SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Blue Skies, Unicorns, and Santa Claus Rallies

"Unhappy events abroad have retaught us two simple truths about the liberty of a democratic people.

The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism—ownership of Government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.

The second truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if its business system does not provide employment and produce and distribute goods in such a way as to sustain an acceptable standard of living.

Both lessons hit home.

Among us today a concentration of private power without equal in history is growing. This concentration is seriously impairing the economic effectiveness of private enterprise as a way of providing employment for labor and capital and as a way of assuring a more equitable distribution of income and earnings among the people of the nation as a whole."

Franklin D. Roosevelt, On Curbing Monopolies

The economic news was fairly awful this morning.

I doubt this will be enough to stay the hand of the Fed, since they wish to raise rates for their own policy purposes, and not to quell any growing pressure on wages from our imaginary full employment economy.   They would like to raise rates above zero to give themselves some room to move in cutting rates in the future when their current financial assets bubble breaks.

And so stocks were on a tear higher, with visions of Santa Claus bonuses dancing in fund managers' heads.

The VIX dropped as it was all good in the Pax Americana.

Stocks need to hit that higher high to keep this algo-driven wilding to the upside from turning into yet another 'wash and rinse.'

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - The Unsustainable Power of Cheap Money and Omnivorous Greed

"Cæsar was swimming in blood.  Rome and the whole pagan world was mad. But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one,—happiness and love. And Peter understood that neither Cæsar nor all his legions could overcome the living truth, —that they could not overwhelm it with tears or blood, and that now its victory was beginning.

He understood with equal force why the Lord had turned him back on the road. That city of pride, crime, wickedness, and power was beginning to be His city."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero

Blues riff in B, watch me for the changes, and try to keep up.

And so we begin the delivery month of December.

The Bucket Shop is leaking, slowly but steadily.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

What is unsustainable will not be sustained: cheap money, and even cheaper grace.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Great Emptiness

"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace


"I see dead people. Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."

Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense


"The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love...

What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it... thus much of comfort do we gain from what has been hitherto, not to despond, not to be dismayed, not to be anxious, at the troubles which encompass us. They have ever been; they ever shall be; they are our portion."

John H. Newman

Economic news came in weakly this morning with a shocking miss in the Chicago PMI.

The major US stock indices were waffling about today at the end of November, with an undercurrent of weakness, but with prices somewhat sustained by a lack of conviction and therefore without the substance of genuine volume to take them much higher or lower.

The US electoral and political process is becoming almost compelling to watch, not out of any enjoyment or intellectual enrichment, but with a macabre fascination of a natural disaster or a train wreck.

What follows the emptying of oneself, the impulse to give over to the void so as to escape the burden of thought and compassion, the pain of being human?   History suggests that it is an occasion of grace, or a slow descent into madness.

More bread, circuses, and cowbell.

Have a pleasant evening.

Shanghai Gold Exchange Has 54 Tonnes of Gold Withdrawn in the Latest Week

There were 54 tonnes of gold bullion taken off the Shanghai Gold Exchange into mainland China in the latest week.

The second chart shows that the SGE is well on its way to a record year.