Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Variations on a Rococo Theme - Gold Option Expiration Tomorrow

"It was for this world that Christ had died: the more evil you saw and heard about you, the greater the glory lay around the death; it was too easy to die for what was good or beautiful, for home or children or civilization--it needed a God to die for the half-hearted and the corrupt.”

Graham Greene, The Power and the Glory


"Evil is ultimately self-destructive. Evil may set out to corrupt others, but in the process corrupts itself.”

John Connolly, The Infernals


Fīat jūstitia ruat cælum. Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.


"Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones, who are taken in that snare which is circling around us!  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison!

Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the truth?  No; he offers you baits to tempt you.

He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods.  Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist

Stocks sold off quite hard today, although they did manage to find a footing on some key support.

Still, if there is more follow through to the downside this week, the situation could become more serious.

And in general you know that is it a hallmark of a major top if the rally back fails to set a new high.


Gold got some legs today in what was clearly a flight to safety.  Silver was flat, but surprisingly the Dollar itself was lower.   The VIX was elevated.

One can speculate about the cause of the decline.   Early thought pointed to the miss on Consumer Confidence, which seems a bit of a stretch.
 
I came into the day with a fairly good sized short index position, and took it off into the closing hour.
Why did stocks decline as they did today?   I think it was more buying exhaustion than anything else.  The chart looked like it was finally ready to roll over.
  
It seems like the madness of King Trump's recklessness is weighing on the markets.

I am certainly no fan of Joe Biden, who has a long record as a corporatist tool.  And certainly not of Trump, who I suspect may wish to be impeached, and be remember by some as a martyr, and spare himself the humiliation of losing badly in the next election.

Let's see the facts come out—  all of them.

Let justice be done, though the heavens may fall.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Plus ça Change, Plus c'est la Même Chose - Comex Option Expiry Wednesday

"Our basic trouble was not an insufficiency of capital. It was an insufficient distribution of buying power coupled with an over-sufficient speculation in production. While wages rose in many of our industries, they did not as a whole rise proportionately to the reward to capital, and at the same time the purchasing power of other great groups of our population was permitted to shrink.

We accumulated such a superabundance of capital that our great bankers were vying with each other, some of them employing questionable methods, in their efforts to lend [leverage] this capital at home and abroad.  I believe that we are at the threshold of a fundamental change in our popular economic thought, that in the future we are going to think less about the producer and more about the consumer.

Do what we may have to do to inject life into our ailing economic order, we cannot make it endure for long unless we can bring about a wiser, more equitable distribution of the national income.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932


"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason.  But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith

"It’s not just political spin, however, that explains the rose-colored coverage [in the media]. Another explanation is that the media is plain stupid — quick to accept guidance from economists on Wall Street, for example, who have a vested interest in making everything wonderful."

John Crudele


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair

The problem is not that we do not know what to do in order to revitalize and reform the economy, which has so badly lost its way beginning at least the 1980s.

The problem is that those with power and influence, and their servants and enablers, do not wish to change.  They have worked very hard and spent a great deal of money to get things exactly the way that they are.  It was a decades long campaign to overturn all the protections and safeguards that were instituted after the Great Depression in reforms of The New Deal.

And so they cannot even admit that there is a problem, much less identify the real source of the problem.  And they will certainly not do anything meaningful to address it, at least voluntarily.

This is the credibility trap in which we are now caught.  And it is leading us into madness.

Gold and silver were higher today, with silver showing an especially big kick after the quad witch option expiration on Friday.

I hope people did not get shaken out of their longer term positions.

There will be a Comex October gold futures option expiration on Wednesday the 25^th.

Stocks were iffy at best.  There are unmistakable signs of slowing in the world's economic activity.

Trade disruptions and wars are a problem, but they are mostly secondary to the great mistaken application of deeply flawed economic and fiscal policies, actively promoted by a wealthy few.

Why do we seem to love lies and the hatred of others so much?  Why do we repeat the extravagant pronouncements of conmen, and hate the truth?  Hate goodness, and justice?

Because although we like to think that we are new, and different, and the epitome of all that is human progress and evolution, in fact we are just deluded.   We are no different or better or stronger than any others.  We are not new, or special, or exceptional as we are, moreso than any other that we may look down upon, and even despise.

No one can serve two masters, for they will be devoted to one, and despise the other.  If they allow themselves to be dishonest in small things, they will be faithless in those things that truly matter, that have a lasting consequence.

It is a madness.  And while people grow mad in herds, they only come back to their senses, one at a time.  And the love of most will grow cold.

This will end.  But it is going to end badly for many.

You know what to do.  But we are such faithless cheats and swindlers that we convince ourselves that we do not, because we do not wish to do what we have been told to do, and has been written on our hearts.

Greed and pride kill.   Love covers a multitude of sins.

Have a pleasant evening.

Precious Metals Physical Holdings and Commitments of Traders

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk Off On the Quad Witch - Oligarchy Follies

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically.  They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission.  Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom


"I understand why an equality that was founded upon God involved neither contradiction nor disorder.  Demagogy enters at the moment when, for want of a common denominator, the principle of equality degenerates into the principle of identity."

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Flight to Arras


"Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege."

Thomas Clement Douglas

As you know today was a quad witch in stocks, and shenanigans were expected to be at a high level.

Stocks traded wobbly most of the morning and Europe closed for the weekend quietly.

But around one stocks started dropping precipitously. I happened to be watching the stock futures and noticed the sharp change in trading 'tone' right away. They were dropping steadily and with some conviction on both the SP and the NDX. Something had clearly happened. So I pulled the trigger on a short order I had teed up for the weekend, and went looking.

Bloomberg TV was showing nothing. Even on their news headlines on the right side there was nothing showing except for a headline 'Breaking News' that Walmart was dropping e-cigarettes. The on air discussion was some infotainment discussion about how to play the next rally, yada yada.

I flipped over to Fox Business, which is something I almost never do, and bam, they were showing breaking news that China had just cancelled a visit to Montana to discuss agricultural purchases, and Trump was making noises about what a hard and complete deal he was going to be driving with China. Fox was covering the hell out of the story, and putting it in context with the market decline.

Back to Bloomberg and there was nothing. Even when their most seasoned news pro Mark Crumpton came on with the headlines at 1:30 there was nothing, and nothing on the sidebars.

Finally when she did a review of the markets, which were clearly dropping pretty hard, Scarlet Fu read off a piece of paper that the Chinese had cancelled their Montana meeting, and that some thought this is why stocks were dropping. And while they mentioned it a few more times in the afternoon, it was never really covered as news per se, although Joe Weisenthal had a chuckle about it, when they said that he was watching it.

So I was wondering if this was a real thing, or just some quad witch shenanigans. If so they should say so, not just ignore it.

Well I let it ride, since I wanted to have some short side coverage for my long holdings over the weekend.

But it seemed more than odd. Fox Business scooping Bloomberg on financial news that moves the markets is like the Orioles sweeping a three game series against the Yankees.

Let's see what happens next week. This is where the fog of corruption has descended over the markets.

There will be a fairly important gold option expiration on the Comex on the 25th. October is an active month for gold, not so much for silver.

Stocks went out near to their lows. Gold and silver went out near their highs. The VIX was higher along with the Dollar.

That precious metals market rigging charge, with RICO overtones, against JPM was such a big nothing, like some wiseguys have claimed, that the gold leverage lords of the LBMA just kicked the head of JPM's precious metals desk off their board.   Is this like the time Lucky Luciano booted Dutch Schultz out of the Five Families for excessive moral turpitude?   QED

And so we had a quiet flight to safety, ninja-style.

Have a pleasant weekend.