Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - They Never See It Coming

 

"It is blasphemy to separate oneself from the earth and look down on it like a god.  It is more than blasphemy; it is dangerous.  We can never be gods, after all — but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”

N.K. Jemisin, The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

"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.  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

"There is not a moment in which God does not present Himself under the cover of some pain to be endured, of some consolation to be enjoyed, or of some duty to be performed.   All that takes place within us, around us, or through us, contains and conceals His divine action.  All souls must admire and respect one another, walking along our path to the same goal, united in purpose and with the help of God's plan which, in its great variety, is in us all.”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, L'Abandon a la Providence Divine

"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

"God has a way of standing before the nations with judgement, and it seems that I can hear God saying to America 'You are too arrogant! If you don't change your ways, I will rise up and break the backbone of your power. And I will place it in the hands of a nation that doesn't even know my name. Be still, and know that I am God.'"

Martin Luther King

 

What is the most you have ever lost on a coin toss?

How about on the assumption that for all the lies, betrayals, theft, greed, and murder, that we will not be judged?

Stocks were weak today, especially in the broader market.

The bubble leaders are the last to get the message.  But when they do, look out below.

Gold struggled again, as the Dollar rose to a new short term high.

Silver was unchanged after another early selloff.

VIX is very low.

Change is in the air.

They never see it coming.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Can These Dry Bones Have Life Again

 

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage."

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Age of Uncertainty, 1977

"How can you know anything about the working class?  You do not live in the same locality with the working class.  You herd with the capitalist class in another locality.  It is the capitalist class that pays you, that feeds you, that puts the very clothes on your backs that you are wearing.  And in return you preach the brands of metaphysics that are especially acceptable to them because they do not menace the established order of society.  But do not come down to the working class and serve as false leaders.  You cannot honestly be in the two camps at once.  The working class has done with you.  And, furthermore, the working class can do better without you than with you."

Jack London, The Iron Heel

"What we have watched unfold for a few decades, I have argued, is a broad reversion to 19th-century political form, with free-market economics understood as the state of nature, plutocracy as the default social condition, and, enthroned as the nation’s necessary vice, an institutionalized corruption surpassing anything we have seen for 80 years.

Everything I have written about in this space points to the same conclusion: Democratic leaders must learn to talk about class issues again.  But they won’t on their own.  The more comfortable option for Democrats is to maintain their present course, gaming out each election with political science and a little triangulation magic, their relevance slowly ebbing as memories of the middle-class republic fade."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, NYT 2006

"And the Lord asked me, 'Son of man, can these dry bones have life again?'”

Ezekiel 37:3


Stocks wanted to continue their rally higher, and the futures came in with the old heave ho higher.

But the euphoria is wearing off a bit, and they managed to avert a loss, finishing nearly unchanged.

The weakness in the tech complex was the tell since this is a tech bubble of the AI variety after all.

The Dollar rallied higher.

Bitcoin is blasting up with the speculation in stocks.

And poor old gold and silver were hammered lower again, down to the lower support bound for the short term.

I took some time to read the things that I wrote in 2016, the last time Trump defeated an overconfident party insider.

There was a euphoria in stocks back then, with the metals getting slammed after an initial rally higher on election night.  I remember it well.

I found this old video shown below from Thomas Frank about that election.   The comments then are still striking today.

They'll never learn.   Because they don't want to.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Pierced Through With Many Sorrows

 

"For those who are determined to be rich fall into temptations and a snare, and into many foolish and hurtful passions which drown them in ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all evil, after which some have coveted, and have lost their faith, and pierced themselves through with many sorrows."

1 Timothy 6:9-10

"Amen, amen, I say to you, all these things will fall upon this generation.  O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets, and stone those who are sent to you, how many times I yearned to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings, but you were unwilling.  Behold, your house is now yours, but is made desolate.  I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’”

Matthew 23:36-39

“Four sorrows are certain to be visited on the United States:

• First, there will be a state of perpetual war.
  
• Second is a loss of democracy and Constitutional rights as the presidency eclipses Congress and is itself transformed from a co-equal ‘executive branch’ of government into a military junta.
  
• Third is the replacement of truth by propaganda, disinformation, and the glorification of war, power, and the military legions.
  
• Lastly, there is bankruptcy, as the United States pours its economic resources into ever more grandiose military projects and shortchanges the education, health, and safety of its citizens.”
  

Chalmers Johnson, The Sorrows of Empire, 2005

 

The Dollar rallied back a bit today.

Gold and silver gave back some of their rebound to finish the week lower.

Stocks managed to consolidate their recent highs.

VIX is at an extreme low for this period of time.

Like death and taxes, reversals are coming. 

And with them, blowback de luxe.

Count Witte:  I see.  So they talk, pray, march, plead, petition and what do they get?  Cossacks, prison, flogging, police, spies, and now, after today, they will be shot.  Is this God's will?  Are these His methods?  Make war on your own people?  How long do you think they're going to stand there and let you shoot them?  YOU ask ME who's responsible?  YOU ask?

Nicholas and Alexandra, 1971

Their pride blinds them to consequences, or perhaps more accurately, they willfully blind themselves to what they are becoming.

For what does it profit a man?

No time for losers.   Winning....

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wait For It

 

"Seneca had made the bargain that many good men have made when agreeing to aid bad regimes. On the one hand, their presence strengthens the regime and helps it endure. But their moral influence may also improve the regime's behavior or save the lives of its enemies. For many, this has been a bargain worth making, even if it has cost them—as it may have cost Seneca—their immortal soul...

The Rome he has been trained to serve, the Rome of Augustus and Germanicus, was gone. In its place stood Neropolis, ruled by a megalomaniac brat.”

James Romm, Dying Every Day: Seneca at the Court of Nero

"The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman.   The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the 'last thing standing' between us and the end of the world.   It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability."

Thomas Frank, Trump to the White House, and liberals put him there, The Guardian, 9 November 2016

"The end result was to be a new Imperial Order and a New World Empire run by elite, self-perpetuating oligarchies from the leading nations of the earth."

Dr. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope, 1966, p. 860

"I think one of the cleverest things the 1% have done over the last few years is the way they have created a relentless public discourse, via their paid political front-men and women and their media empires, to insist on the need to ‘fix’ and protect the system, and the extreme danger to us all should the system not be ‘saved’.  This has served as a perfect cover for making sure that not enough people have noticed that the system is, in fact, being gutted and replaced by something that better serves the interests of the 1%.  We have not been fixing the banks, we have been feeding them."

Golem XIV, The Next Crisis Part One, 2014


The risk markets seem to have finished gorging on the excess liquidity supplied by the Fed in the event of a dislocation caused by a disputed national election, which never happened.

This reminds me very much of late in the year 2000 with a bubble of liquidity and a gross mispricing of risks.

Hey what do I know.  I don't even charge for my blog, or sell anything, or even take ads.

I just trade for myself, as I have done since 2001, and have no job or other sources of income.  Because I don't need or want them.

Watch as the appointments for this new presidential administration unfold, as actions speak louder than words.   They flaunt their intentions.

Stick a fork in that cruel experiment in the Ukraine— it's done.  History will not forgive the ones responsible, and it ought not to forget.

The Mideast is about to run face first into a buzz saw of hard realities.  It may turn out much worse than I fear, and that is going to leave a mark.

The madness serves none but itself.

Gold and silver rallied sharply today, and the Dollar fell.

Wash - rinse - repeat.   

If you lost money of any significance in this little exercise, you may wish to switch to longer term positions and stop trading.  It's not going to get any easier.

These are historic times.

Stocks are getting extra crispy.    Their timer is running out.

Have a pleasant evening.