London Gold Market Imports and Exports - Currency Wars

"Fraud and falsehood only dread examination.  Truth invites it."

Samuel Johnson

Gold is flowing from West to East.

Net central bank purchases of gold in 4Q 2018 were the highest on record.

So few notice—  and even fewer really understand.

Money is power, so do not expect this transition to go smoothly.  Or quietly.  Or honestly.

C'est la guerre des monnaies.

Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Markets Are Holding Their Breadth - Comex Precious Metals Option Expiration

"Financialization is profit margin growth without labor productivity growth. That sounds like a small thing, but I tell you it is everything.

Financialization is squeezing more earnings from a dollar of sales without squeezing at all, but through tax arbitrage or balance-sheet arbitrage.

Financialization is the zero-sum-game aspect of capitalism, where profit-margin growth is both pulled forward from future real growth and pulled away from current economic risk-taking.

Financialization is the smiley-face perversion of Adam Smith’s invisible hand and Joseph Schumpeter’s creative destruction.

Financialization is a global phenomenon. In China, it’s transmitted through the real-estate market. In the U.S., it’s transmitted through the stock market."

Ben Hunt


"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

C. S. Lewis

Stocks are hanging on, waiting for more behemoths to report earnings, preferably of the fabulous kind.

Gold and silver continued to mark time today in honor of the Comex precious metals options expiration.

Karma is in the distance, but heading our way.

Who could have seen it coming?

At ramming speed?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Tech Powers Higher

"Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. We, even we here, hold the power and bear the responsibility

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country."

Aaron Copland, Lincoln Portrait

Today was an interesting day for the unconventional.

Techs powered up to a new high, while the SP 500 moved lower.

The Dollar was much higher again today, cracking the 98 handle on the DX index, while gold also moved higher.

Next week is the May FOMC meeting.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bubble 'n' Squeak - Comex Expiry Action in the Metals

Weighed, and Found Wanting...

“An enthusiastic philosopher, of whose name we are not informed, had constructed a very satisfactory theory on some subject or other, and was not a little proud of it. 'But the facts, my dear fellow,' said his friend, 'the facts do not agree with your theory.'

'Don't they?' replied the philosopher, shrugging his shoulders, 'then, tant pis pour les faits' — so much the worse for the facts!”

Charles Mackay


"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day and cease to be:
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

Alfred Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam


"A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead."

W. B. Yeats, Leda and the Swan


“Any moment might be our last.  Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed.  
You will never be lovelier than you are now.  We will never be here again.”

Homer, The Iliad


"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshalling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general apostasy from it.   Whether this very apostasy is to give birth to Antichrist, or whether he is still to be delayed, we cannot know; but at any rate this apostasy, and all its tokens, and instruments, are of the Evil One and savour of death."

John Henry Newman, The Times of Antichrist

Gold got hit today, as is befitting of an option expiration in our loosely regulated markets.

The Dollar closed higher.

Stocks are hitting new highs.

Never short a stock or stock index just because it has moved higher.

Keep your eyes open though. Things are progressing faster than one might have expected.

Perhaps now is the time to take some profits as one may have them in equities, and redeploy them in safe havens, including cash.

The bubble is frothing.

And so is Trumpolini.

Neither is likely to end well.

Have a pleasant evening.