Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Brotherhood of Light In the Darkness

 

"Do not be amazed then, if the world despises you.  We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.  Whoever does not love remains in the realms of death.  Everyone who hates his neighbor is a destroyer, and you know that no destroyer has eternal life remaining in them.  The way we came to know love was that He laid down his life for us; so we ought to lay down our lives for our fellows.  If someone who has the material substance sees another in need and refuses them compassion, how can the love of God remain in them?  Children, let us love not just in word or speech, but in our actions and our love of truth."

1 John 3:13-18

"The miracles and the mysteries of the events of those days abound along with the horrors and the tragedies.  In contrast to the vile actions of the 'Angel of Death' were the noble and heroic actions of many 'Angels of Life', who stood ready to risk their own lives for the sake of saving that of a stranger."

Yossi Refson, Angels of Light

"This is my commandment: love one another as I love you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down their life for their friends.  You are my friends if you do what I ask.  This is what I ask of you, to love one another."

John 15:12,17

"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age.   His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words.  During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.'   The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?'   He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"

Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 4th century, based on commentaries of Origen

"It is very easy to get drunk with hate. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love."

Maximilian Kolbe


It was risk on today as stocks fell into rally mode, but on very light volume.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar rallied, in its exceptional way.

Gold and silver were under some pressure.

There will be a stock index option expiration on Friday.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

When considering macro and geopolitical events, one must always recall as a baseline that the US is firmly in the grip of an oligarchy that permeates most facets of political and economic policy issues.  It's like a new gilded age, hiding the corruption of a rotten system.

Unfortunately this seems to be the trend in many nations.  

People drift off like herds into madness, until some chastisement humbles them, and brings them back to the light.

Speaking of light, today was the first day that I could actually see something at the doctor's office.  Specialist next week, and then we'll see how things go from there. 

Poor Daisy is pretty much deaf and blind on her left side as the result of the neglect and abuse she had sustained as a puppy.  It's been a long road, but with the unfailing care of the young man, she is now happy and healthy.

The new little ones and their parents came over yesterday to visit and share the bounty of our garden.  The little girl took over Daisy's bed where she waits for me to come home from the store.  The nerve!

We are all broken and struggle.  Everyone you meet is carrying a heavy burden in some way or another. But we all abide, one day at a time, in God's loving kindness and tender mercies.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Harmonies

 

“Do not become angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.”

Thomas à Kempis, The Imitation of Christ


"We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical.

If we look more closely, we see that any violent display of power, whether political or religious, produces an outburst of folly in a large part of mankind; indeed, this seems actually to be a psychological and sociological law: the power of some needs the folly of others.  It is not that certain human capacities, intellectual capacities for instance, become stunted of destroyed, but rather that the upsurge of power makes such an overwhelming impression that men are deprived of their independent judgment, and give up trying to assess the new state of affairs for themselves."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison, 1943-1945


“He opened the book of nature before me, and I saw that every flower He has created has a beauty of its own, that the splendor of the rose and the lily’s whiteness do not deprive the violet of its scent nor make less ravishing the daisy’s charm.  I saw that if every little flower wished to be a rose, Nature would lose her spring adornments, and the fields would be no longer enameled with their varied flowers.  And so it is in the world of souls, Our Lord's living garden.  What delights Him is the simplicity of these flowers of the field, and by stooping so low to them, He shows how infinitely great He is.

Just as the sun shines equally on the cedar and the little flower, so the Divine Sun shines equally on everyone, great and small.  Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be.”

Thérèse de Lisieux


I don't know if it is in fact true, but for many years now I have had an abiding suspicion that the, or at least 'an', antichrist has walked the earth since at least 1948.

What first brought this to my attention was the reading of a privately printed transcript of an exorcism that had been conducted in the 1940s, shared by a professor acquaintance at university.  There is a phase of the ritual during which the possessing spirit can be compelled to answer questions.  How deceptive those answers might be is another thing. 

Stocks wallowed around again, with the usual wash and rinse action, finishing about unchanged with tech lagging again.

The VIX fell.

Gold and silver finished about unchanged, even though the Dollar rallied.

The Fed conference at Jackson Hole is on August 24-26.  

There will be a stock index option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hope and Righteousness

 

"Each Christian has an inner longing that only Christ’s righteousness can satisfy.  But we cannot be filled with righteousness if we are filled with self.  Throughout the Scriptures the one who longs for Him with all his heart will find Him. As we crave righteousness, we will repent of our sin, and God will remove it.  Our selfishness will be replaced by the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. 

Righteousness is not to be taken lightly, nor is it easily attained.  God gives it to those who know they cannot live without it.  Our desire for personal righteousness must be powerful, all-consuming, dominating everything we do.  Pursuing righteousness means that we value the opinion of God far more than we treasure the opinions of people.  Righteousness is not merely an absence of sin.  It is allowing God to fill us with His holiness.  It is becoming like Christ."

Henry Blackaby, Hunger and Thirst

“Hope, on one hand, is an absurdity too embarrassing to speak about, for it flies in the face of all those claims we have been told are facts.  Hope is the refusal to accept the reading of reality which is the majority opinion; and one does that only at great political and existential risk.  On the other hand, hope is subversive, for it limits the grandiose pretension of the present, daring to announce that the present to which we have all made commitments is now called into question.  Our consumer culture is organized against history.  There is a depreciation of memory and a ridicule of hope, which means everything must be held in the now, either an urgent now or an eternal now."

Walter Brueggemann, The Prophetic Imagination

"For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me no thing to drink, a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you gave me no clothing, sick and held in detention, and you did not care for me."

Matthew 25

"In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.  Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship

The Consumer Price Index of inflation numbers were in-line this morning.

Stocks had another wide ranging day with a failed rally, finishing up pretty much unchanged.

The Dollar chopped sideways finishing slightly higher.

Gold lost a little ground, silver was slightly higher.

VIX wandered around as usual.

How many grow cold and fall away, and so easily.

During my healing from eye trouble I have been listening to Mike Duncan's History of Rome on Youtube.  I did a second major in classics in college and it's a nice refresh of things I had studied, and is very well done, tying things together.  Since I am prohibited from reading for a while, this is a very nice audio-only substitute.

One day at a time.

Have a pleasant evening.