Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Precious Metals Rally - Stock Option Expiration Friday

 

"He has shown you all what is good.  And what else does the Lord require of you but to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?" 

Micah 6:8 

 

"It was pride that changed angels into devils; and it is humility that makes men angels. There never has been, and never can be, and there never shall be any sin without pride.” 

Augustine of Hippo 

 

"Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it. Because cynics don’t learn anything. Because cynicism is a self-imposed blindness, a rejection of the world because we are afraid it will hurt us or disappoint us.” 

Stephen Colbert 

 

"By your stubbornness and hardened heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself for the day of revelation of the just judgment of God,  who will repay everyone according to his works:  eternal life to those who seek glory, honor, and immortality through perseverance in good works,  but anger and rebukes to those who selfishly disobey the truth and obey wickedness." 

Romans 2:4-8 

"The humble live in continuous peace, while in the hearts of the proud are envy and frequent anger."

 Thomas à Kempis 

 

"All bitterness, anger and violence, shouting and derision must be removed from you, along with all hatrefulness.   Be kind and compassionate, forgiving one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven you." 

Ephesians 4:31-32

 

The inflation numbers came in pretty much as forecast this morning, which was a reassurance to the markets it seems.

Stocks managed to rally, and were able to hold it into the close.

Gold and silver were impressive today, although only lightly remarked on financial television.

They managed to stage a breakout, and hold it into the close.

Let's see if they can add to those gains.

The Dollar took a dive today, but managed to hang on to the 94 handle.

There will be a stock market option expiration on Friday.

The lack of follow up and attention to an almost unprecedented scandal of Fed governors engaging in brazen insider trading is surprising.

Maybe not so surprising in the corporate media perhaps, but even the bloggers, with a few notable exceptions, are remarkably quiet about this stunning revelation of corruption at the highest levels in our Federal Reserve System, a powerful regulator and largely self-regulating of itself and its clients.

The financial establishment is no benign, objective force for good in the economy.  

They are powerful, self-promoting, and petty in terms of rewards, accolades, and that most golden of oligarchical treasures, access to power.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Die Firmenbierleichen - Chairman Jay's Endless Oktoberfest

 

“The four most dangerous words in investing are: ‘This time it’s different.'” 

 John Templeton 

 

“A bull market is like sex.  It feels best just before it ends.” 

Barton Biggs 

 

“The most dangerous people in the world are very smart traders who have never gotten their teeth kicked in.”

F. Helmut Weymar

 

“I put two children through Harvard by trading options.   Unfortunately, they were my broker’s children.” 

Jason Zweig

 

 Stocks tried to rally today, and fell back into the red by the close, again. 

This is starting to feel like a thing. 

After the bell Apple slashed its i-Phone production estimate because of chip shortages. 

Gold managed to hang on to a bit of its own rally today.

Silver fell slightly.

The dollar moved higher again in a 'flight to safety.'

An analyst on the least weird financial television channel cited Bitcoin as a 'flight to safety' from Treasuries, referencing the recent debt limit discussions.  

Bitcoin is gold and ethereum is silver, says he.

This is nuts, say I.    

We will be getting US inflation data tomorrow.

A good chunk of physical gold in Hong Kong took a hike.

Stock option expiration on Friday.

And as they say, 'The Fed will not allow the stock market to go down.'

Sleep well.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stand and Bear Witness to the End - Tinderbox

 

“As observers of totalitarianism such as Victor Klemperer (I Will Bear Witness To the Bitter End 1933-1945) noticed, truth dies in four modes, all of which we have just witnessed.

The first mode is the open hostility to verifiable reality, which takes the form of presenting inventions and lies as if they were facts. 

The second mode is shamanistic incantation. The fascist style depends upon 'endless repetition,' designed to make the fictional plausible and the criminal desirable. 

The next mode is magical thinking, or the open embrace of contradiction.  Accepting untruth of this radical kind requires a blatant abandonment of reason.  Klemperer’s descriptions of losing friends in Germany in 1933 over the issue of magical thinking ring eerily true today. 

The final mode is misplaced faith.  It involves the sort of self-deifying claims.  When faith descends from heaven to earth in this way, no room remains for the small truths of our individual discernment and experience.  What terrified Klemperer was the way that this transition seemed permanent.  Once truth had become oracular rather than factual, evidence was irrelevant.  At the end of the war a worker told Klemperer that 'understanding is useless, you have to have faith.' 

If people feel lost and alone and broken and hopeless today, what will it be like if the world begins to come apart at the hinges?  Jesus was a man for simple people.  He didn't make his messages incredibly complex.  If you were a person that had the eyes to see and the ears to hear, then his message was easily understood. 

Many who claim today with their mouths that they follow Jesus will abandon him then with their lives.” 

Brandon Andress, And Then the End Will Come

 

'What is truth?'  Sometimes people ask this question because they wish to do nothing.  Generic cynicism makes us feel hip and alternative even as we slip along with our fellow citizens into a morass of indifference.  It is your ability to discern facts that makes you an individual, and our collective trust in common knowledge that makes us a society. 

Remember professional ethics.  When political leaders set a negative example, professional commitments to just practice become more important.  It is hard to subvert a rule-of-law state without lawyers, or to hold show trials without judges.  Authoritarians need obedient civil servants, and concentration camp directors seek businessmen interested in cheap labor. 

To abandon facts is to abandon freedom.  If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so.  If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.  The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.  You submit to tyranny when you renounce the difference between what you want to hear and what is actually the case.” 

Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny, 2017

Stocks made another attempt to rally today.

And again the rally failed, and stocks went out near the lows.

This market is a tinderbox, waiting for a trigger event, and that of a diminishing magnitude, which at the end might even seem inconsequential. 

I am still sitting in cash, taking it easy. 

Gold and silver were lower.

They are having a very difficult time breaking out from here.

With the Golden Week holiday over in China I expect the movement of physical may pick up again there in the East.

The Dollar was higher.

The VIX gained back some of last week's decline.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Dared by a Few, Willed by More, and Tolerated by All

 

"Capitalism is at risk of failing today not because we are running out of innovations, or because markets are failing to inspire private actions, but because we’ve lost sight of the operational failings of unfettered gluttony."

Jeffrey Sachs 

 

"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalized, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud." 

Charles H. Ferguson

 

"At first, the love of money, and then that of power began to prevail, and these became, as it were, the sources of every evil.   For avarice subverted honesty, integrity and other honorable principles and, in their stead, inculcated pride, inhumanity, contempt of religion and general venality.  Ambition prompted many to become deceitful; to keep one thing concealed in the breast and another ready on the tongue; to estimate friendships and enmities, not by their worth, but according to interest; and to carry rather a specious countenance than an honest heart.  These vices first advanced but slowly, and were sometimes restrained by correction; but afterward, when their infection had spread like a pestilence, the state was entirely changed, and the government, from being the most equitable and praiseworthy, became the most rapacious and insupportable." 

Sallust, Conspiracy of Cataline

 

“The worst crimes were dared by a few, willed by more, and tolerated by all.” 

 Tacitus 

 

As you have probably heard the Jobs Number came in strikingly below estimates this morning.

It was a shock because many very important people said that once unemployment compensation was cut, then people would go take any job that was available.

And so stocks did a pop n' flop.

The 'pop' was because the low number made traders think that the Fed would tend to remain dovish longer, since there is a lack of genuine economic recovery in the number.

But alas, the selling came in and stocks ended up in the red on the day.

This is one very dangerous and volatile market.

"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who murder your prophets, and persecute those whom God has sent as messengers to you.  As you have willed, your house is now yours— but is made desolate."

We have learned nothing, and are emboldened by our willful ignorance.  

We make beasts of ourselves, to avoid the pain of our lack of humanity. 

We make a private cult out of our own childlike selfishness, sinning shamelessly against the word and the spirit.

We lay down with swine, and call it greatness.

Gold and silver also rallied strongly for the same reason.  

And then were steadily sold through the day to finish unchanged or even a little lower.

There are some powerful interests in London and New York defending their bearish positions in gold and silver.   

The dollar drifted a little lower as one might expect from a dovish economic indicator.

Need little, want less, love more. 

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

Have a pleasant weekend.