Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Song of Creation - Comex Op-Ex and NFP Next Week

 

“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.  Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus.  He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father, and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever, and of his Kingdom there will be no end."

 Luke 1:30-33

 

"Let Gabriel’s word be held in your mind, for nothing is impossible to his glorious Majesty, who humbled Himself for us and was born of our humanity. God assumed smallness in her, without diminishing His nature, to make us great." 

Ephrem of Edessa, (306-373)

 

“The Church Fathers were fond of exploring the relationship between Eve, mother of all the living, and the new Eve, Mary the Mother of God.  Where Eve grasped and lost, Mary surrendered and received; where Eve said no to the alluring mystery, Mary said yes.” 

Robert Barron

 

"God has prepared for Himself one great song of praise throughout eternity, and those who enter the community of God join in this song.  It is the song that the 'morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy' at the creation of the world.   It is the victory song of the children of Israel after passing through the Red Sea, the Magnificat of Mary after the annunciation, the song of Paul and Silas in the night of prison, 'the song of Moses servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.'  It is the song of the heavenly fellowship.

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. 

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

 

"Isn't it a riddle and awe-inspiring that things can be so beautiful, despite the horror?   I've seen something wondrous peering through my joy in the beautiful, a sense of its creator.  Only people can be truly ugly, because they have free will to separate themselves from this song of praise.   It often seems they will drown out this hymn with cannon thunder, curses, and blasphemy.  But I have realized they will not succeed.  And so I want to throw myself on the side of the victor.” 

Sophie Scholl

 

Stocks were weakly trading today, perhaps digesting their recent gains from the other day.

Gold and silver were off a bit, perhaps for the same reason.

The Dollar chopped sideways and finished essentially unchanged.

Next week should provide a challenge for the precious metals, given our recent experience.

On Monday we have a Comex option expiration for the April futures contracts for gold and silver.

And on Friday we will be seeing the Non-Farm Payrolls Report for March.

In the background we still have a simmering geo-political stew that could boil over at any time.

The ascent of selfishness and pride causes many to turn away from the faith. And false prophets appear, and deceive many. And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of many grows cold.

But his kingdom will not end, and the darkness will not prevail.

So let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Audacious Oligarchy - Monopolies, Cartels, Corruption

 

"Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all." 

Edmund Burke

“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.  This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences." 

 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope

 

"The transnational corporations and the money markets have declared the era of human-designed regulations over.  Now the market must reign.  Because few people in the business community are paid to think about phrases such as 'western civilization,' they don't seem to realize that they are proposing the arbitrary denial of 2,500 years of human experience.

Ever since the democratic systems permitted their various courts to give corporations the status of persons, the individual as citizen has been on the defensive.  How could it be otherwise?  If you are a person before the law and Exxon or Ford is also a person, it is clear that the concept of democratic legitimacy lying with the individual has been mortally wounded.

If allowed to run free of the social system, capitalism will attempt to corrupt and undermine democracy, which is, after all, not a natural state.

It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion.  Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree.  Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you.  Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it.  Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society.  It is a modern form of feudalism.

Capitalism was reasonably content under Hitler, happy under Mussolini, very happy under Franco and delirious under General Pinochet." 

John Ralston Saul

 

Stocks were off to the races today, after yesterday's sharp decline.

Wash - rinse - repeat.

Gold and silver rallied, which is a bit of a divergence of its recent inverse correlation with risk assets.

The Dollar chopped sideways, but finished slightly higher.

The VIX continued to decline as trading with risk becomes more complacent. 

So why the divergence with the precious metals?

Let's keep in mind that Monday the 28th is a fairly important option expiration for the April futures contract on the Comex.

So let's see what happens, especially in light of the fluid geopolitical risks.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wax On, Wax Off - Wash and Rinse Cycle Continues

 

"Control frauds in the financial markets are by their very nature conspiratorial in that they involve the suborning of regulators, ratings agencies, exchanges, the media, and legislators to ignore and facilitate misrepresentation that enable white collar crime.  They are difficult to prosecute because by their nature they involve twisting the legal into the extra-legal on a broad basis to achieve a particular financial effect, while limiting many specific aspects to the letter of the law, or at least the gray areas. 

 By and large they operate in the shadows, hiding behind secrecy and a general mindset towards short term greed and lapses in ethics.  Investigations following the Crash of 1929 and the S&L crisis demonstrated that the existence of such pervasive lapses in stewardship do exist. 

Light is a good disinfectant.  Fraud cannot bear exposure.  While some confidentiality must be maintained in trading, obsessive secrecy regarding significantly large positions and collateral matters is often an indication that something is not right, that it is hidden from the market participants view for a particular reason that is deleterious to market pricing and efficiency."

Jesse, 27 April 2010 

"There is not a crime, there is not a dodge, there is not a trick, there is not a swindle, there is not a vice, that does not live by secrecy." 

Joseph Pulitzer

 

"All frauds, like the wall daubed with untempered mortar, with which men think to buttress up an edifice, always tend to the decay of what they are devised to support."

Richard Whately 

 

"Secrecy is completely inadequate for democracy, but totally appropriate for tyranny." 

Malcolm Fraser

 

Stocks slumped today.

The precious metals rallied.

The Dollar moved up a bit.

VIX had a little bounce.

Wax on, wax off.  

Bonuses on Wall Street this year are up on average by 27%. 

In general, the oligarchy is increasingly audacious.

They have exerted their will and influence over corrupt enablers and the easily distracted very well.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Repentance, Forgiveness, Thankfulness

 

“At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ The servant’s master took pity on him, canceled the debt and let him go.

“But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.

“His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’

“But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.

“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”

Matthew 18:26-35

 

“The truth is that we were so spiritually and morally bankrupt that we could not even see some of those lines: we stepped over them blindly.  Other times we saw the lines alright, but we wanted to cross them.

It wasn’t God who was dead.  We were." 

Ray A.,  Practice These Principles

 

"But we have to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost, and now is found.’” 

Luke 15:32

 

It was risk on again today, as the masters of the universe decided that the direction of risky financial assets was up.  

And so they bought it with some abandon with stocks going out on the highs.

Gold and silver were hit hard early, but managed to snap back a bit from what appeared to be the usual bank shenanigans.

VIX continued to decline and is at a low for the short term.

There will be a gold and silver futures option expiration on the Comex this coming Monday. 

Have a pleasant evening.