Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Phantoms and Shadows

 

"For now we see through a glass, darkly— but then face to face.  Now I know in part, but then shall I know, even as also I am known."

1 Corinthians 13:12

"The one desire which should move us should be, first of all, that of seeing Him face to face, who is now hid from us; and next of enjoying eternal and direct communion, in and through Him, with our friends around us, whom at present we know only through precarious and partial channels, which give us little insight into their hearts.

These are suitable feelings towards this attractive but deceitful world.  To those who live by faith, every thing they see speaks of that future world; the very glories of nature, the sun, moon, and stars, and the richness and the beauty of the earth, witnessing and teaching the invisible things of God."

John Henry Newman, The Greatness and Littleness of Human Life, 23 Oct 1836

"The selfishness of an age that has devoted itself to the mere cult of pleasure has tainted the whole human race with an error that makes all our acts more or less lies against God.  The devil is no fool.  He can get people feeling about heaven the way they ought to feel about hell.  He can make them fear the means of grace the way they do not fear sin.  And he does so, not by light but by obscurity, not by realities but by shadows."

Thomas Merton, No Man Is an Island

"In the famous simile of the cave Plato compares men to prisoners in a cave who are bound and can look in only one direction. They have a fire behind them and see on a wall the shadows of themselves and of objects behind them. Since they see nothing but the shadows, they regard those shadows as real and are not aware of the objects. Finally one of the prisoners escapes and comes from the cave into the light of the sun.

For the first time he sees real things and realises that he had been deceived hitherto by the shadows. For the first time he knows the truth and thinks only with sorrow of his long life in the darkness. The real philosopher is the prisoner who has escaped from the cave into the light of truth, he is the one who possesses real knowledge. This immediate connection with truth or, we may in the Christian sense say, with God is the new reality."

Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy

Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem.   
Out of the images and the shadows into the truth.

John Henry Newman, Epitaph, 1890

There will be a quarterly quad witch option expiration this Friday.

Stocks rallied.

VIX fell.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were hit.

Just another day in the phantoms and shadows of the fallen republic.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Unconditional Surrender

 

“Addiction might be the best word to explain the lostness that so deeply permeates society.  Our addiction make us cling to what the world proclaims as the keys to self-fulfillment: accumulation of wealth and power; attainment of status and admiration; lavish consumption of food and drink, and sexual gratification without distinguishing between lust and love.  These addictions create expectations that cannot but fail to satisfy our deepest needs. 

As long as we live within the world's delusions, our addictions condemn us to futile quests leaving us to face an endless series of disillusionments while our sense of self remains unfulfilled.  In these days of increasing addictions, we have wandered far away from our Father's home.  The addicted life can aptly be designated a life lived in 'a distant country.'  It is from there that our cry for deliverance rises up.”

Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Return of the Prodigal Son

"The most noble repentance, if a fallen being can be noble in his fall, the most decorous conduct in a conscious sinner, is an unconditional surrender of himself to God—not a bargaining about terms, not a scheming to be received back again, but an instant surrender of himself in the first instance.  He is a runaway offender; he must come back, as a very first step, he is a rebel, and must lay down his arms.

Such must be Christian repentance: First we must set out firmly towards God, not knowing for certain that we shall be forgiven.  Still, for our repentance to be Christian, there must be in it that generous temper of self-surrender, the acknowledgment that we are unworthy to be called any more His sons, the abstinence from all ambitious hopes of sitting on His right hand or His left, and the willingness to bear the heavy yoke of servants, if He should put it upon us."

John Henry Newman, Christian Repentance

There will be a major stock option expiration on Friday.

Disappointments from Oracle and Apple helped lead the tech sector lower.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were hit early and hard, because they can.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Confederacy of Evil

 

"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."

Matthew 7:21

"Surely, there is at this day a confederacy of evil, marshaling its hosts from all parts of the world, organizing itself, taking its measures, enclosing the Church of Christ as in a net, and preparing the way for a general Apostasy from it.  This Apostasy, and all its tokens and instruments, are of the Evil One, and savour of death.

Far be it from any of us to be of those simple ones who are taken in that snare which is circling around us.  Far be it from us to be seduced with the fair promises in which Satan is sure to hide his poison.   Do you think he is so unskillful in his craft, as to ask you openly and plainly to join him in his warfare against the Truth?   No; he offers you baits to tempt you. He promises you trade and wealth; he promises you a remission of taxes; he promises you reform.

This is the way in which he conceals from you the kind of work to which he is putting you.   He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods.

Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J. H.Newman, The Times of AntiChrist, 1890

"Love is faith alive and in motion; living love. It is for the person to fully and continually immerse themselves in the love of their Creator, and to thereafter embrace Him and love Him, not in some purposeless and unproductive abstraction that bears no fruit, but by loving and upholding Him in all of His creation, and in His creatures as He made them. Love is the meaning and the measure of our being, of being truly and completely human."

Jesse, Love Is the Meaning and the Measure, 25 October 2016

I have a late doctor's appointment today, as part of a close post-operative review during an important time of healing.   My cornea is quite cloudy, and they are treating it with a more powerful steroid. 

So here are the charts as they are at the close, without additional commentary..   

We will be seeing the CPI and PPI this week as well as the big stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - High Priests of the Channeled Economic Scablands

 

"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

"Call me dark, but what I see here is a toxic relationship between deregulation, underpriced risk, and exorbitant, inefficient pay scales that contribute to the growth of inequality, not to mention the shampoo economy (bubble, bust, repeat)."

Jared Bernstein, A Striking Picture of Pay and Deregulation in Finance

"Thus did a handful of rapacious citizens come to control all that was worth controlling in America. Thus was the savage and stupid and entirely inappropriate and unnecessary and humorless American class system created.  Honest, industrious, peaceful citizens were classed as bloodsuckers, if they asked to be paid a living wage. And they saw that praise was reserved henceforth for those who devised means of getting paid enormously for committing crimes."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You Mr. Rosewater

"Do you not know that to whom you offer yourselves as obedient servants, his servants you will be, whether of sin which leads to death, or of a faithfulness that leads to life?"

Romans 6:16

"Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring. This is what baffles the power of Satan.   He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it.  Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God.  He makes a guess here, or does a bold act there, but all in the dark.  If even devils, sagacious as they are, spirits by nature and experienced in evil, cannot detect His hand while He works, how can we hope to see it except by that way which the devils cannot take, by loving faith."

John Henry Newman

The Channeled Economic Scablands are a relatively barren and non-productive region of the real economy scarred by interconnected and dry flooded liquidity channels and cataracts  eroded into an economic base that had been laid down over decades by the toil of the working public and the sacrifice of many.  The Channeled economic Scablands were scoured by cataclysmic malinvestment and floods of hot money driven by rapacious financialization during the last thirty years by an outsized financial sector created by capricious deregulation, the steady corruption of law makers, academics, and serial policy errors by the regulators.  These floods were periodically unleashed whenever  large amounts of dark money eroded sound regulations and decades long reforms which had been put in place and served the nation well since the 1930s. 

It will be interesting to see how long the slow but steady hand of God must proceed, as it was in the days of Pharaoh, until the servants of the darkness relent.

Do they know what it is that they serve?   Do they care?  Eventually they will, in horror and revulsion.

History suggests that their correction will be reluctant, grudging, and even spiteful— but interesting to observe.

Stocks managed to drift higher on light volumes and relatively little thought.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

The precious metals tried to rally but in the end wallowed.

They appear to be coiling against strong paper market forces.

The VIX fell again, as the equity markets continue sleepwalking to the pied pipers of the financial sector.

There will be a fairly significant quad witch stock option expiration next Friday.

The post-op visit with the surgeon today was very good.  There are none of the severe complications.  There was quite a bit of annoying discomfort last night, but that is passing with the removal of the bandages and the application of a flotilla of medicated eye-drops.  My poor cornea is beaten up and cloudy from the surgeries, but a powerful steroid may help that along.

I do have a noticeable air bubble as a darkening curve over the lower 2/3 of the newly implanted lens, as the eye naturally refills itself with liquid, aqueous humour.   I am assured that this is normal and will resolve itself, perhaps by next week.

I imagine I could obtain temporary employment as a carpenter's level. 

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

Thanking God for his many good and kind servants, his loving kindness, and his tender mercies.

Have a pleasant weekend.