Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Darkness Enboldened

 

"For our allotted time is the passing of a shadow,
and there is no return from our death,
because it is sealed up and no one turns back.

‘Come, therefore, let us enjoy the good things that exist,
and make use of the creation to the full as in youth.
Let us take our fill of costly wine and perfumes,
and let no flower of spring pass us by.
Let us crown ourselves with rosebuds before they wither.
Let none of us fail to share in our revelry;
everywhere let us leave signs of enjoyment,
because this is our portion, and this our lot.
Let us oppress the righteous poor man;
let us not spare the widow
or regard the grey hairs of the aged.
But let our might be our law of right,
for what is weak proves itself to be useless.

‘Let us lie in wait for the righteous man,
because he is irritating to us and opposes our actions.
He professes to have knowledge of God,
and calls himself a child of the Lord.
He became to us a reproof of our thoughts;
the very sight of him is a burden to us,
because his manner of life is unlike that of others,
and his ways are strange.
Let us test him with insult and torture,
so that we may find out how gentle he is,
and make trial of his compassion.
Let us condemn him to a shameful death,
for, according to what he says, he will be protected.’

Thus they reasoned, but they were led astray,
for their wickedness blinded them,
and they did not know the secret purposes of God,
nor hoped for the wages of holiness,
nor discerned the prize for blameless souls;
for God created us for a eternal life,
and made us in the image of his perfection,
but through the devil’s envy death has entered the world,
and those who belong to his company shall receive it."

Wisdom 2:5-24

"A true opium of the people is the belief in nothingness after death, the huge solace, the huge comfort of thinking that for our betrayals, our greed, our cowardice, our murders, we are not going to be judged.”

Czeslaw Milosz, Discreet Charm of Nihilism

Stocks tried to rally and failed, but managed to take back a chunk of the day's losses in the quiet of the last trading hours.

Gold and silver declined on a Non-Farm Payrolls Report.

What a surprise.

It seems that the metals may be under some pressure, until the mechanics of the physical market demand break the current paper trading stranglehold.

The Dollar rose, taking a firmer grip on the 98 handle.

I tend not to play 'systems' with counts and rules.   I always felt that they tended to create a bias towards what the market *should* do at a given time.

Anticipating the future market movements is a very non-linear, probabilistic art, best approached with humility.

I was thinking of all the other sites that I had posted on over the years, and read, and wondered today that so many of them have gone dark behind a paywall, or just gone.

I wonder if, at the end of the day, there will be any asset, any place that is safe from unbridled greed and lust for power, the ruler of the darkness of this world.

"But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow before the gods of evil."

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Déjà Vu All Over Again - Farewell to the First Quarter

 

"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.  The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.  The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed."

Jesse, 5 August 2019


"'The markets used to be about capital formation,' said Mr. Quast, the consultant. 'Now 80 percent of trading is driven by some form of statistical arbitrage. We are buying into a statistical house of cards that could unravel very quickly.'”

Landon Thomas, Inquiry Stokes Concern over Trading Firms that Shape Markets, 3 September 2009


“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” 

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby


“It is better to be a child of God than king of the whole world.”

Aloysius Gonzaga

And it is.

Non-Farm Payrolls Report tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Worst Is Likely Yet To Come - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

 

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created. Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage.

And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes against which no laws had been passed. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater


"Just as it was in the days of Noah, so will it be with the coming of the Son of Man.   People were eating, drinking, marrying and being given away in marriage, up until the very day that Noah entered the ark.  Then the flood came, and swept them all away... 

And they said to him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?' And He said to them, 'Where death is, there will be a gathering of vultures.'” 

Luke 17:26-27, 37

 

"Everyone knows that plagues have a way of recurring throughout history, yet somehow we find it hard to believe in the ones that crash down on us out of the sky.  There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise.  When war breaks out people say it's stupid and won't last long. Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves.  In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus, The Plague

Stocks gave up some of their gains from yesterday, or as the spokemodels quaintly and charmingly put it, 'Yesterday there was optimism about the Ukraine: today there was not.' 

 Or as someone who is not afraid to say it might have put it, 'Yesterday was a very calculated and determined short squeeze.   Today they let some of the air out of the bubble.'

Bully needs to set a new high.   A failure to do so will put the risk imbalance higherl.  

Gold and silver rebounded sharply, because of the artificial magnitude of the selloff the last two days in observance of the April contracts option expiration.

The Dollar continues its slide for much the same reason.   There are no markets more manipulated than the currency and interest rate [LIBOR] markets.   It is the dark heart of our financial system.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls Report on Friday.   This has often been an occasion for shenanigans, operating behind a thin veneer of 'fundamentals.'

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We Learn Nothing

 

“I have spoken to the heads of various Wall Street equity derivatives trading desks and every single one of the senior managers I spoke with told me that Bernie Madoff was a fraud.  Government has coddled, accepted, and ignored white collar crime for too long.   It is time the nation woke up and realized that it's not the armed robbers or drug dealers who cause the most economic harm, it's the white collar criminals living in the most expensive homes who have the most impressive resumes who harm us the most.  They steal our pensions, bankrupt our companies, and destroy thousands of jobs, ruining countless lives.”

 Harry Markopolos

 

"A kleptocracy is sucking the life out of working men and women by force and fraud.  They pervert and corrupt so many, filling their hearts with their passionate lies, appealing to what is the very worst in them." 

Jesse, September 2012

 

"The report [by author John Detrixhe] found that as of December 2020 the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) had a 19.9 percent share of stock market trading versus 13.4 for Citadel Securities and 9.4 percent for Virtu Financial.  This gave Citadel Securities and Virtu a combined stock market trading share of 22.8 percent versus 19.9 for the NYSE. 

The big problem with this picture is that neither Citadel Securities or Virtu Financial are registered as stock exchanges and neither are regulated by the SEC as stock exchanges. Citadel Securities is a broker-dealer that pays for order flow from at least nine online brokerage firms and has a dubious history of regulatory fines and abusive behavior.  Virtu Financial is a market maker and high frequency trading firm that bragged in its IPO prospectus that it had only one losing day in 1,238 days of trading."

Wall Street On Parade,   Unregistered 'Exchanges' Carry More Volume Than NYSE

 

 "And in some ways, it creates this false illusion that there are people out there looking out for the interest of taxpayers, the checks and balances that are built into the system are operational, when in fact they're not.  And what you're going to see and what we are seeing is it'll be a breakdown of those governmental institutions.   And you'll see governments that continue to have policies that feed the interests of -- and I don't want to get clichéd, but the one percent or the .1 percent -- to the detriment of everyone else."

Neil Barofsky

 

"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."

London Banker, Lies, Damned Lies, and LIBOR

Stocks were in rally mode today on a most likely false optimism about the progress of a truce in the Ukraine.

Rising rates, inflation, global pandemic, supply chain breaks - meh.

At least for today.   The wash and rinse must flow.

Gold and silver were brazenly hit again this morning, in the familiar day after option expiry smackdown to dislodge all those new holders of April metals contracts.

They are no longer subtle, not bothering to even disguise their blatant manipulation of markets.

Stocks were on a tear, managing to take out another level of failed rallies from the past.

Bully needs to make a new high.   Or all that has failed thus far is going to be just a warmup.

Bitcoin managed to go higher, which makes sense given its positive correlation with the equity bubble.

The Dollar fell.   

It's sad to see how many have given themselves over to the madness, and blithely skip along towards the abyss. 

And the beat goes on.

"It turns out that you can blow life off for as long as you want, but you still have to take the finals.”

 Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

Have a pleasant evening.