Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Maundy Thursday

 

"'The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me
   because the Lord has anointed me.
He has sent me to announce good news to the poor,
   to strengthen the brokenhearted,
   to proclaim liberty to those held in captivity
a recovery of sight to the blind, and release to those who have been oppressed,
   to proclaim a year of the Lord’s favor.'

Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all looked intently at him. He said to them,  'Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.'”

Luke 4:18-21

"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.

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."

John Henry Newman

"I give you a new commandment: love one another.  As I have loved you, so you also should love one another.   This is how all will know that you are mine, if you have love for one another.”

John 13:34-35

The mighty rise and are forgotten, but the word and the spirit endure. 

Maundy Thursday: The English word maundy in the name for the day is derived through Middle English and Old French mandé, from the Latin mandatum, the first word of the phrase "Mandatum novum do vobis ut diligatis invicem sicut dilexi vos" A new commandment I give unto you: That you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.

 Stocks were trading in a relatively tight range ahead of the three day Easter weekend and especially because of the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow.

VIX fell.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver waffled around.

Let's see what happens.

Christ has died, Christ has risen, and Christ will come again. 

In the end, the only real tragedy is not to be among the saints.

Have a blessed and joyous weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fooled Again

 

“There are two ways to be fooled.  One is to believe what isn't true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”

Søren Kierkegaard

“When we trade the effort of doubt and debate for the ease of blind faith, we become gullible and exposed, passive and irresponsible observers of our own lives.   Worse still, we leave ourselves wide open to those who profit by influencing our behavior, our thinking, and our choices.”

Margaret Heffernan

“The financial system itself continues to exhibit dangerous and erratic behavior; the stock market is rigged and Wall Street is a parasitic wealth transfer operation; commodity prices plummet; junk bond defaults double; derivative exposures remain in the dark; community banks are gobbled up; and the holdings of the mega Wall Street banks become ever more concentrated, with just six banks now controlling over 90% of derivatives and 40% of deposits.”

Wall Street On Parade, 10 December 2015

"Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked. Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap."

Galatians 6:7

Fresh concerns about the slowing economy mixed with continuing concerns about the financial sector and its unsoundness and corruption, causing stocks to struggle most of the day.

Gold and silver were steady.

The Dollar moved a little higher.

VIX remained subdued.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pride And Death - Gold and Silver Surge

 

"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

"Continue to love one another.   And do not neglect hospitality to strangers, for thereby some have unknowingly entertained angels."

Hebrews 13:1-2

“Our problems stem from our acceptance of this filthy, rotten system.  People say, 'what is the sense of our small effort?'  They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time.  A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. 

The mystery of the poor is this: that they are Jesus, and what you do for them you do for Him.  It is the only way we have of knowing and believing in our love.   The mystery of poverty is that by sharing in it, making ourselves poor in giving to others, we increase our knowledge of and belief in love."

Dorothy Day

"And what does the Lord require of you but to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God?"

Micah 6:8


The message of the gospel is simple, clear, and straightforward.

We are not things meant for the use and pleasure of another. 

We are made for joy, with all the life and fulfillment that it brings. 

So we are to love our fellows as ourselves, in harmony with the love of God, whom we love above all.

But the words of life that have been planted in our hearts are suffocated too often by the worries of the world, or seduced by wealth, and twisted into barrenness with pride.

So we make the gospel disputatious and complex, because the evil in us loves to hide the light with complexity.

It is a way to blind our eyes and harden our hearts against the two great commandments. 

A hollow, lifeless pride in the superiority of our form of worship and ritual observance is the leaven of the Pharisees.

The jobs JOLT Report came in light on job openings, and big name layoffs continue to cool the ardor of the bulls in the belief of a perfect landing for the economy by the Fed in their inflation fight.  

As if. 

The Dollar fell.

Gold and silver bolted higher, making a serious stab at a bull breakout.

Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Implications of the Incarnation - Non-Farm Payrolls on Good Friday

 

“Myth seeks the ascent of man to spirit; the Word of God seeks descent into flesh and blood.  Myth wants power; revelation reveals the true power of God in the most extreme powerlessness.  Myth wants knowledge; the Word of God asks for constant faith and, only within that faith, a growing, reverent understanding.  The revelation of God’s Word is gentle patience amidst the intractable tensions of life.

So-called 'gnosis’ was an enormous temptation in the early Christian Church.  What made it so insidious was the fact that the Gnostics very often did not want to leave the Church.   Instead, they claimed to be offering a superior and more authentic exposition of Holy Scripture, though, of course, this was only for the ‘superior souls’.  It inevitably encouraged not only an excited craving for higher initiation, but also an almost unbounded arrogance in those who had moved from mere ‘faith’ to real, enlightened ‘knowledge’.

Error never shows itself in its naked reality, in order not to be discovered.  On the contrary, it dresses elegantly, so that the unwary may be led to believe that it is more truthful than truth itself.”

Irenaeus of Lyons, edited by Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Scandal of The Incarnation

“Odor of blood when Christ was slain
Made all Platonic tolerance vain."

William Butler Yeats, Two Songs from a Play

"Only the humble believe in Him and rejoice that God is so free and so marvelous that He does wonders where people despair, that He takes what is little and lowly and makes it marvelous. And that is the wonder of all wonders, that God loves the lowly.

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


Repentance - Forgiveness - Thankfulness

These are gifts of the cross, illuminated by the resurrection, the greatest gifts that we may ever hope to receive. And they have been given freely, to all those who will accept them.

OPEC+ surprised the markets with a million barrels per day production cut, which put a spark under the energy sector this morning.

But the ISM Manufacturing Numbers came in weaker than expected at 10AM, so stocks took a hit from the signs of continued slowing in the real economy.

Expectations are that earnings for the first quarter are going to be dismal for the real economy.

As opposed to the unnatural pricing power of monopolies and cartels like Oil, Big Pharma and eggs.  lol.

The Dollar continued to slide.

VIX was elevated but fell again as stocks recovered, and the Wall Street oligarchs took solace in their relative invincibility.

Gold and silver managed to post some gains.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

This will be interesting because the stock market in the US will be closed that day for Good Friday.

It's always something.

Gold is pushing up against a key resistance level as you can see on the chart.

Have a pleasant evening.