Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Europe Agonistes - In the Garden of the Beast

 

"Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
who have observed his law;
Seek justice, seek humility;
And perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s justice.

This was the triumphal city, high and mighty,
Saying to herself, ‘I am the one, and none dare stand beside me.’
How desolate now has she become, a place fit only for wild beasts.
Those who pass by her scoff, and shake their heads at her ruin."

Zephaniah 2:3-15


"It is interesting to contrast the complacency of the career diplomats, at that time most often Americans of privilege, and their preoccupation with obtaining full payment of the German bonds for their wealthy domestic constituents and the banks, with the agony of the German people as they slowly sunk into the abyss.   The lone voices that were raised in protest were suppressed, ridiculed, marginalized, and ignored even in America.

This is a fine example of serial policy error in the service of privilege and the status quo.  To many amoral minds, including especially the capitalists of the free world, Hitler's rise to power was just another business opportunity, and the plight of his victims a crisis not to be wasted, a source of great profit.  And not all those who benefited were censured and punished.  Some families rose to greater prominence and power, even in America, on a pile of European corpses."

Jesse, Review: In the Garden of Beasts, 26 September 2011


"The real danger comes from encouraging or inadvertently tolerating inflation and its close cousin of extreme speculation and risk taking, in effect standing by while bubbles and excesses threaten financial markets."

Paul Volcker


"For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind."

Hosea 8:7


“I'm not crazy about reality, but it's still the only place to get a decent meal.”

Groucho Marx

Stocks were sold hard in the overnight and at the opening of trade in New York.

And then as the day progressed the campaign to turn stocks and rally wore on, with the major indices unchanged or in the green at the close, led by the bubblemeisters in tech.

Like a dog returns to its vomit.

Gold and silver were slammed, hard.  

The euro was sold to a 20 year low, and as a result the DXY index of which the euro is the major component, soared to the 106+ handle.

I came in short from the weekend, expecting some selling to carry into the opening, and covered those shorts in the first thirty minutes.

I did take some initial, lightly held trading positions in the usual suspects later in the day during what felt like capitulation for at least the short term.  It may be rough to hold, much less build upon.

Let's see how the wash and rinse cycles progress into the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

The powers-that-be seem determined to wage a proxy war for economic power, to the last impoverished European.

How can they not?  This is how they use everyone, even if needed their own.

“He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.”

Samuel Johnson

And having forsaken the image of God, they lose themselves in darkness, become it, and call its endless death and desolation winning.

Have a pleasant evening.

Listen, and I will tell you a mystery...

 

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him.  We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now.  We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case.

God's presence is not discerned at the time when it is upon us, but afterwards, when we look back upon what is gone and over.  The world seems to go on as usual. There is nothing of heaven in the face of society, in the news of the day.

And yet the ever-blessed Spirit of God is there, ten times more glorious, more powerful than when He trod the earth in our flesh. 

God beholds you.  He calls you by your name.   He sees you and understands you as He made you.  He knows what is in you, all your peculiar feelings and thoughts, your dispositions and likings, your strengths and your weaknesses.  He views you in your day of rejoicing and in your day of sorrow.  He sympathizes in your hopes and your temptations.   He interests Himself in all your anxieties and remembrances, all the risings and fallings of your spirit.

He encompasses you round and bears you in His arms.  He notes your very countenance, whether smiling or in tears.  He looks tenderly upon you.  He hears your voice, the beating of your heart, and your very breathing.  You do not love yourself better than He loves you.  You cannot shrink from pain more than He dislikes your bearing it; and if He puts it on you, it is as you would put it on yourself, if you would be wise, for a greater good afterwards.

There is an inward world, which none see but those who belong to it.  There is an inward world into which they enter who come to Christ, though to men in general they seem as before. If they drank of Christ's cup it is not with them as in time past.  They came for a blessing, and they have found a work.

To their surprise, as time goes on, they find that their lot is changed.  They find that in one shape or another adversity happens to them.  If they refuse to afflict themselves, God afflicts them.

Why did you taste of His heavenly feast, but that it might work in you—why did you kneel beneath His hand, but that He might leave on you the print of His wounds?

God has created me to do Him some definite service; He has committed some work to me which He has not committed to another.  I have my mission— I may never know it in this life but I shall be told it in the next.

I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons.  He has not created me for naught.   I shall do good, I shall do His work. I shall be an angel of peace, a preacher of truth in my own place while not intending it if I do but keep His commandments.

Therefore I will trust Him.  Whatever I am, I can never be thrown away.  If I am in sickness, my sickness may serve Him; in perplexity, my perplexity may serve Him. If I am in sorrow, my sorrow may serve Him.

He does nothing in vain.  He knows what He is about.  He may take away my friends.  He may throw me among strangers.  He may make me feel desolate, make my spirits sink, hide my future from me— still He knows what He is about.

Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.

Let us feel what we really are— sinners attempting great things.  Let us simply obey God's will, whatever may come.  He can turn all things to our eternal good.  Easter day is preceded by the forty days of Lent, to show us that they only who sow in tears shall reap in joy.

The more we do, the more shall we trust in Christ; and that surely is no morose doctrine, that leads us to soothe our selfish restlessness, and forget our fears, in the vision of the Incarnate Son of God.

May the Lord support us all the day long, till the shades lengthen, and the evening comes, and the busy world is hushed, and the fever of life is over, and our work is done.  Then in His mercy may He give us safe lodging, and a holy rest, and peace at last.”

John Henry Newman

 

"It seems that under the overwhelming impact of rising power, humans are deprived of their inner independence and, more or less consciously, give up establishing an autonomous position toward the emerging circumstances. 

This great masquerade of evil has played havoc with all our ethical concepts. For evil to appear disguised as light, compassion, historical necessity or even social justice is quite bewildering to anyone brought up on our traditional ethical concepts, while for the Christian who bases his life on the Word, it merely confirms the fundamental wickedness of evil.

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.

Mere waiting and looking on is not Christian behavior. Christians are called to compassion and to action. We pray for the big things, and forget to give thanks for the ordinary, small, and yet really not so small, blessings. 

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 

 

"The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows. Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.” 

Martin Luther King

 

"Listen, and I will tell you a mystery."

1 Cor 15:51

 Love is moving among us.  Do not let yourself be pulled away. Do not be left behind.

Lord, I trust in you.

Need little - Want Less - Love more

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Churn and Burn Friday - Non-Farm Payrolls Next Week

 

“A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others. Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov


"Hear this, you who trample the needy and oppress the poor of the land, saying,
‘When will the New Moon be over that we may sell grain,
      and the Sabbath be ended that we may market wheat—
      skimping on the measure, boosting the price,
and cheating with dishonest scales,
        buying the poor with a piece of silver,
and the needy for a pair of sandals,
        selling even the worthless sweepings with the wheat.'

The Lord has sworn by his own name, the pride of Jacob:
‘Never will I forget anything that they have done.'"

They will stagger from sea to sea,
and wander from north to east,
In search of the saving word of the Lord,
but they shall not find it.
They shall fall, never to rise again."

Amos 8:4-7,12,14


"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 managed to find a footing a stage a rally into the close on the first trading day of the second half of 2022.

The Dollar nevertheless moved higher.

Gold and silver were hit hard but managed to take back their losses into the close.

We *might* have seen a spike bottom in the metals, but with the Payrolls report coming up we may have to linger and chop around here for a while.

Let's see what happens in this holiday shortened week coming up.

The underpinnings of equities remain dodgy despite the bullish sentiments put forward by the spokesmodels and Wall Street's minions.

The VIX fell.

The US is having a three day holiday weekend with the observance of the 4th of July.

Let's hope the rest of the world can carry on without Washington's oversight.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fallen Angels - End of 1st Half 2022

 

“The pull of fascist politics is powerful. It simplifies human existence, gives us an object, a 'them' whose supposed laziness highlights our own virtue and discipline, encourages us to identify with a forceful leader who helps us make sense of the world, whose bluntness regarding the 'undeserving' people in the world is refreshing. Fascism thrives under conditions of economic uncertainty, where fear and resentment can be mobilized to set citizens against one another.

When you legitimize yourself entirely by inventing enemies, the truth ceases to matter, normal restraints of civilization and decency cease to matter, the checks and balances of normal politics cease to matter.  It dehumanizes segments of the population. It limits the capacity for empathy among other citizens, leading to the justification of inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination."

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works


"Then the devil took him up to a very high mountain, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, in all their magnificence, and he said to him, 'All these I shall give to you, if you will prostrate yourself and worship me.'”

Matthew 4:8-10


"In the present state of the world, a virile and strong Christianity must go to the point of being a heroic Christianity.  This heroism will not consist of speaking constantly of heroism, and of being delirious about the virtue of power–which would perhaps prove that one was submitting to the influence of  power, and that one was beginning to fall away.

Gentleness and goodness, delicacy toward the humble and weak, pity–yes, pity –toward those who suffer, the rejection of perverse means, the defense of the oppressed, humble devotion, resistance to lies, the courage to call evil by its name, the spirit of peace and concord, openness of heart, the thought of heaven, that is what Christian heroism will save.  This [Nietzsche's] whole 'morality of slaves' will make it obvious that it is a morality of free men, that it alone makes man free.

Christianity will never have any real efficacy, it will never have any real existence and will never make any real conquests, except by the power of its own spirit, by the power of love."

Henri de Lubac, Spiritual Warfare, 1943


“Each day we are becoming a creature of splendid glory, or one of unthinkable horror.”

C. S. Lewis

Today marked the end of the first half of 2022.

And just about everything moved lower.

Stocks were down.

The Dollar was down, slipping back to the 104 handle.

Gold and silver were down.

Let's see what the second half brings.

Probably more bear market, and geopolitical turmoil.

Standing firm on the high ground still seems like the place to be.

The trick will be to remain firm and standing, even if all around you lose their way.

Have a pleasant evening.