Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Idylls of Azrael

 

"A thriving upper class accepts with a good conscience the sacrifice of untold human beings, who, for its sake, must be reduced and lowered to incomplete human beings,to slaves, to instruments.

One cannot fail to see in all these noble races the beast of prey, the splendid blond beast, prowling about avidly in search of spoil and victory; this hidden core needs to erupt from time to time, the animal has to get out again and go back to the wilderness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

“Not everyone who calls out to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of My Father.  Many will say to Me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’  And I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you.   Get away from me, you who practice lawlessness.’

Matthew 7:21-23

"You snakes, you brood of vipers.   How can you speak goodness when you are evil?  From the depths of the heart the mouth speaks.  The good bring forth goodness from their reserves of good, and the evil bring forth evil, from the depths of their treasures wrought in evil."

Matthew 12:34-35

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.   We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case."

John Henry Newman

"The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.  It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.  The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."

Dorothy Day

“Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be in the days of the Son of Man.  People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up to the very day Noah entered the ark.  Then the flood came, and swept them all away."

Luke 17:26-27

"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8

When people get angry and fall into a prevailing hysteria, they start believing and doing some remarkably foolish and self-destructive things to those around them, their families, and ultimately to themselves.

The message of the gospel is simple, clear, and straightforward.

But the word that has been planted in most is suffocated by the worries of the world, and seduced by wealth.

God does not need us to assert His justice, for we are not just, or to uphold his righteousness, for we are not righteous.

What we tend to be is proud, posturing, and presumptuous.

The only way to remain standing in this madness is to remember that God has called us to love.

But we make His calling disputatious and complex, because the evil in us loves to hide the light with complexity.

It is a way to blind our eyes and harden our hearts against the words of life.  It is the leaven of the Pharisees.

If the wages of sin are death, there are a few jokers on the world stage acting like they want us to get paid, sooner rather than later.

Stocks rallied hard into the close.

Gold and silver also drove higher.

VIX started out higher and then fell sharply.

Gold continues to leave the Hong Kong warehouses, as gold flows from West to East. 

I will be having a surgery done on my left eye at the end of the week.  Hopefully it will go much better than the right eye.  But I may be out of pocket.

My positions are fairly light in anticipation of being preoccupied during the FOMC on Wednesday and the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dancing on a Volcano

 

"Do not fear your enemies.  The worst they can do is kill you.  Do not fear your friends. At worst, they may betray you.  Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent."

Bruno Jasieński, Spiknutí lhostejných, Praha 1958

"We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.  But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life.

That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income.  We see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class."

Henry Giroux, On the Rise of Neoliberalism, 19 October 2014


The precious metals futures options expiration today was rather quiet.

FOMC on Wednesday January 31^st and a Jobs Report coming on Friday, February 2^nd.

The mispricing of risks in the equity markets remains pronounced.

"The whole town and all its inhabitants are quite drowned in carnival din, masks and confetti.  And on top of that the news of the Reichstag fire.  Dancing on a volcano."

Alban Berg, Letter from Berlin, September 1, 1933

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - At the Hands of a Savage Few

 

"When Saul of Tarsus set out on his journey to Damascus the whole of the known world lay in bondage. There was one state, and it was Rome.  There was one master for it all, and he was Tiberius Caesar. Everywhere there was civil order, for the arm of the Roman law was long.  Everywhere there was stability, in government and in society, for the centurions saw that it was so.

But everywhere there was something else, too.  There was oppression — for those who were not the friends of Tiberius Caesar.  There was the tax gatherer to take the grain from the fields and the flax from the spindle to feed the legions or to fill the hungry treasury from which divine Caesar gave largess to the people. There was the impressor to find recruits for the circuses.  There were executioners to quiet those whom the Emperor proscribed.  What was a man for but to serve Caesar?

There was the persecution of men who dared think differently, who heard strange voices or read strange manuscripts.  There was enslavement of men whose tribes came not from Rome, disdain for those who did not have the familiar visage.  And most of all, there was everywhere a contempt for human life.  What, to the strong, was one man more or less in a crowded world?

Then, of a sudden, there was a light in the world, and a man from Galilee saying, 'Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's and unto God the things that are God's.'   And the voice from Galilee, which would defy Caesar, offered a new Kingdom in which each man could walk upright and bow to none but his God.  'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.'   And he sent this gospel of the Kingdom of Man into the uttermost ends of the earth.

So the light came into the world and the men who lived in darkness were afraid, and they tried to lower a curtain so that man would still believe salvation lay with the leaders."

Vermont C. Royster, In Hoc Anno Domini, December 24, 1949

"Truth dies from the neglect of many, and thereafter liberty, at the hands of a savage few.

Jesse, Liberty Dies at the Hands of a Savage Few, 3 July 2023


Stocks did a bit of a pop and flop today, led by the 'Magnificent 7' tech stocks.

Gold, silver, and the Dollar all drifted higher.

VIX rose.

There will be a precious metals futures option expiration on Friday.

Stocks of physical gold in the Comex registered Hong Kong warehouses have dropped significantly.

The markets seem to be jogging in place.

At some point they will break.  Perhaps they may progress a little more. 

But the mispricing of risk is profound.

Stop spreading lies and hate, creating divisions, and slandering others.

Stop oppressing and murdering the innocent.

Simple commandments.   

Widely ignored though, amongst our stiff-necked generation that thinks it is above judgement, for whatever reasons and manners of privilege.

A banquet of consequences is awaits.

Have a pleasant evening.