Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Time Goes By

 

Stocks were mixed today, with a divergence between the SP 500 and the big cap tech divas.

Gold and silver were lower.

The Dollar fell closer to the 92 handle.

We had quite the weather event, with the remnant of Tropical Storm Ida dumping eight inches of rain on our area.

We are fortunate to live on high ground.   South of here along the Raritan river the flooding was catastrophic.

It's always something.

Here's looking at you, kid. 

Have a pleasant evening

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Gathering Storm

 

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it." 

Mark Twain

 

“Many of our most vaunted innovations are simply methods -- electronic or otherwise -- of pulling off some age-old profit-maximizing maneuver by new and unregulated means.” 

Thomas Frank 

 

“The combination of power, optimism and abstract thinking makes powerful people more certain. The more cut-off they are from others, the more confident they are that they are right.” 

Margaret Heffernan, Willful Blindness

 

The heart of the rain that is Tropical Storm Ida is rolling over us now.  

I was down the street helping a neighbor get some things ready. 

We have active flash flood and tornado warnings.

Stocks reached for another high note today, but fell back to the earth and mostly unchanged into the close.

Gold ended up flat while silver managed to hang on to a decent gain.

The Dollar was just a bit lower.

All eyes are on the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

The markets seemed to just shake off the big disappointment in the ADP private employment report today.

This market makes me a bit edgy.   I am out of all positions in the my trading account, keeping cash on hand.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Modern Know-Nothings - History Repeating

 

“Explosive urban and industrial growth had thrust the [Massachusetts] Commonwealth into the forefront of the industrial states in the antebellum period, creating, in the process, wrenching social and economic dislocations.  The failure of the established parties to mount a significant response to the myriad issues and problems spawned in the matrix of modernization weakened partisan attachments and set the rank and file of the established parties on a quest for a political vehicle that would make a difference in their lives. 

In 1854, such a vehicle materialized in the form of an antiparty, antipolitician populist movement that promised to cleanse the statehouse of corrupt old parties and self-serving political careerists and turn the government over to the people so that they might right the wrongs that had for so long afflicted them.

Among the afflictions, it is true, were the many social problems associated with mass immigration; but there were other troubling and pervasive concerns endemic to an unharnessed, rapidly expanding urban, industrial order, including the tyrannical factory system, the decline in the status of labor, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the deteriorating quality of urban life.” 

John R. Mulkern, The Know-Nothing Party In Massachusetts 

 

"I am not a Know-Nothing.  That is certain.  How could I be?  How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor of degrading classes of white people?  Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.  As a nation, we begin by declaring that 'all men are created equal.' We now practically read it 'all men are created equal, except negroes.'  

When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read 'all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and catholics.'  When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretense of loving liberty-to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocrisy." 

Abraham Lincoln, August 24, 1855 

 

“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.” 

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

 

Some stocks were a little wobbly after their recent parabolic gains. 

We may see more signs of instability as the bubble proceeds to its natural conclusion.

Gold was up a bit, silver not so much.

The active months in the gold contract are now October and December.  For silver the most activity is now in December.

The Dollar was once again unchanged at 92.67.   Three days in a row.  How about that.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

I am really getting antsy about the equity markets.  

I have pretty much stopped watching most network television, and am much more selective about the sites that I read on the internet.   I spend much more time reading and praying and working outside, and trying to help others.

It makes my thinking clearer, and my overall outlook generally more content.

As Fulton Sheen noted, "The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about."

People can become addicted to all sorts of things.   And there are plenty of examples in history of how people became addicted to demagogues who wove a delusional cartoon fantasy for their followers.

Time to disconnect from the machine, and start thinking and feeling for something more worthwhile and genuine and lasting.  

As a test, change that channel, stop running to read those websites.  See how badly you miss your favorite source of emotional opiates when they are gone.   Be patient with yourself in your withdrawal.

But above all save yourselves, for in the end to lose yourself, to throw yourself away for what is essentially nothing, is the only real tragedy. 

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God brings life to them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Just Another Manic Monday - Oligarchs Abounding

 

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.   They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills 

 

"Back in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt set down his understanding of American political history, in which there were two schools of political belief.  'The liberal party believed in the wisdom and efficacy of the will of the great majority of the people, as distinguished from the judgement of a small minority of either education or wealth.'  

What Roosevelt could not foresee was a party system in which the divide fell not between the few and the many, but between the small minority of education and the small minority of wealth.  Enlightened technocrats on one side, and resentful billionaires on the other.  Get that great majority back together, and they would be unstoppable." 

Thomas Frank 

 

"Manipulation can only go so far, especially when gold is reverting to its primary function which is as a currency in its own right or as means to substantiate existing currencies." 

Richard Henley Davis 

 

"Propaganda is the executive arm of the invisible government." 

Edward Bernays

The story stocks in the SP 500 and the NDX were ripping higher today, with the big cap teach stocks going parabolic.

Gold and silver were under pressure much of the day, but managed to bounce back a bit into the close.

Silver in particular finished almost unchanged.

The Dollar was unchanged, short of the 93 handle.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday that could move the markets.   

Dinner tonight was my son's favorite Asian comfort food, mapo tofu.  It came out really well he says.

I put in some slightly charred shoshito peppers and eggplant from the garden, in addition to the traditional and usual suspects.

Have a pleasant evening.