SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Quiet Trade, Crimea Vote

Very light volumes today as the markets tended towards jitters, judging by the VIX chart which is below.

FOMC next week, and a triple witch stock option expiration on Friday. But the real attention may be to the referendum vote in the Crimea on Sunday, and any Russian plans to act on a vote for annexation.

Let's see if the wiseguys get a chance to buy the dip and run the shorts sometime next week in honor of the Fed and the triple witch in a squeeze play. Or not. The geopoliticals may have some say in this.

Have a pleasant evening.

Year To Date Performance of Several Financial Investments

It is early days yet, but I was curious to see how several assets have been performing so far this year.

Even the precious metal miners are doing well this year.  But we must consider the absolute beating they took in 2013, and the overall depressed prices at which many of them are still trading.  I think the third chart tends to put the brutality of the correction in the precious metals during 2013 in perspective.

While volatility in investments can be thrilling on the upside, it is a kind of portfolio hell to the downside.  Live by beta, die by beta. 

Unless of course you have access to asymmetric knowledge, with an advantageous positioning at the market table, and can turn in almost perfect trading records over long periods of time. 

Still, this is a nice change of pace so far.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

As a reminder, next week there is a two day FOMC meeting, with an announcement of their decision and opinions on Wednesday afternoon.

There is also a triple witch March stock expiration on Friday.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Killing Fields

Imagine a case in which markets offer very profitable opportunities to wealthy and well-connected participants. Let's call them insiders. And let's assume that the government does little in the way of effective regulation, except for the occasional small fry or relative outsider who is caught breaking the rules.

Imagine that the insiders either directly or indirectly control the rule based governance of the exchanges, which are often supposed to be self-regulating in those areas in which the government is not able to exert the rule of law.

What is there to limit the ability of those insiders to set prices where they wish for their own benefit? What are the real world consequences such as being required to actually deliver something which they have sold, or pay a serious and personal criminal penalty when they are caught rigging the game and breaking the rules?  

In such a system, one has to ask themselves, what is there to keep this market from just degenerating into a control fraud, a type of killing field, where those in the real economy who dare to venture in, either willingly or without recourse, are led into a blind alley and robbed, and sometimes economically strangled for the benefit of a few?

And what are the likely longer term consequences to the real world of people who work and produce things, of such a corrupt and inefficient arrangement?  Some might suggest the decimation of certain industries and economic sectors, eventual systemic shortages, significant inequality of power and wealth, and a straining of the social fabric in widespread cynicism and discontent.

Who could even imagine people allowing such a dreadful state of affairs to exist, especially in a land of the free?

"He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you. He bids you mount aloft. He shows you how to become as gods. Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

Have a pleasant evening.

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