Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - To Those Who Are Not, in the Rigorous Sense, Damned

 

"A crowd of many thousands had gathered, so that they were jostling against one another.  Jesus began to speak first to his disciples, saying: ‘Beware the leaven of the Pharisees, which is their hypocrisy.  There is nothing concealed that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be made known.  What has been said in the dark will be heard in the daylight, and what has been whispered in the inner rooms will be proclaimed from the rooftops.

‘I tell you my brothers, do not be afraid of those who kill the body and after that can do no more.  But rather you should fear him who, after your body has been killed, has the authority to cast you into hell.   Amen, I tell you, fear his judgement."

Luke 12:1-6

"Those among the comfortably rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand the emptiness of poverty, because they are empty themselves, after a fashion; but they cannot understand true impoverishment.  Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, the comfortable will be moved to the sound of beautiful music, at the thought of 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, and hanging from a beautiful woman’s throat."

Léon Bloy

"They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good.  They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God.  They will act religious, but they will refuse the grace that could make them righteous."

2 Timothy 3:3-5

"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, The Cost of Discipleship, 1937


Just charts tonight.

The market is perched on the edge of the abyss.

How can those who have come before us see how compliant we are now, as the high principles and freedoms for which they fought and died are trampled carelessly into the dirt.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Led Down a Blind Alley and Strangled

 

"Every thing secret degenerates, even the administration of justice; nothing is safe that does not show how it can bear discussion and publicity."

John Dalberg Lord Acton, Letter to Richard Simpson, 23 January 1861

"Banking and corporations have largely monopolized power in Western Civilization and in American society.  They are ruthlessly going forward to eliminate land, labour, entrepreneur-management skills and everything else the economists once told us were the chief elements of production.  

The only element of production they are concerned with is the one they control: capital.  Thus capital intensification has destroyed food, manufacturing, farming and communities.  All these processes result in the instability and disorder we see around everyday."

Carroll Quigley, The Oscar Iden Lecture Series, Georgetown University 1978

"Over a protracted period of good times, capitalist economies tend to move from a financial structure dominated by hedge finance units to a structure in which there is large weight to units engaged in speculative and Ponzi finance."

Hyman Minsky, The Financial Instability Hypothesis, May 1992

“The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling – their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons, their notion of inevitability."

Arundhati Roy, War Talk, 2003

“Blood and power intoxicate; they help to develop callousness and debauchery. The mind then becomes capable of the most abnormal cruelty, which it regards pleasure; the man and the citizen are swallowed up in the tyrant; and the return to human dignity, repentance, moral resurrection, becomes almost impossible."

Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from the House of the Dead, 1862

"You shall not offer your children as a sacrifice to the fires of Moloch, and profane the name of your Lord."

Leviticus 18:21


Stocks continued to wobble today, stabilizing a bit into the last hour but still finishing in the red.

VIX rose but then backed off a bit. 

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver were smacked around as usual.

It is well to remember that the most important precious metals option expiration on the Comex for this year will be on Monday, the 24^th.  

These are not regulated markets.   There are levels of lawlessness being tolerated because it benefits a rich and powerful few, the public and the health of the economy be damned. 

And this is why the Congress and White House continue to twist themselves into knots to cover up and hide the sexual, political, and financial corruption of the Epstein scandal. 

And how, over time, we have come to tolerate war crimes including genocide, and extra-judicial murder.  We are truly exceptional. 

“So much for Caligula the Emperor.  The rest of this history must deal with the Monster."
  Suetonius, The Twelve Caesars

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Danger Closing In - A Cult of Erratic Malignancy

 

“They’ll [DOJ] redact every Republican or conservative person in those files, leave all the liberal, Democratic people in those files, and have a very slanted version of it come out… without really seeing any of their bad behavior,” admitted Joseph Schnitt, Acting Deputy Chief at the Office of Enforcement Operations for the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), on hidden camera to an undercover OMG journalist. Schnitt confirmed that the government is in possession of an extensive trove of Epstein-related documents but warned that any release would be politically manipulated.

Schnitt admitted that “There’s thousands and thousands of page-open files,” and further described how the department would handle disclosure of the material: “If they’re released in any way, it’s going to be very redacted.”

He further revealed new information regarding Epstein co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell. “She got transferred to a minimum security prison,” Schnitt said, despite her conviction as a sex offender. “It’s against BOP policy because she’s a convicted sex offender. And they’re not supposed to get minimum security prisons, which is an interesting detail because she’s getting a benefit, which means they’re offering her something to keep her mouth shut.”

Schnitt also revealed internal conflict within federal law enforcement over the release of said files. “The head of FBI [Kash Patel] really wants to… second-in-command [Dan Bongino] at FBI has been causing problems, because he’s like, ‘No, these [Epstein Files] have to be released.’ He added, “The FBI wants them out. The top two guys that will do it. But they work for Bondi, so… Bondi wants whatever Trump wants. Internally there’s a lot of conflict.”

Despite public assurances that the government has been transparent, Schnitt admitted that nothing substantive has been revealed: “Whatever they’ve released has already been publicly released anyway, so they haven’t released anything new. Even though they were the ones that were claiming that they were going to release everything.”

O'Keefe Media, DOJ Deputy Chief Admits They Will Redact Every Republican from the Epstein Files, September 4, 2025


Stocks tumbled again today, but had a bit of a stick save into the close.

There will be a stock option expiration on Friday.

And there will be a precious metals option expiration on the Comex on Monday the 24th.

I think it will take an event of some moderate significance to break the support that Scott Bessent of the Treasury and his Wall Street hedge fund cronies are employing to keep the bubble floating.

The smart money is getting out now.  But the least scrupulous traders will keep dancing while the music is playing, dancing and looting the real economy until it hits the wall.  And then they will try to stick the public with the tab.

The US is now operating with a flywheel, without serious adult supervision to rein in the wackier ideas that pop out seemingly out of nowhere and gain a momentum without any serious strategic and even tactical consideration.  

Words like 'out of control' come to mind.  'Reckless disregard' are some others.  The cult of personality is still standing but support, particularly among those with access to alternative news media, is melting.

There are too many signs of a deterioration in judgement, and a growing cult of erratic malignancy. 

The Europeans have let the irresponsible take control.  I don't see how you can view the things they are doing and saying and come to any other conclusion. 

Tough times ahead.  Until something breaks.

Have a pleasant evening.  

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Tyranny of Idols and Counterfeit Gods

 

"When truth is replaced by silence, the silence is a lie."

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Open Letter, NY Times, 1974

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

John F. Kennedy, Commencement Address, Yale University, June 11, 1962

"The righteous hate words that are deceitful, but the lawless are shameless in their disgrace."

Proverbs 13:5

“Above all, do not lie to yourself.  A man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point where he does not discern any truth either in himself or anywhere around him, and thus falls into disrespect towards himself and others.  Not respecting anyone, he ceases to love, and having no love, he gives himself up to passions and coarse pleasures in order to occupy and amuse himself, and in his vices reaches complete beastiality, and it all comes from lying continually to others and himself.  A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense.”

Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, 1880

“An idol is anything more important to you than God. Anything that absorbs your heart and imagination more than God. Anything you seek to give you what only God can give.”

Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises, 2011

It has been said that primitive societies build their gods from metal and stone, and advanced societies build theirs in flesh and blood.

Bully worship, the grave adoration of idols, is the cult of our modern sophisticates.

Stocks slumped badly today, but miraculously were pumped up slowly into the close to finish green.

Like the suppression of gold and silver, the inflation of overpriced equities can only continue for so long, can be hidden only for so long.

And then they will break free, and the results may be tumultuous.

There are ways to address this.  But our elites are so bought and complicit that I don't think we can make any progress on this, until we achieve political reform.

Gold and silver were smacked lower today.  It's mostly about the management of perceptions.

There will be a stock option expiration next week.

VIX came in hot but then drifted much lower, as the Treasury and Fed poured liquidity on troubled waters.

"The Employment Situation for September 2025 will be released on Thursday, November 20, 2025, at 8:30 AM Eastern Time."

None of this really matters in the long run.

In the short term, however, we have an obligation as with any generation to never give up the fight against the malign intents of the privileged few, and the ebb and flow of lawlessness.

Release the Epstein files, you lawless ones.

Audit the gold reserves, and make the information transparent and available.   This is the wealth of the nation, and you are only appointed caretakers, not rules. 

Have a pleasant weekend.