SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - For the Times, They Are A-Changin'

FOMC Meeting next week on the 16th and 17th.

The Fed wants to get off the zero bound, but needs to do it in such a way that they are not blamed for the next financial crisis, while ironically preparing to fight it.

They will most likely raise 25 to 50 basis points this year, or 25 this year and 25 next year.

Since next year is a presidential election year the politics of that will inhibit any policy actions after June or perhaps a bit earlier, unless some exogenous event compels them.

I have lightly sketched the symmetrical triangle on the SP futures chart for your ease of viewing.  The markets will likely go with whatever direction they can break out and confirm from this.  There already has been one false breakout that retraced intraday.

I see so much impetus in the polls that the voters are rejecting the status quo, particularly those icons of privilege Bush and Clinton.

Let's see if this becomes a trend that the political establishment and their mainstream media cannot control.

As for now, winter is coming, if we can but feel it in the cooling of the evenings. The season, and the times, are changing.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Comex Hong Kong Sees Biggest Daily Gold Withdrawal at 19.17 Tonnes - Mr. Float Goes to Asia

In Hong Kong when you buy gold and take it out of the exchange warehouses it is called a withdrawal.

In other words, you do something with your bullion besides letting it sit around in some exchange warehouse to be passed around and hypothecated 230 times.

The other day at the Hong Kong Comex Metals Exchange 19.17 tonnes of .999 gold kilobars were taken out.

That is about 616,329 troy ounces.  Taken out by buyers in a single day.  That is a new record for the young exchange.

I hear they have quite a few over-the-counter dealers now, whose mission it is to faciliate the offtake of physical bullion.

Maybe that is why the Comex Hong Kong exchange trading volumes are so low, but the physical offtake levels are so high.  They are serious about their business.

Not bad but still not as much as Shanghai does, overall.  See the second chart.

It is almost like the New York - London float of unencumbered gold bullion available for delivery is— melting away.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Tightening - Can't Touch This

"Big squeeze with shortages starting now both on the wholesale/retail level and at the bulk level. Unless the paper price is reverting up, it may not subside this time around and then the paper fiat mess (including paper prices of gold and silver) is in trouble.

If it goes to the point of shortages at the bulk level like 1kg gold bars and 1000 oz silver bars, the emperor will stand without clothes."

Torgny Persson, BullionStar CEO

Now is the time to get your own house in order, and to make the arrangements to protect any bullion you own as wealth insurance.

This means holding that bullion in private vaults to which you have personal access or subject to regular public audits.  It means owning your 'insurance' without leverage, sharing,  and without intervening parties who may use the bullion for hypothecation as collateral for third party obligations.

Insurance is for those instances when times get tough, and a deleveraging under duress is occurring.

While this is not a likely scenario normally, now it seems to be more possible than one might expect.

There was intraday commentary about NAV Premiums and the Paper to Bullion ratio on the Comex here.

Ring the bell; school's back in.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - All Eyes On the Fed - Let It Whip

Stocks tried to rally today, but just managed a little bounce.

If you take a look it is clear that stocks are 'coiling' within fairly tight symmetrical triangles ahead of next week's FOMC meeting.

Fundamentally the economy is weak, and financial assets are overpriced.

They could get more overpriced here for the short term, but the risks still seem elevated.

The primary weakness in the economy is the lack of wage growth providing the disposable income that consumers need to repair their domestic balance sheets and to do the kind of broad and steady buying that will be a stimulus to GDP and aggregate demand.

The difficulty is that the one percent is keeping a huge portion of the domestic public down financially, the better to shift their wealth through political policy, tax loopholes, and wage suppression.

It is not a good longer term situation but the ruling classes and their courtiers are traveling in rarefied realms of their own construction.

Have a pleasant evening.