves in times of both suffering and joy, with humility in this life, as we resort not only to ourselves or to the world, but to all things with God. 

And so we find comfort in His will, and the conversations that we keep with His many tender mercies. The world can not see this, and in not seeing does not understand.   To the world we are fools.  

His consolations and comforts are hidden, delivered to us in quiet moments, heart to heart. And so He gathers us together to Himself, and keeps us safe, and slowly takes us from this world and the dark powers therein, that search endlessly for souls to make their own, and to devour. "

Jesse, 15 May 2018

 

The Bank of England came to the rescue of the gilts market this morning, pledging to buy 'an unlimited amount' of bonds.

While this was obviously just kicking the can down the road as they say, on the premise of easing pressures of dislocation and disorder in their markets, traders nevertheless chose to take it a sign of more general central bank intervention.

And so stocks rallied sharply and held their gains into the close.

Gold and silver were smacked down hard in the overnight, as gut punch to the new holders of futures contracts from the recent option expiration. 

But with their expiry manipulation done, gold and silver rocketed higher.

The Dollar fell sharply off the signal to the markets by the BoE and the new appetite for riskier assets..   It was very overbought.

Bully managed to take stocks off the danger of breaking down through the important second low.

Let's see if they can keep it up.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Vultures and Corruption - A Fairly Impressive Failure For Stocks to Rally

 

"As a country becomes industrialized, its governance and corruption challenges do not disappear. They simply morph and become more sophisticated: Transfer of a briefcase stashed with cash is less frequent.

Instead, subtler forms of capture and 'legal corruption' exist: an expectation of a future job for a regulator in a lobbying firm, or a campaign contribution with strings attached. In many countries this may be legal, even if unethical. In industrialized nations undue influence is often legally exercised by powerful private interests, which in turn influence the nation's regulations, policies and laws."

Daniel Kaufmann, Corruption And The Global Financial Crisis, Forbes, 27 January 2009

And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?'  And He said to them, 'Where death is, there will be a gathering of vultures.'”

Luke 17:37

"A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including themselves. 

The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.

And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy.  The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious, organized hypocrisy."

Jesse,  What Is a Credibility Trap, 18 September 2014

 

Stocks made a serious attempt to rally off that deep low from yesterday.

And for the first half of the day they were doing fairly well.

But alas, a rally was not meant to be, and in the afternoon the stock rally failed impressively.

Gold and silver also attempted to rally off their oversold condition, but they too could not hold their gains, although gold did finish a bit higher.

The VIX rose.

The Dollar edged higher into the 114 handle.

In news after the bell sixteen Banks were fined $1.1 Billion for failing to maintain records of communications between their employees.  

The usual excuses were being made, yada yada.  But collusion between employees to break the law is a commonplace temptation that requires the Banks to maintain records of those communications.

Stock are at a 'must hold' point here on the charts, and a further decline from here may destabilize things further.

Needless to say, the markets are one event away from a panic.  

But that's how it is when journeying through experiments in lawlessnes.

Have a pleasant evening.