Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lead Kindly Light - Powell's Hawkish Words Jar Markets

 

“These people honor me with their lips, and offer worship with their words, but their hearts are far from me. Their religion is nothing but the rituals and traditions of men, which they memorize. I will awaken them with one shocking blow after another. Their wisdom will be shown as foolish, and all their cleverness will be made worthless. Woe to those who go to great depths to hide their plans from the Lord, who do their work in darkness and think, 'No one can see us, so who will know?’"

Isaiah 29:13-15

"And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of most will grow cold.   But those who stand, firmly to the end, will be saved."

Matthew 24:12

"And the measure for weighing the virtue of things is this: God’s light has come into the world, but some people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.  All who do evil hate the light and refuse to come into it for fear that their sins will be revealed.   But those who do what is right come into the light, so others can see that they are doing God's will."

John 3:19-21

"In a society that worships the self, power is the coin of the realm, where power is to be found in asserting one's own will over others.  And beyond all doubt, kindness and tolerance are to be despised as undermining, weakening the will to power.  In power is to be found the definition of all truth, for it dictates all, and does not bend a knee to any other reality but its own interpretation.  'Might makes right' is written large on the tableau of empire.

We rise in our own esteem by knocking others flat.  And from this flows a cornucopia of all other injustice and abuses.  In rationalizing ourselves by dehumanizing others, we can therein comfortably become monsters.   And some do."

Jesse, 9 January 2015


"Lead, kindly Light, amidst the grey and gloom
    The night is long and I am far from home.
Here in the dark, I do not ask to see
    The path ahead— one step enough for me,
Lead on, lead on, kindly Light."

Audrey Assad, based on The Pillar of the Cloud by J. H. Newman


Powell said some hawkish 'what if' things today and the markets reacted strongly.

But, as usual, it was a transitory thing.

The Dollar, which plunged intraday shortly after Chair Powell's remarks, rocketed higher after the 3 year note auction.

Gold finished a little higher.  Silver not so much. 

VIX moved lower.

The oligarchy remains exceptionally audacious and war-mongering.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Old As Babylon

 

"We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men."

George Orwell

"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.

Impunity is not an accidental or incidental defect of American society. It is a system foisted on us by the rich and powerful, and it continues to work its magic.  Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity.

The channels of corruption and secrecy havens are largely owned and operated by the big boys — the United States and the UK — and depend absolutely on the gross impunity that prevails at the highest reaches of power and finance in the United States."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity, 12 May 2016

"'Come, I will show you the judgment on the great harlot who reigns over many waters. The kings of the earth have sinned with her, and the worldly became drunk on the wine of her infamies.' Then he carried me to a deserted place where I saw a woman seated on a scarlet beast that was covered with blasphemous names, with seven heads and ten horns.  The woman was wearing purple and scarlet and adorned with gold, precious stones, and pearls. 

She held in her hand a gold cup that was filled with the abominable and sordid deeds of her harlotry.  On her forehead was written a name, which is a mystery, 'Babylon the great, the mother of harlots and of the abominations of the earth.' I saw that the woman was drunk on the blood of the innocent and on the blood of witnesses to righteousness."

Revelation 17:1-6


Today was a reflective day for the markets, as they continued to give up a little risk exposure in equities.

The Dollar and VIX were higher.

Gold was up a bit with silver a little lower.

The market continue to be wobbly.

Biden will be giving his State of the Union message tomorrow night so I think any serious market dislocations are not in the cards, barring some exogenous event.

Have a pleasant evening.

Weekend Reading: The Leaven of the Pharisees

 

"For judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. Mercy overcomes judgment.

What does it profit, brothers and sisters, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?  Can faith save him?  If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Depart in peace, be warmed and filled,' but you do not give them the things which are needed for the body, what does it profit?  Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

But someone will say, 'You have faith, and I have works.' Show me your faith without your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. You believe that there is one God.  You do well.  Even the demons believe—and tremble!  

You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith alone."

James 2L13-24


"Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is a pious, hollow hypocrisy."

Luke 12:1


"Not everyone who calls out to me, 'Lord! Lord!' will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only those who actually do the will of my Father in heaven."

Matt 7:21


"You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”

Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ


“No, this is the kind of fasting I want:
Free those who are wrongly imprisoned;
   lighten the burden of those who work for you.
Let the oppressed go free,
   and remove the chains that bind people.
Share your food with the hungry,
   and give shelter to the homeless.
Give clothes to those who need them,
   and do not hide from relatives who need your help.

“Then your salvation will come like the dawn,
   and your wounds will quickly heal.
Your godliness will lead you forward,
   and the glory of the Lord will protect you from behind.
Then when you call, the Lord will answer.
   ‘Yes, I am here,’ he will quickly reply.

“Remove the heavy yoke of oppression.
Stop pointing your finger and spreading vicious rumors!
Feed the hungry,
   and help those in trouble.
Then your light will shine out from the darkness,
   and the darkness around you will be as bright as noon."

Isaiah 58:6-10


"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.  Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, 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

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Revolution of the Heart - And There's the Rinse

 

"The world would be better off if people tried to become better.  And people would become better if they stopped trying to become better off.  For when everybody tries to become better off, nobody is better off.  But when everybody tries to become better, everybody is better off.   What we give to the poor for Christ's sake, is what we carry with us when we die."

Peter Maurin

“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."

John Henry Newman

“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, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, 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 Jobs Report came in smoking hot this morning.

I no longer track the numbers closely in spreadsheets, but I would strongly suspect that the number this morning was the child of a misapplication of seasonality that will be corrected away some time in the future.

But it is timely, and will make a great talking point for Biden's State of the Union address.

So the outsized Jobs print signaled a hawkish Fed, higher rates for longer, and therefore a stronger US Dollar.

And with that stronger Dollar came a brutal takedown of gold and silver.

When the times comes it nevrer seems like you are short enough, or hedged enough.

But it was nice to see the markets adhering t the same fictionalized story at least, and not wildly divergent like yesterday.

 Gold has nearly completed the kind of backtest of support one might be looking for in a 'W' double bottom.   If it holds, it calls to $2100.

Let's see how it goes next week. 

We are caught up in a polar vortex here, and it is very windy and very cold. 

I am making a very hearty beef bone broth soup for dinner, and will be using the fireplace tonight for the first time this season.

Daisy hates the cold.  Maybe its a holdover from her brief life on the city streets last winter.  

She likes to fall asleep in my lap on cold nights, and we often stay snuggled in the chair under a warm blanket that way until morning, a book on my chest.

Old age is no joke.

She is slowly but surely becoming healthy after her time as a stray.  The young man has infinite patience in her care, and we found a wonderful veterinarian.

It has been time consuming and somewhat expensive.   Even feeding the birds has gotten a little pricier this year.

But in healing others, we heal ourselves.  It's good to see the difference we can make.

Need little, want less, love more.

For those who abide in love abide in God and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.