Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ubi Sunt, Ubi Caritas - Option Expiration Wash and Rinse

 

"Where are the princes of this world, and those who lorded it over the creatures of the earth?  Those who made sport of the birds of the air, and hoarded up riches in which they trusted, and for whom there is no limit to their greed, those who schemed to get wealth, and were always anxious about their possessions.

But now there is no trace left of them.  They have vanished down into the bowels of the earth, and others have risen to take their place."

Baruch 3:16-19

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. For whoever wishes to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for my sake and that of the gospel will save it. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose their soul? What could one give in exchange for their soul? Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this lawless and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with his angels."

Mark 8:34-38

"For the preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to those who are saved it is the power of God.  It is written: 'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will cast away the understanding of the learned.'

Where is the wise man?  Where is the learned of the law?   Where is the philosopher of this world?   Has not God made the wisdom of this world look like foolishness?   When the world through wisdom could not know God, in His wisdom it pleased God to save those who came to believe through the foolishness of our preaching."

1 Corinthians 1:18-21

"¿Qué fue entonces del rico y de su poderío
de la vanaglorïa, de su orgulloso brío?
Todo ya es pasado y corrió como río;
de todo su pensar fincó él mucho frío."

Pedro López de Ayala, Ubi sunt

"The souls of the virtuous are in the hands of God, no torment shall ever touch them.  In the eyes of the unbelieving they appeared to die, their going looked like a tragedy, their leaving us, like a desolation; but they are at peace.  God has put them to the test and proven them worthy to be with him; he has tested them like gold in a furnace, and accepted them as a sacred offering.  They who trust in him will understand the truth, those who are faithful will live with him forever in love; for grace and mercy await his holy ones."

Wisdom 3:1-6, 9

 

Just another options expiration.

So we had stocks plunge and give the public another knuckle biting option expiration, based on what a couple of non-voting Fed heads said yesterday.

This market is all about leverage, of hot money and information.

Gold and silver caught a stiff wash and rinse, which was pretty much par for the course.  I think I mentioned it about every day.  After a deep plunge they ended about unchanged to green on the day.

The Dollar ended up largely unchanged.

The US will be closed on Monday in honor of past presidents.

Ubi sunt.  Ubi caritas.

“Verily verily I say to you, whoever hears my word, and believes in him who sent me, has eternal life and will not be judged, but has crossed over from death into life."

John 5:24

For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

οἵη περ φύλλων γενεή, τοίη δὲ καὶ ἀνδρῶν.
φύλλα τὰ μέν τ’ ἄνεμος χαμάδις χέει, ἄλλα δέ θ’ ὕλη
τηλεθόωσα φύει, ἔαρος δ’ ἐπιγίγνεται ὥρη·
ὣς ἀνδρῶν γενεὴ ἡ μὲν φύει ἡ δ’ ἀπολήγει.

Iliad 6.146–149

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Blind Heroes of the Resistance

 

“Since it was not I who was making the light, since it came to me from outside, it would never leave me.  I was only a passageway, a vestibule for this brightness.  The seeing eye was in me.  Still there were times when the light faded, almost to the point of disappearing. It happened every time I was afraid..."

After the first deportations of French Jews and the first arrests for resistance that Jacques became aware of, he fell ill.  Jacques realized that the German occupation of France was his illness.  And so he became the leader of a Resistance Movement.  

Everyday Jacques knelt in prayer;  “My God, give me the strength to keep my promises. Since I made them in a good cause, they are yours to keep as well as mine.  By myself I know how to do almost nothing, but if you will it I am capable of almost everything. Most of all give me prudence. Your enthusiasm I no longer need, for I am filled with it.

The Lord took pity on the poor mortal who was so helpless before him.  But there was one thing left which I could do: not refuse God’s help, the breath he was blowing upon me.  That was the one battle I had to fight, hard and wonderful all at one: not to let my body be taken by the fear.  For fear kills, and joy maintains life...

I was nothing but skin and bones, but I had recovered.  The fact was I was so happy, that now Buchenwald seemed to me a place which if not welcome, was at least possible.  If they didn’t give me any bread to eat, I would feed on hope.  It was the truth. I still had 11 months ahead of me in the camp.  But today I have not a single evil memory of those 333 days of extreme wretchedness.  I was carried by a hand.   I was covered by a wing.  One doesn’t call such living emotions by their names.

I hardly needed to look out for myself.  I was free now to help the others; not always, not much, but in my own way I could help.  I could try to show other people how to go about holding on to life.  I could turn toward them the flow of light and joy which had grown so abundant in me.

From that time on they stopped stealing my bread or my soup.  It never happened again.  Often my comrades would wake me up in the night and take me to comfort someone.  I became 'the blind Frenchman.'   Hundreds of people confided in me.  The men were determined to talk to me.  They spoke to me in French, in Russian, in German, in Polish.  I did the best I could to understand them all.  That is how I lived, how I survived.  The rest I cannot describe.”

Jacques Lusseyran, And There Was Light and Poetry at Buchenwald

"Could you see, what God sees, those snares and pitfalls which the devil is placing about your path; could you see that all your idle thoughts which you cherish, which seem so bright and pleasant, so much pleasanter than religious thoughts, are inspired by that ancient seducer of mankind, doubtless you would tremble, even as he does while he tempts you.

But this you cannot possibly see, you cannot break your delusion, except by first taking God's word in this matter on trust.  You cannot see the unseen world at once.  They who ever speak with God in their hearts, are in turn taught by Him in all knowledge; but they who refuse to act upon the light, which God gave them by nature, at length come to lose it altogether."

John Henry Newman

"We can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.  We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.   There is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.”

Dorothy Day

We hear far too little about those who shine like lights in the darkness, down through the halls of history.  It's not good for the sake of the elite to give hope and good examples to the common people, I imagine.

Thankfully few are challenged in such a manner, and called to be heroes for conscience.

But we are all beckoned, everyone of us, to deny ourselves, take up our own cross, and follow Him.

So we are all called to be 'blind' heroes of the resistance to evil, taking one step at a time through the darkness, following with trust in the light of the Lord.

Stocks and the markets were chugging along, and in the afternoon Fed heads Bullard and Mester delivered a one-two punch with some rather hawkish remarks about the Fed's stance on interest rates.

Stocks plunged, and went out on the lows ahead of tomorrow's option expiration.

The VIX shot higher.

The Dollar edged higher.

Gold and silver finished largely unchanged.

I hope someone is keeping track of the current and former Fed head insider trading this week.

As if.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Slow Manifestation and Sanctification of Lawlessness

 

"It is always the soul that dies first, even if it's departure goes unnoticed.  And it always carries the body along with it.  Man is nourished by the invisible, man is nourished by that which is beyond the personal.  He dies from preferring the opposite."

Jacques Lusseyran, Poetry at Buchenwald

"It is not the world that is a source of evil, but the willfulness of our hearts, made hard with pride.  Only love is creative and productive.   Only love is accepting and uplifting, able to bring all things forward to His plan and make them new.   Love consecrates, while sin desecrates and destroys in its lust for possession and the will to power.

God is the essence of all existence, which is His love. The pity for those who would otherwise be faithful, then, is not to love."

Jesse, 24 June 2015

"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil. For avarice subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general venality.  Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart."

Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline

"Dallas Fed President, Robert Kaplan, wasn’t just trading like an aggressive hedge fund kingpin in 2020, he’s been doing the same thing for five years at the Dallas Fed while simultaneously having access to non-public, market moving information from the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting FOMC meetings and other confidential communications."

Martens, Trading Like a Hedge Fund Kingpin for Five Years while President of the Dallas Fed; a Dozen Legal Safeguards Failed to Stop Him

“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 I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918–1956


Stocks were slumping this morning from the better than expected retail sales numbers.

Now that they have inflated an asset bubble, further enriching their powerful patrons, they are set to balance things out by suppressing the real economy, which has been so sadly neglected for so long.

The Dollar rallied, while gold and silver were further pressed down into a correction.

 The VIX fell.  Our pride in our exceptionalism knows few bounds.

There is no way to tell if this is done and overdone yet, but we seem to be drawing closer.

More shenanigan are on deck, no doubt. 

And beyond the markets, the recent derailment of a train bearing hazardous chemicals in Ohio, from a rail industry that has been resisting safety and reform and the investment in infrastructure, should give you some indication that in the name of profit, the moneyed interests will burn you and your family to the ground, in there is a profit without consequences in it.

And then there are the steady drumbeats and perpetual foment to war.

Their greed is without limit.  Their serial lawlessness prevails.  

They cynically resist all efforts to change, and be made whole.

Have a pleasant evening.