Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Walking Dead - A Relief Rally

"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to be wary of those who cause divisions and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned.  Avoid them.   For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites and desires.  And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of many of the innocent and easily led."

Romans 16:17-18


"Dividers speak evil about things that are different, 'the other,' or that which they do not understand.  Like instinctive animals, they follow wherever their passions lead them, and so they bring about their destruction.   What sorrow awaits them.  For they follow in the footsteps of Cain, who killed his own brother.  Like Balaam, they deceive other people for money."

Jude 1:10


"Do you not know that to whom you give yourselves as servants, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?"

Romans 6:16


"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 that they're dead."

Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

Stocks bounced back a bit today, after slumping badly in the overnight as Trump named China as a currency manipulator.

But in the quiet hours they managed to turn the SP 500 futures higher, and today we saw a bit of a short squeeze.

Gold held its gains remarkably, even in the face of a stronger dollar.

In the news today we see that UBS is starting to charge storage fees for cash.  This speaks volumes about the direction of fiat money.

The case for gold gets stronger and stronger.

Also in the news is the steep decline in Chinese capital fleeing the mainland, and finding a haven in the real estate markets of Canada and the US.

Rick and Ilsa will always have Paris.  Those seeking boltholes for their hot money will always have London.   Perhaps even moreso now.  

Let's see how things go tomorrow.

The willful arrogance and blindness of the fortunate few is daunting, if not discouraging.

They are so lost and sad, these walking dead.  Requiescat in pace.

Get right, and sit tight.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Into the Storm - The Men Who Sold the World

"We passed upon the stair
We spoke of was and when
Although I wasn't there
He said I was his friend
Which came as a surprise
I spoke into his eyes
I thought you died alone
A long long time ago
Oh no, not me
We never lost control
You're face to face
With the man who sold the world."

David Bowie, The Man Who Sold the World


"There are six things the Lord hates, no, seven that are detestable to him:
     proud eyes,
     a lying tongue,
     hands that harm the innocent,
     a heart that plots wicked schemes,
     feet that are quick to rush into evil,
     a false witness whose mouth pours out lies
     and most of all, a person who stirs up conflicts in a community."

Proverbs 6:16-19


"Be not deceived— God is not mocked.   Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap."

Galatians 6:7


“The mask was a thing on it's own, behind which Jack hid, liberated from shame and self-conciousness.”

William Golding, Lord of the Flies

Monetary and regulatory policy encourage asset bubbles to proliferate. Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.

Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.

The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.

The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed.

You fill your minds daily from those who sow hatred with lies and fear.

You make beasts of yourselves.  You worship a pig.   Is this unexpected to you?

Are you not entertained?  No, not yet?

As Egon von Greyerz noted, the next five years are not about winning, but surviving.

So, then let us proceed.

Have a pleasant evening.

Precious Metals Holdings, Commitments of Traders, and Technical Indicators

Gold and silver are in slightly different technical positions.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Consequence of Empire

George Frederick Watts, Mammon

"Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness.

A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair. Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture."

Thomas Merton


"Thus we see how the neoliberal utopia tends to embody itself in the reality of a kind of infernal machine, whose necessity imposes itself even upon the rulers. Like the Marxism of an earlier time, with which, in this regard, it has much in common, this utopia evokes powerful belief - the free trade faith - not only among those who live off it, such as financiers, the owners and managers of large corporations, etc., but also among those, such as high-level government officials and politicians, who derive their justification for existing from it.

For they sanctify the power of markets in the name of economic efficiency, which requires the elimination of administrative or political barriers capable of inconveniencing the owners of capital in their individual quest for the maximisation of individual profit, which has been turned into a model of rationality. They want independent central banks.

And they preach the subordination of nation-states to the requirements of economic freedom for the masters of the economy, with the suppression of any regulation of any market, beginning with the labour market, the prohibition of deficits and inflation, the general privatisation of public services, and the reduction of public and social expenses."

Pierre Bourdieu, L’essence du néolibéralisme


“How good is our God!  When we are no longer able to come to Him, He comes to us.  We are each of us like a small mirror, in which God searches for His reflection.”

John Vianney

The first two charts below, which describe the decline in life expectancy in the US and the rise of negative yielding sovereign debt, are emblematic of a status quo in serious decline, but grasping the reins of power desperately, as they slowly lose control.

Stocks continued their move to the downside today, taking back only a little bit of it into the close.

The NDX finally closed the big gap it had left open a few weeks ago. These gaps keeps getting closed in these moves up. We are not seeing any breakaway gaps. That speaks volumes about these rallies, a word to the wise.

The SP 500 fell back to its 61.8% Fibonacci retracement in the most recent rally.

I have not yet labeled this latest episode as a blow off top, because I want to see it set a lower low first.

Gold held its gains from yesterday fairly well, as the Dollar continued to move even lower.

I was a little concerned about the big gold gain, because a portion of it was clearly due to short covering as the front runners of the Non-Farm Payrolls report short side play got smoked.

The action next week, the first week in August, will be most interesting.

I think we might look with some concern to the autumn, particularly September and October.

Have a pleasant weekend.