Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - For What Does It Profit a Man - Fīat Jūstitia Ruat Cælum

 

"Isaiah was right about you hypocrites when he said:

 'These people honour me with their lips,
  but their hearts are far from me.
  In vain do they offer me worship as
  their teachings are merely the preferences of their own.” 

Mark 7:6-7 

 

"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to be wary of those who cause division and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teachings that you have learned.  Shun them.  For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites.  And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of the innocent and naive." 

Romans 16:17-18

 

"Such is the way with the multitude of men everywhere and at all times; they do not see the image of Almighty God before them, and ask themselves what He wishes.   And, for the same reason that they do not please Him, they succeed in pleasing themselves.   For that contracted, defective range of duties, which falls so short of God's law, is just what they can fulfill;  or rather they choose it, and keep to it, because they can fulfill it. 

Hence, they become both self-satisfied and self-sufficient; they think they know just what they ought to do, and that they do it all; and in consequence they are very well content with themselves, and rate their merit very high, and have no fear at all of any future scrutiny into their conduct, which may befall them, though their religion mainly lies in certain outward observances, and not a great number even of them." 

John Henry Newman

 

Stocks held steady at the end, despite a little wobbling, at their recent lofty highs. 

The Dollar gave up about half its recent gains, falling back down towards 90.

Gold advanced a little, but silver fell back to its open at the beginning of the week.

The trial of Trump in the Senate began today.

The plague wears on taking even those who to the end would not believe it.

Those who would make us mad are doubling down on their madness.  

All they have left now is audacity, and shamelessness.  Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.

"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

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dumb Jokes Like the US Markets, but Funnier - Hard Time Killing Floor Blues

 

“Learn what is to be taken seriously and laugh at the rest.” 

Herman Hesse

 

All things considered, I thought we can use some comic relief today. 

So here it is.

Q: What did the salad say to the congregation?

A: Lettuce pray.

Q: What did the bartender say to the horse who came in for a drink?

A: Why the long face?

Q: What did the Dalai Lama order when he went to Pizza Hut?

A: One with everything.

 

 Stocks rallied today.

The precious metals continued to move higher.

Very serious people continued to say very important things.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - From Fear to Complacency - Metals Bounce Back after Market Mugging

 

Stocks continued to push higher. 

The metals bounced after the calculated hit ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls report, in the most crooked of Wall Street traditions. 

The Dollar dumped about 50 cents and gave up the 91 handle. 

Have a pleasant weekend. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Metals Hit on Eve of Non-Farm Payrolls Report - Let Me Tell You a Mystery

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.  We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case. 

Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.  God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over.  The world seems to go on as usual.  There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.  And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh."

John Henry Newman

 

“This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts.  For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.  Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior.  Christians are called to compassion and to action. 

Only the humble believe in Him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that He does wonders where people despair, that He takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous.  

And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.  God is not ashamed of the lowliness of human beings.   God marches right in.   He chooses people as his instruments and performs His wonders where one would least expect them.  God is near to lowliness; He loves the lost, the neglected, the unseemly, the excluded, the weak, and the broken. 

In the Incarnation the whole human race recovers the dignity of the image of God.   Thereafter, any attack, even on the least of men, is an attack on Christ, who took on the form of man, and in his own Person restored the image of God in all.  

Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind." 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As we have come to expect on a Non-Farm Payrolls report the metals were subjected to a smashing and fearless bear raid.

But Yellen and crew will be looking carefully at the little pack of Redditors, who singed a hedge fund or two by piling on to their lazy short positions in Gamestop.

There are ways to reform this.  We used to have them.  We lost them in the great crusade to roll backk all the New Deal Reforms at the end of the last century.

Stocks rallied on the triumph of the status quo, and the waves of Fed-driven liquidity.

If you trade every day, and look carefully at the mechanics of the market around your orders, you may get the sense that your trades are being front-run, and gaming in the markets.

And you might not be incorrect in this.

Your order flow from your non-commission broker is probably being run through a gauntlet of mammoth hedge funds who are paying for a look at your hand milliseconds after you play it, and before it can have any effect.

There are ways to counter this.   Use limit orders only and do not chase.

Or better yet, do not trade at all.   This is a vicious market, and not well-regulated at all.

Do not expect to knock down all the regulations, and then stand against the powerful winds of malice and oppression that blow across the markets, with little or nothing to impede them.

What do you see that frightens you? 

If you love the Lord, as He loves you, you need not be afraid. 

"Through our relationship with the Incarnation, we recover our true humanity, and at the same time are delivered from that perverse individualism which is the consequence of sin, and recover our solidarity with all mankind."

Need little.  Want less.  Love more. 

For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.