Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Who Could Have Seen It Coming?

 

"The oligarchic character of the modern English commonwealth does not rest, like many oligarchies, on the cruelty of the rich to the poor.   It does not even rest on the kindness of the rich to the poor.

It rests on the perennial and unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich."

G. K. Chesterton, Heretics


"We've become, now, an oligarchy instead of a democracy.  I think that's been the worst damage to the basic moral and ethical standards to the American political system that I've ever seen in my life."

Jimmy Carter, television interview, September 27, 2015


"It is precisely this — high-powered computers and the swagger of those who operate them — that is causing worries over high-frequency trading’s increasing sway.  '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


"A rogue does not laugh in the same way that an honest man does; a hypocrite does not shed the tears of a man of good faith. All falsehood is a mask; and however well made the mask may be, with a little attention we may always succeed in distinguishing it from the true face."

Alexandre Dumas, Les Trois Mousquetaires


“We can have democracy in this country or we can have wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

Louis Brandeis, source


"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgement, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America 'You are too arrogant!  If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power!  And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name.  Be still, and know that I am God.'"

Martin Luther King, Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam, 1967


The ECB bid au revoir to nominally negative interest rates today. 

And so the euro rallied and the Dollar declined a little further into the 106 handle, which is still rather elevated.

Stocks rallied on the bad economic news this morning.'

It's that kind of Fed-eriffic, otherworldly market.

Gold and silver rallied sharply after a big overnight plunge in honor of the Comex option expiration and FOMC decision next week.

The VIX is at recent lows.  I put a more extended VIX chart up to put it into a broader context.

Stocks have a way to go in order to take out those secondary highs on the CrashTrak model.

But they are finally having a decent go at it. 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Here We Stand - Comex Metals Expiration on Friday

 

"What we would like to do is change the world— make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.  And to a certain extent, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, of the poor, of the destitute— the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor in other words, we can to a certain extent change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.   We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world."

Dorothy Day, The Catholic Worker, June 1946

“By means of gradual, treacherous, systematic abuse, the system has put every man into a spiritual prison.  Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."

Sophie Scholl, The White Rose, Munich 1942

"Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.   But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.   When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one— happiness and love."

Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis, 1905

“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.  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."

J. H. Newman

"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 its 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

"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


Once again concerns were cast aside after a wobbly open, and stocks went into risk on mode and rallied higher once again.

The VIX has fallen to its recent lower bound.

Gold and silver were lower as the Dollar edged higher.

The inventory of physical gold in the Comex Hong Kong warehouses continues to diminish 

Gold is flowing from West to East.

There will be an option expiration for the precious metals on the Comex next week.  It is more significant for the gold contracts than for silver, but both typically go hand in hand in this scenario.

I hear in many cases the sentiment that the recent decline in stocks is of little consequence, and that even if they were to decline much further that they did so in 2008, and will likely turn out all right in the end once again.

I have included the latest in the CrashTrak calculations.  As you know the indices must exceed the second high in order to take this chart formation off the table.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On - And Devil Take the Hindmost

 

"Hobbes had argued the need for a despot because men were like beasts; Townsend insisted that they (people) were actually beasts and that, precisely for that reason, only a minimum of government was required.  From this novel point of view, a free society could be regarded as consisting of two races: property owners and laborers.  

The number of the latter (working class) was limited by the amount of food; and as long as property was safe, hunger would drive them to work.  No magistrates were necessary, for hunger was a better disciplinarian than the magistrate.

To the politician and administrator laissez-faire was simply a principle of the insurance of law and order, with the minimum cost and effort.  Let the market be given charge of the poor, and things will look after themselves.

The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes. Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism. The improvidence of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. 

Also what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor? 'For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?'"

Karl Polanyi


“If you can feel that staying human is worth while, even when it can't have any practical result whatsoever, you've beaten them.”

George Orwell

It was risk on all the way today as Wall Street decided not to look at the bad news and just start putting some of their excess liquidity to work.

In other words it was technically time for a new wash cycle.

Gold and silver advanced slightly as the Dollar continues to fall.

There will be a futures option expiration for gold on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Cœurs des Cochons

 

"You are like whitewashed tombs which appear beautiful, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all corruption.   You outwardly look righteous, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness."

Matthew 23:27-28


"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves after a fashion; but they cannot understand destitution.  Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping their own souls bare, they may be moved to the sound of beautiful music, to Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them."

Léon Bloy


“The court is like a palace of marble; it's composed of people very hard and very polished.  False greatness is unsociable and remote— conscious of its own frailty, it hides, or at least averts its face, and reveals itself only enough to create an illusion and not be recognized as the meanness that it really is.”

Jean de la Bruyere


"All the nations which appear in history are necessarily a mixture, for us inextricable, of City of Good and City of Evil.  But what theology, history and common sense have also taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie


"The Lord has told you, O man, what is good.
And what does the Lord require of you?
Only this: to do what is right, to show mercy,
and to walk humbly with your God."

Micah 6:8


“We run heedlessly into the abyss, after putting something in front of us to stop us from seeing it.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées


It started out as a 'risk on' day, but alas, Apple indicated a slowdown in its business with all that entails, and stocks took a turn into the red.

Gold and silver joined the Dollar in giving up some ground.

The wash and rinse consumes all.

The VIX bounced back up again off its lower bound moving average.

There will be a futures options expiration for gold on the Comex this Friday.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them. 

Have a pleasant evening.