Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Emptiness of Passionate Privilege - Saudi Oil for China Gold?

 

"He fancies that he is sufficient for himself; or he supposes that knowledge is sufficient for his happiness; or that exertion, or that the good opinion of others, or fame, or that the comforts and luxuries of wealth, are sufficient for him.  What a truly wretched state is that coldness and dryness of soul, in which so many live and die, high and low, learned and unlearned.  Many a great man,  many a busy man, lives and dies with closed heart, with affections undeveloped, unexercised."

John Henry Newman

"We run carelessly to the precipice, after we have put up a façade to prevent ourselves from seeing it.”

Blaise Pascal

"At a late stage, speculation tends to detach itself from really valuable objects and turn to delusive ones.   A larger and larger group of people seeks to become rich without a real understanding of the processes involved.   Not surprisingly, swindlers and catchpenny schemes flourish."

Aliber and Kindleberger, Manias, Panics and Crashes

"American political corruption was the buying up of legislatures and assemblies to keep them from doing the people's will and protecting the people's interests; it was the exploiter entrenching himself in power, it was financial autocracy undermining and destroying political democracy.  By the blindness and greed of ruling classes the people have been plunged into infinite misery."

Upton Sinclair, The Brass Check

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud.

Charles Ferguson

"True narcissists are self-serving and lack integrity.   They believe they’re superior and thus not subject to the same rules and norms.  Studies show they’re more likely to act dishonestly to achieve their ends.   They know they’re lying, and it doesn’t bother them.  They don’t feel shame.”

Charles A. O'Reilly, Stanford University

Stocks slumped further today, testing the limits of a normal correction.

What comes next will likely be driven by key corporate earnings reports. 

The big techs are heavy weights in the SP 500 and the NDX.

Gold and silver were under pressure.

As was the Dollar.

A whopping 289,000 ounces of gold bullion left the Shanghai warehouses yesterday.

There may be some merit in the 'oil for gold' transactions between the Saudis and China.

VIX was basically flat.

META 'crushed' expectations and the stock was up over 10% after hours.

Amazon on deck.

The spice must flow.

Have a pleasant evening

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Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Safer Harbors - Quiet Comex Expiration

 

"They do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes.   And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.  Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient; – they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct."

John Henry Newman

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.  Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have relighted the flame within us."

Albert Schweitzer

The sinner, having forsaken the service of his God, falls under the dominance of Satan, and becomes the slave of his lowest passions, which are signified by the swine which the prodigal was forced to feed.  But the more he obeys his passions, the more dissatisfied he becomes.  No pleasure of the senses can give him happiness, and he feels an emptiness and spiritual hunger in his heart which he is powerless to satisfy. He knows no rest; he only knows that he is miserable, and hateful to himself...

Though the sinner has offended Him so grievously and so often, yet He does not reproach him, but forgives him everything, and restores him to his former rights and dignity of sonship.  God alone can love in this way, and to us this sort of love is inconceivable. Our Lord portrays this narrow-mindedness of ours in the conclusion of the parable.  The elder son cannot understand his father’s joy; he murmurs at it, and refuses to take part in it; and even professes to believe that his father prefers the returned prodigal to himself, the faithful, obedient and industrious son.  By this behaviour of the elder son our Lord signifies the jealousy of the Pharisees, who considered themselves to be just, and murmured at the deep interest which Jesus took in sinners."

Friedrich Justus Knecht, The Prodigal Son

"We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small, and yet really not so small, blessings.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

 

Stocks took a dive today, as one might have expected with this kind of risk-blindness we have been seeing in the recent spate of low VIX readings.

The Dollar and gold caught some safe haven tradings.

Silver followed equities lower.

So, is this yet another 'new bull market' in equities all shot to hell?

Maybe, but we certainly don't know so yet.

So far its just a fairly normal correction.

Stock futures were bouncing for joy after the bell as some of the big cap tech stocks released their earnings results.

People love the lie too much to let go of it quickly or easily.

That seems to be an unambiguous trend in many of our most prominent public figures these days.

I think its the pride.  It causes people to blind themselves.

And cry big salty tears for their favorite con man, while trampling on love and the truth with self-satisfied delight.

Well, the rinse follows wash, so we might see a rally in risk tomorrow.

But let's see if stocks can keep moving higher past this great resistance area that has destroyed the last three rally attempts at breaking it.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - On the Road to Emmaus - Comex Precious Metals Options Tomorrow

 

‘I am the good shepherd.  The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.  The hired hand is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep.  So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away.  Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it.  The man runs away because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep.

I am the good shepherd; I know my sheep and my sheep know me – just as the Father knows me and I know the Father – and I lay down my life for the sheep.  I have other sheep that are not of this fold.  I must bring them also.  They too will listen to my voice, and there shall be one flock and one shepherd.'

John 10:11-16

“Woe to the shepherds, who have been feeding only themselves.  You eat the fat, you take the wool, and you slaughter the fattest animal, but you do not feed the flock.  You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bandaged the injured or brought back the strays or looked for the lost; rather, you have ruled them with harshness and tyranny."

Ezekiel 34:1-4

"We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing.  With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. 

The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty.  Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails today among us human creatures."

Abraham Lincoln, Baltimore Maryland, April 18, 1864

Stocks waffled around today, ahead of the start of the big Tech earnings reports this week.

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver rallied a bit.

VIX popped and flopped.

There will be a Comex option expiration tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.