Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Where Angels Fear to Tread

 

"Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles shall devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us."

Thomas Nashe, A Litany In Time of Plague

"Here we may reign secure, and in my choice to reign is worth ambition though in Hell:  Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven." 

John Milton, Paradise Lost 

 

"Foolishness has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus

 

Stocks were for the most part higher. 

Gold and silver were knocked back down. 

The Dollar drifted a bit higher. 

We are in one of those periods of deep denial, of business as usual. 

The scams of yesterday and the brute assertion of our own reality is an old habit that remains.

It might even be safe to say that this has been our default approach to life for some time now. 

It is certainly the style of choice for a good part of the public, and their thought leaders and talking heads. 

I have never thought I would see so many people just throwing themselves away.  

The amazement at the willful blindness reminds me of the astonishment at folly of the German people in the letters that Bonhoeffer wrote from prison.

We have no shame, no sense of proportion or our own place in our selfishness and mad defiance.

And we do it because, in the short term, we can.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And It Is

 

The broader measures of Stocks managed to trim their losses, with big cap techs once again leaning lower as they continue to deflate.

Gold and silver were a bit higher, along with the Dollar. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Troubled Seas of Thought

 

"It is a far, far better thing to have a firm anchor in nonsense than to put out on the troubled seas of thought." 

John Kenneth Galbraith 

 

“Foolishness is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice.  One may protest against evil; it can be exposed and, if need be, prevented by use of force.  Evil always carries within itself the germ of its own subversion in that it leaves behind in human beings at least a sense of unease. 

Against foolishness we are defenseless.  Neither protests nor the use of force accomplish anything here; reasons fall on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental. 

In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack.  For that reason, greater caution is called for when dealing with a foolish person than with a malicious one.  Never again will we try to persuade the foolish person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Prisoner for God: Letters and Papers from Prison

 

"Misconceptions and laziness may produce more mischief in this world than deceit and malice." 

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

"There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root." 

Henry David Thoreau

 

Stocks had a grand pop and flop today, as the initial exuberance over a possible vaccine for coronavirus and the apparent win by Biden took a large exogenous weight off equities. 

And so it was risk on to near euphoric levels. 

And then it was not. 

Gold and silver got hammered today. 

Looks like the traditional Non-Farm Payrolls report shenanigans were a trading day late. 

I was pretty much in cash coming into today. I did add back a trading position in gold and a couple of miners, which were just brutalized. 

Let's see how the rest of the week goes.

The Dollar was higher, but failed to take out the 93 handle. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Not With a Bang But a Whimper - Gold and Silver Continue to Shine

 

"The great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.   For evil to appear disguised as light, as charity, as historical necessity, or social justice is quite bewildering to anyone raised on traditional ethical concepts.  But for the Christian who builds his life on the word of God, it merely confirms the fundamental perversity of evil." 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer 

 

“The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly.  Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them.  It wasn’t God who was dead.  We were." 

Ray A., Practice These Principles 

 

"He speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men.  He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of society, he infects the body politic, so deeply that it no longer resists.” 

Marcus Tullius Cicero 

 

"The real conflict is the inner conflict.  There are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost personal selves?” 

Maximilian Kolbe

 

"In his house in R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.” 

H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu

 

Stocks were shaky today after their big rally of the week. 

But as usual, the markets managed to get them back to nearly unchanged in the quiet trading of a Friday afternoon. 

We may expect to see a nominal, if not exact, conclusion to this election sooner than expected, at least on the Presidential and House level. 

The Senate not so much.   The Georgia runoffs and the virtual tie in results will continue to weigh

Gold and silver continue to shine.  

The dollar moved lower once again. 

Today was the Non-Farm Payrolls report for October.  And the markets barely noticed.  Especially surprising was gold, silver, and the Dollar.

For all his hubris and bluster, Donny is transitory and incidental.   The real game continues as he passes into memory, and forgotten.

And the band played on. 

Have a pleasant weekend.