SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Spinning the Records

The Dow Industrials managed to hang a close over 16,000 which is good for the tourist trade.

There was an analyst named Steve Kuhn who today was suggesting that Progressive Insurance is a short because soon cars will be self-driving and one will no longer have to buy auto insurance because there won't be any more accidents.

While I would certainly welcome such a world, especially since the freeways are too often a hair raising example of why the efficient market theory is hokum, I wonder how such a feat of transformation could be accomplished in a nation that does not seem to be able to find the funding and the will to perform a satisfactory level of highway and bridge maintenance. 

Most of the bridges in the US are over 50 years old, and far too many are substandard.  About half the people are on food stamps and one paycheck away from insolvency.   But soon we'll have self-driving cars everywhere, and accidents will be a thing of the past.  Is this what a national psychotic break looks like?

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums Of Precious Metal Trusts and Funds - 17,256 Ounces of Gold Leave PHYS

When I did my update today I noticed that the number of ounces held in the Sprott Gold Trust has declined by 17,256 ounces. I believe this is a very recent development. That is over $21.5M in gold bullion that has been redeemed which is a fairly large amount. I don't think it's for Hanukkah gelt.

With these paper price raids on gold, the redemption terms at PHYS must look good compared to the premium one can obtain to physical gold in Asia. Given the integrity of PHYS and the cost and bother of a redemption, it must be due to some significant price differentials. Or someone just sees something coming, and wants to have their gold very close to home, wherever that might be.

There were no changes at the Sprott Silver Trust, except for the usual reduction in cash on hand. The cash levels there are getting down to the point where I suspect that Sprott will consider another shelf offering sometime within the next six months at most.

Gold is flowing from West to East. It is a somewhat unique phenomenon, seen markedly in the ETFs and Funds that hold physical gold. I have not seen anything like it before in my memory.

This drawdown in physical gold inventories in the West is remarkable, especially when compared to the other precious metals and silver.

It seems to me to be a fairly strong indication of a mispricing in the market, most likely caused by the blatant price manipulation we see almost every day on the Comex.

But what is surprising to me is that we see the same kind of antics in the silver price, but the silver inventory is robust and even slightly increasing. I suspect that we are seeing Mideastern and Asian powers gearing up for a big 'currency event.' What exactly it is and when it will happen no one really knows, but when it does happen it will be noticeable, that I can almost guarantee.

When Nick Laird takes a break from the barbie, I will ask him for an update on the ETF drain, probably near the end of November. 

This is going to get interesting. Historic, I suspect.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - A Special Request From Me To You

"The terrible, cold, cruel part is Wall Street. Rivers of (paper) gold flow there from all over the earth, and death comes with it. There, as nowhere else, you feel a total absence of the spirit: herds of men who cannot count past three, herds more who cannot get past six, scorn for pure science and demoniacal respect for the present.

And the terrible thing is that the crowd that fills the Street believes that the world will always be the same, and that it is their duty to keep that huge machine running, day and night, forever."

Federico Garcia Lorca

Gold was hit by an opening bear raid that was fairly obvious, and then was hit again in the afternoon, together with a wash and rinse in equities, based on the Fed minutes from a month ago which reopened the repeated canard of Fed tightening.

There was negligible activity in or out of the Comex bullion warehouses today, typical for non-active month of November.

What can you say about a culture when the word of the year was selfie. And the runner up was twerking.   And there was an excess selfie twerking by the spokesmodels of Wall Street, and the bloviating windbags of Big Money, on the boob tube today. 

Gold is flowing from West to East.

This video below was made by the family of Joan, who accompanied her on a very special 'Make-a-Wish' trip to Rome. Joanie is the angelic looking young lady in the hat. She is being treated at St. Jude Research Hospital for Children for osteosarcoma.

As you know, my way is to rarely ask for anything, and certainly not money.  Your fellowship and occasional thoughts are more than enough. When I write, I write for both you and me. And when we pray, we pray for both another and ourselves. Love is never an exclusive thing, it does not diminish us.  And if we do things with love, they can never be for nothing.

Today I am asking that if I have ever done you any service, any good at all, have helped you to see anything in yourself or in the world that has touched your heart, that you remember Joanie and her family in your prayers, as I will remember you in mine.  

And perhaps you can forward this request to those who are like minded, and would be inclined remember a child and her family in their thoughts and prayers, especially during the coming holiday season. 

In prayer we find not only the grace to care for another who is in God's hands, but to also realize, through their own trials which we willingly share, that we also are in God's hands too. It is better to discover this now, while we are in some better position to act upon it.

I know, like so many others who have seen and who have said so to me, that our society, which is based on greed and the self, is becoming coarse.  And the hearts of many have grown cold, and harsh.  It will get worse before it gets better.   But as Dostoevsky once said, 'If they drive God from the earth, we shall shelter Him underground.'

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Fed Minutes Triggered Wash and Rinse

The market was clicking along, buoyed by weak economic news, until the Fed minutes from a month ago came out, and traders hit the markets on QE taper thoughts, despite what Chairman Ben said yesterday.

I think the corruption of some members of the Fed is unfortunate but inevitable, and sometimes barely hidden by the fig leaf of plausible deniability and the 'scientific objectivity' of economics.

The only possible remedy is a surplus of transparency, and not more secrecy and the centralization of power in the hands of a privileged few.  And where offenses are found, the correction must be swift, and forceful in its example. 

As they used to say, Caesar's wife must be above suspicion.

Have a pleasant evening.