SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Day Afternoon

The trade was quiet today, subdued in the morning because of a miss on the ADP payrolls, with an afternoon push higher as the Fed Beige book came out telling a recovery story.  The Fed has little clue about what is happening in the real world, and its record of forecasting is horrific.

Same old tune, same old words.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Better Than This

"I don’t think there’s any doubt that quantitative easing enabled the rich and the quick. It was a massive gift… I hope that we do indeed succeed in being able to say in the end the wealth effect was more evenly distributed. I doubt it.”

Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher


"I have brought you to the Revels. Now dance if you can."

William Wallace

There was a fairly good sized move in the Scotia Mocatta warehouse of almost 100,000 ounces from eligible to deliverable.   The registered category is now fairly well set for the June delivery to be sure, barring an unlikely run on bullion.

The Financial Times notes that rigging the gold fix around digital derivatives 'was routine.'  The pigmen have been shamelessly portraying the Barclays rig as a one-off.

As you know, Scotia is one of the three banks remaining in the London gold fix.

A few more June contracts stood for delivery.

We used to be the good guys, or at least better than this.  Good enough for a few honorable men and women to remind us to feel shame when we were not doing the right things, and for those in charge to at least pretend to bend a knee to truth. 

Good enough for at least a few to remember that power and money are not the end all and be all, and not to treat their God and their freedom like a mockery, a vending machine and a sock puppet for their own selfish desires.

Perhaps we never really were that good at all, not just a few bad people, but the most.  And it was just the happy illusions of youth.

Or perhaps this is just the big question that faces every generation, the question of good and evil, and of freedom.  And this is our moment.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Begin the Beguine

Another low volume hootchie kootchie day in the equity markets.

The news that may drive stocks one way or the other are the ECB rate meeting on Thursday and the US Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Until we get some clarity on the real economy, volumes may not pick up and the trade may continue to be highly technical in both stocks and bonds. The Banks and Funds are gaming the markets with the Fed providing the backdrop for price distortions with their top down 'stimulus' policy.

In case you were wondering, absent an exogenous event they can keep this up for quite a while, surely longer than you can keep averaging down on leveraged ETF bear sucker bets.

I own no equities and am not short anything. I do hold both gold and silver in my trading account.

Have a pleasant evening.

Wall Street Firms Using Their Dark Pools To Make Markets in Their Own Stocks

These self-named dark pools are operating as private exchanges, with a faux type of specialist system managing the order book, with all the insight and power that it entails.  The layman may not quite comprehend this, but anyone familiar with Wall Street operations and history will certainly do so.

That they are trading for their own parent company stocks, and possibly for their own books, ought to raise more than a few eyebrows. 

We ought to have internalized the lesson by now that markets are not naturally efficient and self-regulating.  But even moreso when the business of price setting and order matching is being done in darkness, and apparently with lax regulatory oversight and institutionalized conflicts of interest.

The lack of integrity in the Western financial system must seem appalling to anyone whose ears are not firmly taped to the corporate news feeds droning out of New York and London to their jaded listeners.  Another lie, another fraud, another abuse of oaths and trust.    Tra la, tra la, comme ci comme ça.

The Banks must be restrained, and the financial system reformed, with balance restored to the economy, before there can be any sustainable recovery.

After Charges of Running a Price Fixing Cartel on Nasdaq in the 90s,
Wall Street Banks Are Now Trading Their Own Stocks in Darkness
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: June 3, 2014

On July 17, 1996, the U.S. Justice Department charged the biggest names on Wall Street, names like Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan and predecessor firms to Citigroup, with pricing fixing on the electronic stock market known as Nasdaq...

Yesterday we learned that the very same Wall Street firms charged with price fixing in the 90s have somehow conned their regulators into allowing them to own their own dark pools – effectively unregulated stock exchanges – and make markets in the stock of their very own Wall Street bank.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) – a self-regulatory Wall Street body (which under a previous name was responsible for missing the Nasdaq price fixing for more than a decade) released trading data yesterday for the dark pools operating the week of May 12 – 16. This was the first time such data has been released. The data releases are set to continue..."

Read the entire article with the details here.