Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Cruel Deception - FOMC Next Week

 

"The Fed can create only paper.  Inflation does not create value, it merely masks the rot of economic stagnation, but can do so for several years if the inflation can be concealed artfully.  The US has been struggling through a particularly non-productive period for most Americans in terms of real wealth production especially as expressed in the growth of savings, which has been decidedly negative.

In their irresponsible foolishness and greed the Fed and the Bush Administration have managed to transfer more wealth from the many to the few, further impeding any sustained recovery since the health of the economic body has been concentrated in a few parts of questionable productive value.

This is how we coined the term 'Potemkin Economy' many years ago.  It is a cruel illusion of the Fed, the Treasury, and their associates in misdirection and deception. For that is what this has been, regardless of motives or intentions.  It is a disgraceful episode in our country's history, but this is what happens when one gives themselves over to the rule of fear and greed."

Jesse, The Cruel Deception, 8 July 2008

"In the task of that redemption the most effective agents will be men who have substituted some new illusions for the abandoned ones.  The most important of these illusions is that the collective life of mankind can achieve perfect justice.  It is a very valuable illusion for the moment; for justice cannot be approximated if the hope of its perfect realization does not generate a sublime madness in the soul.

Nothing but such madness will do battle with malignant power and 'spiritual wickedness in high places.' The illusion is dangerous because it encourages terrible fanaticisms.  It must therefore be brought under the control of reason. One can only hope that reason will not destroy it before its work is done."

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932

"It does not matter how small the sins are, provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.  Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one--the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts."

C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters

The illusions of extremists, of both the right and the left, are dangerous things, for the very reason that they often incline themselves to sacrifice the individual, and even surprisingly large groups of individuals and segments of society, for the 'greater good' of their extremes and their illusions. 

A seemingly endless parade of infamous tyrants, forgotten viceroys, and faceless bureaucrats always seem to have their roots in the extremity of illusion that rises out of some turmoil of excess, and the throwing off of the restraints of reason.  And no people, no organization of people, and no nation is immune or exceptional to this extremity. 

The human being is remarkably clever and wonderfully self-deluding in choosing the things that they know are wrong, that they hide both from the world and themselves at first.  That they excuse, wrap in exceptionalism, drape in personal exemption and necessity.

Evil is a choice, or more properly a long, gradual succession of choices. And the madness never sleeps, is always open for business.  And looking for souls to devour.

It was 'risk on' today as stocks rallied hard all the way into the close, with the futures going out on the highs.

The Dollar chopped sideways, along with the metals slid down towards the bottom of their short term range..

The VIX fell sharply down to a recent low.

Must be an end of month thing, tee-ing up the next wash and rinse perhaps.

We will have the FOMC on Wednesday afternoon.

I go to see the dermatologist for a skin check every year.  

I got a call this week from the doctor to tell me that I have a squamous carcinoma on my leg.

Luckily it is early days, and some outpatient surgery will remove it later in November.  And hopefully it will provide clear margins.

But still, it is a bit unsettling to get that kind of call, no matter how prepared one might think themselves to be.  

Check ups matter.  I have seen it work for our good many times.  Do not fear them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Amazon Miss Knocks Stocks

 

"And with many other words Peter gave warnings and pleaded with them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this lawless generation.'"

Acts 2:40

"Be sober, be vigilant.  Your adversary, the devil, prowls the earth like a roaring lion, seeking those whose souls he may devour."

1 Peter 5:8

"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.  Everywhere, and at times of greatest trials, men have appeared, prophets and saints who cherished their freedom, who preached the One God and who with His help brought the people to a reversal of their downward course."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12


And as was said here yesterday:

"At some point the markets will have to catch up with reality."    Jesse, 26 October 2022

And Amazon dropped a stink-bomb on the bubblicious view of the markets and the economy after hours.  

Here's one for the record books, along with the other rosy quotes from the late 1920s.

“This is a strong, robust economy. People have savings on their balance sheet from the period when they couldn’t spend and where they were getting government transfers. There’s still very significant savings out there, although not as much at the lower end of the income spectrum — but still, some savings out there to support growth." 

Jerome Powell, 21 September 2022

As they pointed out at Wall Street On Parade today,  " According to BEA data, the Personal Savings Rate in the U.S. now stands at 3.5 percent, exactly where it stood in August of 2008 – in the midst of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression."

The futures were cratering after the bell, so I'll just leave them as they are on the charts for now, and we'll see what we have tomorrow morning.

If nothing else these are wild, volatile markets, compliments of deregulation and the Fed.

Gold and silver were pretty much unchanged after another attempt to smack prices lower.

The Dollar actually gained some strength back.

Let's see what happens as the credibility trap continues to unravel around the aura of the self-proclaimed elites.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Great Emptiness

 

"I am guilty, but not in the way that you think.
I should have recognized my duty earlier;
I should have more sharply called out evil, as evil;
I suppressed my judgement far too long.
I did warn,
but not nearly enough, and certainly not clearly enough;
And today I know the nature of my guilt, and my obligation."

Albrecht Haushofer, executed by the SS, 23 April 1945


“Imagining that you are deep and complex, but others are simple, is one of the primary signs of malignant selfishness.”

Stefan Molyneux


"The definition of money as the sublime good results in the depreciation of all values that do not pay.  What is moral is what returns a profit and satisfies the judgment of the bottom line.  Freedom comes to be defined, in practice if not in commencement speeches, as the freedom to exploit.  This commercial reading of the text of human nature gives rise to a system that puts a premium on crime, encourages the placid acquiescence in the dishonest thought or deal, sustains the routine hypocrisy of politics and proclaims as inviolate the economic savagery otherwise known as the free market or freedom under capitalism.

Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history off the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor.  The state of perpetual emptiness is, of course, very good for business.  The feasts of consumption sustain the economy, keep up the volume in the stock markets, employ the unemployable, excite the fevers of speculation, and stimulate the passion for political and sexual novelty."

Lewis H. Lapham


"Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness."

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace


"Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom
Remember us—if at all—not as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men."

T. S. Eliot

Stocks fluffed around again, and finished slightly lower, led by the disappointments of big tech.

Gold and silver advanced, but not as much as one might might think with the Dollar taking another leg lower.

At some point the markets will have to catch up with reality.

The Bank of Canada did a 'pivot' of sorts today, and that breathed more air into the bubble dreams of Wall Street.

I think we have heard this tune before.

Many times.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Market As God - Comex Gold Option Expiration Tomorrow

 

"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. 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, The Great Transformation


"Do you not know that to whom you yield yourselves as servants to obey, his servants you become, whether of a corruption unto death, or of a righteousness unto life?"

Romans 6:16

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages.  They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.”

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite


"Since the earliest stages of human history, of course, there have been bazaars, rialtos, and trading posts—all markets.  But The Market was never God, because there were other centers of value and meaning, other 'gods.'  The Market operated within a plethora of other institutions that restrained it.  As Karl Polanyi has demonstrated in his classic work The Great Transformation, only in the past two centuries has The Market risen above these demigods and chthonic spirits to become today's First Cause."

Harvey Cox, The Market As God: Living In the New Dispensation


"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.  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."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich 1942


It was risk on today as weak economic news spurred more hopes of an early end to the Fed's rate increases. 

Weak economic data is of course a two-edged sword, because of its primary effects on commerce and profitability.

But no matter, today was one of a renewed euphoria.

Stocks rallied, although they pulled back noticeably in the last thirty minutes from their highs.

Smells like a technical trade, or at least teen spirit. 

After the bell the big cap tech names disappointed and the NDX pulled back even further.

The Dollar declined.

Gold and silver were hit hard early but took a fairly significant part of that back.

There will be an expiration for the November gold contracts tomorrow on the Comex.  November is a very thin month for gold futures.

Have a pleasant evening.