Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Dealings of Our Trade - FOMC Decision on Wednesday

"`But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,' faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again.  `Mankind was my business.  The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business.  The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

`At this time of the rolling year,' the spectre said `I suffer most.  Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode!  Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!'

Scrooge was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on at this rate, and began to quake exceedingly.

`Hear me!' cried the Ghost.  `My time is nearly gone.'"

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol


"I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interests of organisations, specifically banks and others, were such that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms."

Alan Greenspan, apologising for his disastrous, ideologically-biased policies promoting financial deregulation, 23 October 2008


"Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast,
And each will wrestle for the mastery there...

To speak the truth, as truth to me appeared,
Caused noisy protest, I was hooted down.
Such unpleasant incidents occurred
I ran off, to be on my own,
into a wilderness. Utterly forsaken,
I fell into that devil's grip, and was taken.”

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust

Stocks were a bit wobbly today, after Friday's power rally.

There are three short term events that are worth watching.

The first is the FOMC announcement on Wednesday. It is widely expected to be a non-event. But we will have to see what if anything that they say about future actions.

The second is the British general election on December 12th, which could have quite an impact in the currency markets.

And finally there is the deadline of Sunday December 15th for the imposition of additional chinese tariffs.

The stock option expiration for December will not be until Friday the 20th.

Of course there will be the usual economic and earnings data which may move markets as well.

Gold and silver held primarily unchanged today.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On! - Rattling Nonsense in Full Volleys Breaks

"The Lord is my light and my salvation –
     whom shall I fear?
The Lord is the refuge of my life –
     of whom shall I be afraid?"

Psalm 27


"For fools rush in where angels fear to tread
Distrustful sense with modest caution speaks,
It still looks home, and short excursions makes;

But rattling nonsense in full volleys breaks,
And, never shocked, and never turned aside.
Bursts out, resistless, with a thundering tide."

Alexander Pope, Essay on Criticism

Stocks were in a boisterous, risk-taking mood today on a much better than expected Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

The report was boosted by over 40,000 GM workers coming back onto the payrolls after a long strike.

The Dollar was slightly higher, but gold and silver were smacked down hard, as is traditional for a strong payrolls report in the heavily held December contract period.

But this all serves the purposes of the worst, who are loud and proud.

And so let all the worldly rejoice.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - History Lessons Revisited - Peak Hubris

“In sorrow we must go, but not in despair. Behold! we are not bound for ever to the circles of the world, and beyond them is more than memory.”

J.R.R. Tolkien


“We were promised sufferings. They were part of the program. We were even told, 'Blessed are they that mourn,' and I accept it.  I've got nothing that I hadn't bargained for. Of course it is different when the thing happens to oneself, not to others, and in reality, not imagination.”

C.S. Lewis


“If the devil tells you something is too fearful to look at, look at it. If he says something is too terrible to hear, hear it. If you think some truth unbearable, bear it.”

G.K. Chesterton


"The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.  He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc


“In an ever-changing, incomprehensible world the masses had reached the point where they would, at the same time, believe everything and nothing, think that everything was possible and that nothing was true. The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

Hannah Arendt

Stocks were largely unchanged, gripped in the uncertainty of macroeconomic news and geopolitical developments.

The dollar continued drifting lower. Gold and silver were also largely unchanged.

Non-Farm payrolls report tomorrow.

The financial elite of the US are in a deep denial.  A reckoning will be coming sooner rather than later.

A surprise, if not a shock, for those who have placed their faith and trust in unworthy temporal things is also coming. And unfortunately, that is most of us.  We have a system that is badly in need of new leadership and reform.

And the face of change is regrettably not to be found in Mitch McConnell or Nancy Pelosi, or most of the politicians and business models that this system has raised and nurtured, so that they belong to it body and soul.

There is great promise, but also risk, in change.

Events will make the words from history which you have read, and understood on the most superficial level or in dismissive of ways, come to life, and impose their meaning on your hearts and minds.

And you will think that you are the first to experience such things— and that the dangers of this age are new and insurmountable.  But in reality we are just trodding the familiar path of an unending struggle, with our eyes now opened, and being called to resist forces that are as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hiding in Dark Pools of Self-Deception, Misery and Pride

"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


“One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgement, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding.

Let me propose that if your beliefs or convictions matter more to you than people—if they require you to act as though you were a worse person than you are—you may have lost perspective.”

Tim Kreider


"The Pharisee took up his position and spoke this prayer to himself:  ‘O God, I thank you that I am not like the rest of humanity—greedy, dishonest, adulterous—or even like this tax collector over there."

Luke 18:11

Stocks rebounded today on a resurgence of risk-seeking.

The Dollar and the precious metals, along with the VIX, were lower.

The poor economic data from this morning was set aside with fresh rumours, for the hundredth time, of striking progress in the US-China trade talks. 

As a reminder there will be the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Outrage over the petty and careless and foolish things that other people do can be like a narcotic.  It can become a preoccupation with the imperfections of others, so that we can look down on them, and thereby feel so much better about ourselves.   Thank God that we are better, the most worthy, and not like them.  We are special— exceptionally gifted, and especially deserving of favor.

This narcotic selfishness and delusional pride blinds us to who we are, and what we are becoming.   Truly, why do we look so hard at the speck in our brother's eye?  It is so that we can ignore the festering sore in our own that distorts our true sense of things even more.

It can become addictive, an unfortunate habit, and eventually a way of life.   There are places in the media and on the Internet, politicians and pundits, that pander to this looking down upon other people, and of groups of people.  They search far and wide, and expose the imperfections and faults of others, putting them into the most unattractive and unforgiving perspective.  And thereby they shape and feed an exasperation with a caricature of 'the other.'

It is ironic.  If you read the comments section on such sites, those places that pander to this sort of thing, you will find the least attractive and ignorantly distorted things being said, but with an intense sort of pride.

It can be very discouraging to see. But it is addictive to some, and pandering to it pays.  And so it tends to flourish here and there.

What is the solution to this sort of trap?   Don't do it.  Do not read it.  Do not fall into the sin of thinking that only you and a few people like you are worthy of creation.  And if you are feeling truly brave, pray to God fervently to show your sins to you now rather than later. You may be surprised.

You are human, and full of faults. And so you are most surely not most worthy.  And fooling yourself into thinking that you are better betrays you into the snare of lawlessness, of treating your brothers and sisters as less worthy and deserving of mercy than you.  And so you become less than human, while making yourself feel better, and puffed up with pride.

“A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

C. S. Lewis

You cannot justify or forgive yourself.   And deceiving yourself about who you are does not last. You are not damaged goods or unworthy in the eyes of your heavenly Father.  But you are not super human or exceptional either.  This sick pride is a defense mechanism that prevents you seeing things as they are, and from giving yourself over to what you need to live a fully human and happy life:  repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness.

Have a pleasant evening.