Audacious Oligarchy: The Double Flash Crash In Gold - Sept 13, 2012

The 'Dr. Evil' strategy in two pictures.

From Nanex Research:

Trading was so furious in Gold, that the CME circuit breakers triggered and halted the futures contract for 5 seconds. First on the downside, then on the upside. This is the same circuit breaker that triggered only once in the eMini during market hours: that time was at the bottom of the flash crash on May 6, 2010.

The first halt in the December 2012 Gold Futures contract (GC.Z12) was at 12:14:44: you can see the gap in volume in the lower panel of Chart 1. One second before the halt, 2,000 contracts traded the price down $10, from $1,730 to $1,720. The CME halt logic triggers a 5 second market pause whenever orders appear that would remove all available liquidity and move the price by a certain amount.

For this event, this basically means that if this order represented a true intent to sell, then we should expect additional selling (from the balance of the order that triggered the halt) when trading resumes.

However, in this case, the additional selling did not materialize, which leads us to believe the large sell order was meant to disturb any market based on the price of gold. And disturb the markets, it did.

1. December Gold Futures (GC.Z12) ~ 1 second interval trades with depth of book color coded by how much size is at each level.

Note the gap showing the halt after the drop. The depth of book shows orders continue to be added/removed from the book during the halt.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Bear Raid in Honor of Quad Witch

Gold and silver were rallying hard to day, reaching new recent highs and threatening overhead resistance when they were hit rather hard and suddenly, on no news and without a commensurate move in stocks.

This looks like quad witching action.

Here are the charts so you can see where we stand. Intraday commentary discusses the daily gold chart formations.

See you Sunday evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Even the Quad Witch Is Sleepy

Today was the big 'quad witch' of September in the markets, but you would have hardly known it as stocks popped and flopped.

SP is also rebalancing their indices today which is driving some of the volume.

The front month in the stock futures is now December. How time flies.

Have a pleasant week.

Jon Stewart: Chaos On Bullshit Mountain

Out of the mouths of comedians...

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Chaos on Bulls**t Mountain - The Entitlement Society
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What kind of a people could delight in machine-gunning the lifeboats of those who are attempting to escape, not to thrive but to merely survive, the mayhem and chaos that these same sociopaths have created through their selfish and criminal actions? And what sort of gullible fools will listen to them, and assist them in their work even if passively by saying nothing?

"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people.

What is called 'fellow traveling' (collaboration) was primarily business interest: one pursues one’s own advantage before all else and, simply not to endanger oneself, does not talk too much. That is a general law of the status quo."

Theodor Adorno

Have we truly learned nothing? Must we make the same mistakes over and over again?

These 49 percent include for the most part the elderly, students, the working poor, soldiers and their families, and the disabled.

These 'handouts' include Social Security and unemployment insurance which people have paid for when times were good. The ranks of the working poor have swelled for sure, because of a financial collapse brought on by unfettered greed and fraud of Wall Street, and a stagnant real median wage for the past 20 years in the face of rising costs, often driven by monopolies, fraud, and cartels.

A kleptocracy is sucking the life out of working men and women by force and fraud. A group of sociopaths, who have committed one of the great crimes in history, not only blithely walk away with their loot unpunished, but come back to rob their victims once again, to finish the job. And they gorge themselves on the public trust even while begrudging the widow her pittance, or trying to steal it.

They pervert and corrupt so many, filling their hearts with their passionate lies, appealing to what is the very worst in them. They are truly a den of vipers and thieves.

You can believe what you will, but you will be held responsible for your beliefs, and your actions, what you do and do not do.

And finally, it takes a comedian to stand up and say it. "Shame."

Source: Reuters