Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Arsenal of Hypocrisy - Know Whom You Serve

 

“When the healthy pursuit of self-interest and self-realization turns into self-absorption, other people can lose their intrinsic value in our eyes and become mere means to the fulfillment of our needs and desires.”

P. M. Forni, Choosing Civility

"I told you once that I was searching for the nature of evil.  I think I've come close to defining it: a lack of empathy. It's the one characteristic that connects all the defendants.  A genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow man.  Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy."

G. M. Gilbert, Nuremberg Diary

"This is how we know who are the children of God and who are the children of the Satan: anyone who does not do what is good is not God’s child, nor is anyone who does not love their neighbor."

1 John 3:10

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

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Ten Years After, 1943

"They which play with the devil’s rattles will be brought by degrees to wield his sword."

Thomas Fuller, The Profane State, 1642

"Help me, Lord, that my eyes may see all with mercy, so that I may never suspect or judge from appearances, but look deeper for what is good and beautiful in others' souls, and then come to their aid.  He who refuses to pass through the door of My mercy must pass through the door of My justice. "

Maria Faustyna Kowalska

Markets were diving this morning, in the kind of kabuki theater we have come to expect on major stock option expiration events.

This is why we can't have nice things.

Stocks managed to gain back most of their intraday losses..

VIX rose sharply and then dropped back down.

Gold and silver were just hammered in the futures, but again, managed to take back their early declines and finished in the green.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

All eyes will be on the Federal Reserve meeting on Wednesday September 21st.

Serve whom you will.   But know whom it is that you serve.

“The greatest evil is not done now in sordid dens of crime.  It is not even done in concentration camps and labor camps.  In those we see its final result.  But it is conceived and ordered in clear, carpeted, warmed, and well-lighted offices by quiet men, with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks, who do not need to raise their voice.”

C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Our Lady of Sorrows - Quad Witch Expiration Tomorrow

 

"The child’s father and mother were amazed at what was said about him; and Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, 'Behold, this child is destined for the fall and rise of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed, and a sword will pierce your own soul, so that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.”

Luke 2:33-35


"When Jesus saw his mother, and the disciple whom he loved standing near, he said, 'Woman, behold, your son.'  Then he said to his disciple, 'Behold, your mother.'  And from that moment the disciple took her into his home."

John 19:26-27


"When they had seen him, they spread the word concerning what had been told them about this child, and all who heard it were amazed at what the shepherds said to them.  And Mary treasured up all these things, and pondered them in her heart."

Luke 2:17-19


"And a great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed in the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head."

Revelation 12:1


“Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to sift all of you like wheat.  But I have prayed that your own faith may not fail.  And once you have returned to faith, you must strengthen your brothers.”

Luke 22:31-32

The Dollar and VIX chopped sideways and were essentially unchanged.

The spokesmodels were talking up 'King Dollar' with pom-poms flashing.  Sis boom bah.

Stocks declined quite a bit but came back from the selling pressure in the last half hour.

Gold and silver were slammed.

What a surprise.

Tomorrow must be a major stock option expiration and rebalancing, aka a 'quad witch.'

Lawless, with little to no consequences.

Fedex withdrew their 2023 earnings forecast in an early announcement after the bell and was knocked down 11%.  Ouch.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Those Who Are Not

 

"Since 1998, in our corrupt political system, the private healthcare sector has spent more than $10.6 billion on lobbying and over the last 30 years it has spent more than $1.7 billion on campaign contributions to maintain the status quo.  We have the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, and the pharmaceutical industry right now has 1,500 paid lobbyists in Washington, D.C. to make sure that in some cases we pay 10 times more for the medicine that we need."

Bernie Sanders, September 2022

"Yet the system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity.  Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view.   Impunity is epidemic in America.  The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight.  When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish 'dreamer.'  Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity, May 2016


"There is now abundant evidence of widespread, unpunished criminal behavior in the financial sector.  The evidence is now overwhelming that over the last thirty years, the U.S. financial sector has become a rogue industry.  As its wealth and power grew, it subverted America’s political system (including both political parties), government, and academic institutions in order to free itself from regulation.

As deregulation progressed, the industry became ever more unethical and dangerous, producing ever larger financial crises and ever more blatant criminality.  Since the 1990s, its power has been sufficient to insulate bankers not only from effective regulation but even from criminal law enforcement.  The financial sector is now a parasitic and destabilizing industry that constitutes a major drag on American economic growth.

The rise of predatory finance is both a cause and a symptom of an even broader, and even more disturbing, change in America’s economy and political system.  The financial sector is the core of a new oligarchy that has risen to power over the past thirty years, and that has profoundly changed American life."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


Stocks had another ranging day, ending slightly higher.

Gold dropped, under pressure most of the day.

Physical inventories are very thin in Hong Kong.

Silver moved higher, taking back some of its recent decline.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

The VIX receded after the big rise yesterday.

Who do the powerful of this world serve?  The simple truth of the matter is this— non serviam.  In all things they will not serve any other but themselves. 

May God have mercy and forgive us, especially in that moment when we will finally see ourselves as we really are, stripped of all worldly ornaments and illusions, and then know what we have done, and what we have failed to do, with perfect clarity.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - And There's the Rinse - Quad Witch on Friday

 

"If I speak with the words of men and of angels, but do not have love, I am a resounding gong or a clashing cymbal.  And if I have the gift of prophecy and comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge; if I have the faith to move mountains but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything that I have, and if I hand myself over for sacrifice but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind.  Love does not envy, is not boastful, is not conceited, does not act improperly, is not selfish, is not provoked, and does not keep a record of wrongs.  Love finds no joy in wickedness but rejoices in the truth."

1 Corinthians 13:1-7

"Then it will be God without disguise; something so overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature.   It will be too late then to choose your side.   That will not be the time for choosing: it will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realised it before or not."

C. S. Lewis, 1944

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. They will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus’s sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman’s beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

"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

'Woe to that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed.'

Mt. 26:24


The headline yesterday here was 'Wax On, Wax Off.' 

The spike rally of the last two days was the 'wax on.'

Guess what today was?

There is a triple witch option expiration on this Friday, based on the calendar I have been posting.

In short, this was a trading setup for the quad witch.  What a surprise.

We even had the usual talking heads muttering about a 100 bp increase by the Fed in September.

What did we say before?   75 bp is baked in, the pivot is an delusion, and 100 bp is highly unlikely.

The Dollar rocketed higher today, slamming gold and silver.  

I didn't think they had much of a shot at moving higher, especially given the dearth of physical in Hong Kong.  They need to scour some coin out of a few of the ETFs. 

I would be a little more constructive on the metals after today, with due caution.

Stock market volume was nothing to write home about.   No real panic.

This is another indication that this was a fairly cynical trading gambit.

And the volatility will get worse, as long as regulation stays so subdued, and the risk reward for cheating is so favorable.

So Jay, how is that 'internal investigation' coming along into that brazen insider trading by the Fed Governors?

Have a pleasant evening.