Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Fed Pauses - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

“When you develop your opinions on the basis of weak evidence, you will have difficulty interpreting subsequent information that contradicts these opinions, even if this new information is obviously more accurate...

Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes.  This is apparent from a social pathology— psychopaths rally followers.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable


"And the people who belong to this world worshiped the beast.  They are the ones whose names are not written in the Book of Life that belongs to the Lamb."

Revelation 13:8

The FOMC came out with their decision today.

They reduced their benchmark short term interest rate by 25 bps.

And they also signalled by a change in wording that they would be more data dependent on any future changes.

Initially this was interpreted as a hawkish stance, and the markets swerved accordingly, with Dollar up and gold/silver down and stocks a bit off.

But in a little while people realied that the Fed was merely shifting into 'neutral' and so those trades reversed.

And so gold, siver, and stocks finished higher with the Dollar lower.

This data dependency might put a little more push behind macroeconomic indicators, such as the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

After the bell some of the wunderkind stocks such as Facebook, Lyft, Etsy put forward decent results.

For the first time in a little while we saw a large offtake of gold from the Comex Hong Kong warehouses.

And there were no tweets from Trumpolini about the Fed after their announcement this afternoon.  That was probably the most unexpected thing in some time.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - An Oligopoly of Privilege - FOMC Tomorrow, Payrolls on Friday

"Moral hazard is the probability that a party insulated from risk will behave differently from the way they would behave if fully exposed to the risk. Moral hazard arises because an individual or institution does not bear the full consequences of its actions, and therefore has a tendency to act with increasing recklessness, literally 'without reckoning." It also encourages the rise to power of the sociopath in the affected organizations.

It is difficult to explain moral hazard to tenured professors or the pampered princes of bureaucracy, who beat the drum with their silver spoons in support of shifting the risk of loss to the public every time that Wall Street falls into one of its own schemes and blows itself up.

It is a lesson that the average person learns by the age of twelve and relearns, sometimes spectacularly, at least once in young adulthood. If you do something wrong there can be bad outcomes, and you will pay the price and penalty.  Unfortunately there is a small but powerful oligopoly of privilege that is trying to project themselves onto the global stage while believing that they are immune to ordinary consequence, and have become addicted to the notion that 'others must pay' for their failures.

Moral hazard comes from rewarding bad behaviour in markets with wristslaps and bailouts. It is a danger to the economy and to the public."

Jesse, Moral Hazard, 22 March 2008


"When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin!

Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal, (bringing his fist down on the table) I will rout you out."

Andrew Jackson, The original minutes of the Philadelphia bankers sent to meet with President Jackson February 1834, from Andrew Jackson and the Bank of the United States (1928) by Stan V. Henkels

Alphabet, the tech giant formerly known as Google, weighed on the tech stocks today.

Most other market were lightly traded ahead of the FOMC announcement tomorrow.

The financiers sparkled as Jamie Dimon has apparently persuaded Mr. Mnuchin, the Treasury Secretary, to further lighten up their regulations on capital.

They might also considered forbidding stock buybacks. That would loosen up some funds for loans.

There will be a general election in the UK on December 12 apparently.

The market is expecting a 25 bp cut from the FOMC tomorrow. And then we will see what they say about the future.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Called to the Supper of the Lamb - Expiry, FOMC and Non-Farm Payrolls

“People are often unreasonable and self-centered.
        Forgive them anyway.

If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives.
        Be kind anyway.

If you are honest, people may cheat you.
        Be honest anyway.

If you find happiness, people may be jealous.
        Be happy anyway.

The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow.
        Do good anyway.

Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough.
        Give your best anyway.

For you see, in the end, it is between you and God—
        It was never between you and them anyway.”

Mother Teresa


"Little children, I am with you only a little longer...  I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.   Just as I have loved you, so you should love one another.  By this people will know that you are my followers, if you have love for one another.

If anyone would love me, they will keep my word.  And the Father and I will come to them, and dwell with them.  Anyone who does not keep my word does not love me."

John 13:33-35 14:23

What a tangled web of complexity and exceptions we weave to twist this simple and straightforward commandment to our wills.  These are the illusions that we cherish and hold so close, as a mask to hide our deformities from the world, and from ourselves.

Alphabet missed its numbers after the bell. Oops

Today was a minor option expiration for the precious metals on the Comex.

There will be an FOMC decision on Wednesday and a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

It was a risk on day, as the dollar and gold moved lower, and stocks hit new highs on several indices.

Even though it was foretold, it is still surprising that so many are letting their souls slip away.

But it is a madness that they are thrown away for so little.

For what does it profit a man?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bumping Up - Comex Option Expiration Next Week

“The whole edifice of modern financial theory is, as described earlier, founded on a few simplifying assumptions.  It presumes that homo economicus is rational and self-interested.  Wrong, suggests the experience of the irrational, mob-psychology bubble and burst of the 1990's.  A further assumption: that price variations follow the bell curve. Wrong, suggests the by-now widely accepted research of me and many others since the 1960's.”

Benoît B. Mandelbrot, The (Mis)Behavior of Markets

There will be a gold option expiration on the Comex next week.

Stocks are once again bumping their heads on the prior highs.

Gold attempted to break out of its current consolidation pattern today, but failed to hold the close.

Have a pleasant weekend.