Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Because They Can, Without Meaningful Accountability

 

"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole.   If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable.

Over the past 25 years the forces of regulatory liberalisation and demutualisation of markets have allowed the largest global banks to set the rules, processes and infrastructure of global markets to their own self-interested requirements." 

London Banker, Lies, Damn Lies, and LIBOR 

 

"This is the Dr. Evil strategy, as so named by the US traders who got nailed pulling this baloney in the European bond market some years ago.  It is a massive dumping of contracts into a dull market for the purpose of gaming the price to achieve some objective." 

Jesse, 21 September 2018

 

"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful. That’s what I have a problem with. And I think most people agree with me." 

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation

 

"No lie can live forever." 

Thomas Carlyle

 

The data shows that about 24,000 gold futures contracts with a nominal value of 4 Billion in gold were dumped in the quiet overnight trading hours.

I wish we could be surprised by this, but it is an all too common event in US markets.  In all these years I have learned to trade around it and live with it.   But it is still discouraging to see this sort of thing so quietly tolerated.

There was no fundamental reason for this 'flash crash.'   But you would not have picked the details of this up from the facts-lite description of this by the Wall Street spokesmodels and bubblevision bobbleheads.

Europe has taken steps to curb this malicious practice by the Banks in their bond markets, limiting the amount of heedless selling (dumping) that can be done in short periods of time in quiet markets.

The US continues to tolerate this and other abuses of its markets.   It is particularly brazen in gold because it does not offend the powers that be in the Fed and Treasury, who look on it somewhat favorably.

Until this corruption is rooted out of its monopolized and under-regulated markets there can be no sustainable economic recovery in the US.

That's why we can't have nice things.   It's an oligarchy, dominated by rigged markets and monopolies, and paid-for politicians, so that a very few benefit the most, without a meaningful counterbalance and accountability.

And now back to your favorite distractions,  junk calls and spam emails, healthcare system landmines, demagogues, conflict entrepreneurs, and conmen.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All Hail The RecoveryTM

 

“Do not accept anything as the truth if it lacks love.  And do not accept anything as love is it lacks the truth.  One without the other is a destructive lie. When you seek truth you seek God, whether you know it or not.

My God, fill my soul with holy joy, courage and strength to serve You.  Kindle your love in me and then walk with me along the next stretch of road before me.  I do not see very far ahead, but when I have arrived where the horizon closes down, a new prospect will open before me, and I shall meet it with peace.” 

St. Edith Stein

 

"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 

 

“No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The real conflict is the inner conflict. Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, 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

 

The Jobs report came in much stronger than expected.

And so the taper-related bets were reversed.

The Dollar rallied.

The metals and miners were hammered.

Stocks of the big cap story variety were off, jonesing for more bubble.

The SP 500 rose to a new high.

Real worldly concerns were pushed aside and forgotten.  At least for now. 

In the long run there is only one trade that really matters.  

For what does it profit a man...

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On - Non-Farm Payrolls Tomorrow

 

"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 

 

Stocks rallied today, with the big cap techs making a new bubble high. 

Gold and silver were off. 

The Dollar was unchanged. 

VIX dropped back down to the bottom of its recent range. 

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow. 

Let the games begin. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Keep the Lid On Metals - Huge Miss On ADP Payrolls

 

"A simple definition of concentration is a large market share held by only one or a few participants operating in concert.  The question of concentration is of utmost importance to the functioning of free markets and a more familiar term for market concentration is monopoly – which lies at the heart of antitrust law.  Sometimes monopolies can’t be avoided – in the case of public utilities for instance – but in those cases, strong oversight and regulation are the order of the day. 

Whenever I use the term concentration, substitute the word monopoly or cartel. Think of the four or less traders on the short side of COMEX silver as a monopoly or cartel whose existence is solely dependent on keeping the price of silver contained – much like OPEC or the DeBeers diamond cartel seeks to elevate the price of oil or diamonds. 

It appears to me that the big silver short monopolists on the COMEX are fighting the inevitable coming rise in silver prices, not for profit, but from the fear of what a failure to contain prices would entail.  An explosion in the price of silver, even with the recently reduced concentrated short position would involve the potential financial ruin for some of the big shorts – to say nothing of resultant legal fallout.  And please don’t think I am minimizing in any way the power of the motivation of the fear of ruin.  The big silver shorts were originally and for most of the past 40 years motivated by greed, but now the motivation is fear." 

Ted Butler, The What and Why of Concentration

The metals and stocks were rallying hard this morning.

And then Fed Vice-Chair Richard Clarida spoke at 10 AM, and shocked the markets with a 'hawkish' take on interest rates.

Clarida was under-secretary of Treasury under W, and advises firms like PIMCO and Credit Suisse Forex, when not holding an august chair of economics at Columbia.

If you listen to what he said it was not really on that hawkish, but the markets set off on it like someone rang a bell.  

What a coincidence.  I am sure no one knew what he was going to say in his prepared remarks.

And so gold and silver plummeted, and the Dollar soared.

Stocks dumped, although big cap tech story stocks managed to burble up for a bit of a gain into the close.

I had sensed a setup and took profits on about 3/4^ths of my miner longs on the early spike rally. 

I did buy a little back into the close in the aftermath, but am keeping my powder dry for Friday.

As Ted Butler notes above I think the precious metal cartels and their camp followers are a little nervous.   And so are those who are beholden to the Banks and the pampered princes of finance.

Although mostly it feels like the only fear they have is spraining their ankles while kicking the metal markets ass back and forth for fun and profits.   All the other markets as well.

Is it really worth it?   Let's table the answer to that until judgement day when all the accounts are settled.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.  The data suggests that it will be a weak number, short of expectations at least.

But that is just a suggestion., ex-adjustments and stat-magic boogie woogie moves so favored by the BLS.

Below is a table outlining the derivatives time bomb, which no one can apparently talk about.

Have a pleasant evening.