Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Old As Babylon, And Evil As Sin

 

“Lawlessness has come out of Babylon, that is, from the elders who were to govern the people as judges. They perverted their thinking; they would not allow their eyes to look to heaven, and did not keep in mind just judgments.  How you have grown evil with age. Now have your past sins come to term, passing unjust sentences, condemning the innocent, and freeing the guilty."

Daniel 13:5,9,52-53


"A kleptocracy is sucking the life out of working men and women by force and fraud.  A group of sociopaths, who have committed one of the great crimes in history, not only blithely walk away with their loot unpunished, but come back to rob their victims once again, to finish the job.

Those fallen into wickedness bear the fruits of hate, deceit, greed, fear, pride, and anger. They forsake love by washing their hands of it, and eventually come to condemn it, and persecute it— and thereby condemn themselves."

Jesse, September 2012



“I think that the depth of Satan's pride is difficult for humans to understand, and therefore it is easy to fall into this error and partake of it, thinking, all the while, that we are instead doing something great and beautiful...

Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems bad to you in yourself is purified by the very fact that you have noticed it in yourself. And avoid fear, though fear is simply the consequence of every lie.”

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

"Woe to you, you hypocrites.  You scrupulously observe the details, but neglect the more important spirit of His commandments – justice, mercy and faithfulness.  Woe to you, you hypocrites.  You carefully perform the rituals, but inside you are full of greed and self-indulgence.   Woe to you, you hypocrites.  You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside, but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  On the outside you appear righteous, but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.  You snakes, you brood of vipers." 

Matthew 23: 23-33

 

“He did not care for the lying at first.   He hated it.   Then later he had come to like it.  It was part of being an insider, but it was a very corrupting business.” 

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

 

"For the oppression of the poor, for the groans of the much abused, now will I arise, says the Lord.  I will set them in safety from those that sneer at them.  The words of the Lord are pure words: as silver tested in a furnace purified seven times.  You shall keep them safe, O Lord, you shall preserve them from this generation of vipers forever, where the wicked prowl on every side, where vile men are exalted." 

Psalm 12:5-8

 

Stocks were weak overnight and in the opening today, but gained a footing and then took to the upside.

Tech was buoyed by the news that Elon Musk bought a 9.2% passive position in Twitter.

Has Elon ever been passive for long in anything?

Gold moved a little higher, silver a little lower.

The Dollar moved higher, just short of taking back the 99 handle.

I suppose today would be called 'risk on' despite the upside in gold.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

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.