Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Oligarchy Is Audacious

 

"Financial predators are usually narcissistic and audacious.  They regularly have an extreme sense of entitlement coupled with high self-efficacy.  Many of them have a charismatic quality and are preternaturally persuasive.  Financial predators are commonly shameless and quite adept serial liars.  They perceive themselves having near unlimited guile and resourcefulness to extricate themselves out of any compromising situations." 

Russ Alan Prince

 

"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy. I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life." 

Jimmy Carter

 

"Crime, once exposed, has no refuge but in audacity.” 

Tacitus 

The Dollar drifted around the 93 handle, finishing slightly lower. 

Gold and silver moved a little higher. 

Stocks were in risk off mode, but managed to curtail their losses in the last hour of trading in the US.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

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.