Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gods of the Market, Idols of the World

 

"Then those who revered the Lord spoke with one another.  The Lord took note of this and listened, and a book of remembrance was written before him of those who revered the Lord and hallowed his name.  They shall be mine, says the Lord of hosts, my special possession on the day when I act, and I will spare them as parents spare their children who serve them.  Then once more you shall see the difference between the righteous and the lawless, between the one who serves God and the one who does not serve."

Malachi 3:16-18

"And so Jesus gave us a new norm of greatness.  If you want to be important— wonderful.  If you want to be recognized— wonderful.  If you want to be great— wonderful.  But recognize that he who is greatest among you shall be your servant.  And this morning, the thing that I like about it: by giving that definition of greatness, it means that everybody can be great, because everybody can serve."

Martin Luther King, The Drum Major Instinct, Ebenezer Baptist Church, February 4, 1968

"We poor tired sons of Adam need to be made young again.  To become children to enter the kingdom.  To have the mind and heart of a child is to be in touch with reality, unobstructed by the fantasies of the worldly 'wisdom.'  They are ready to receive the truth in amazement at what is there.  Children naturally have this wonder.  As we get older we can live in a virtual world of illusion, of our own concepts and making, and false sense of security. Return, with an open mind and heart, to the Gospels."

John Saward


Everyone serves something, whether they realize it or not.

Most people serve themselves, through the love of some vain idol of the market, whether it be money, status, possessions, or power.

Those who can do so put themselves aside to serve the Lord, or some ideal greater than themselves, which becomes the focal point of their energy and their love.

The Dollar and the markets reacted strongly to a slight variation in the CPI inflation data this morning.

The Dollar rallied sharply.

Stocks slumped, in stages,

Gold and silver declined.

VIX rose.

The direction of the markets was extended.  Today might have been a reversal of trends more than anything else.  The CPI data was merely a trigger.

Let's see how we go on this week, and particular into the weekend.

The risk tails in the geopolitical sector are much fatter than the markets appear to allow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Oligarchs and Their Enablers - Gold and Silver Rising

 

"Immediately upon departing her post as Chair of the Federal Reserve, but prior to getting the nod from the Biden administration to become U.S. Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen engaged in what the courageous reporter at ProPublica, Jesse Eisinger, called a 'two-fisted money grab from banks.'   Yellen raked in more than $7 million in speaking fees with the bulk of that coming from Wall Street banks and trading houses, including JPMorgan Chase.”

Pam and Russ Martens, Yellen’s Treasury Hires 5-Count Felon JPM to Look for Fraud, October 11, 2023

"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."

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

"A credibility trap is when the regulatory, political and/or informational functions of a society have been compromised by a corrupting influence and a fraud, so that they cannot address the situation without implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure including themselves.   The status quo has at least tolerated the corruption and the fraud, if not profited directly from it, and most likely continues to do so."

Jesse, Financial Coup d'Etat and a Credibility Trap, 28 September 2012

"And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not. And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions. And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else.

Neil Barofsky, Interview with Bill Moyers, 27 October 2012

 

Here are the updated charts.

Gold and silver put in another solid performance.

The Dollar slid a little lower.

VIX declined further showing the almost complacent optimism in the equity markets.

Earlier today the doctor gave me a green light on the recovery of my eye.    The improvement in the last week has been heartening.  

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Nakedness of Kings - Pax Americana

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.  It is not merely that at present the rule of naked force obtains almost everywhere.  Probably that has always been the case.  Where this age differs from those immediately preceding it is that a liberal intelligentsia is lacking.  Bully-worship, under various disguises, has become a universal religion."

George Orwell, Review of Bertrand Russell's Power, 1939

"No warning will suffice to powerful fools who, driven mad by hubris and lust for power, weave the hangman's ropes of their own destruction.  They preach the necessity of hardness, and practice the circumvention of the law for themselves and their associates in injustice.  But when the reckoning comes for them, as it eventually does, they always seem astonished, but unfortunately never to the point of speechlessness.  They will harangue fortune, and all those imaginary enemies who conspired to their downfall, to the bitter end.  The Western elite are in a denial, and a bubble of delusion, so profound that I am concerned that when reality intrudes their reaction will be mishandled, provocative, and likely to hasten a generational change that is already occurring and being fiercely resisted, slowly."

Jesse, Complicity of the Advantaged in the Nakedness of Kings, 19 February 2015

"Washington has become our Versailles. We are ruled, entertained, and informed by courtiers -- and the media has evolved into a class of courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are mostly courtiers. Our pundits and experts, at least those with prominent public platforms, are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games, and the purpose behind it is deception.”

Chris Hedges, Empire of Illusion

"Such, then, is the law of Christ's kingdom, such the paradox which is seen in its history.  It belongs to the poor in spirit; it belongs to the persecuted; it is possessed by the meek; it is sustained by the patient.  It conquers by suffering; it advances by retiring; it is made wise through foolishness.  God has chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise: and God has chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world, and things which are despised, God has chosen."

John Henry Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons

Stocks continued climbing higher in defiant bullishness.

Once they get done squeezing the shorts and crushing the hedges of the cautious, we may expect them to dump the stock markets hard, under whatever pretext is handy.

But for today the Fed heads were out speaking sweet nothings about rates being fine where they are.

The VIX continued to drop.

Gold backed off a bit, but silver gave up most of its recent gains.

What a surprise.

A big chunk of gold left the Hong Kong Comex registered warehouses.

The Dollar declined.  

Who needs safety when you are closely held in the comforting hands of the Pax Americana?

We start getting some economic data on Wednesday.

Have a pleasant evening.