Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Love in the Vortex of Madness

 

"Holiness consists simply in doing God's will, and being just what God wants us to be.  Our Lord does not look so much at the greatness of our actions, or even at their difficulty, but at the love with which we do them.  Without love, deeds, even the greatest, count as nothing.  Our Lord's love shines forth as much in the simplest of souls as it does in the most highly gifted, as long as there is no refusal of His grace."

Thérèse Martin de Lisieux, Story of a Soul, 1898

“Do not indulge in dreams of having what you have not, but reckon up the greatest of the blessings you do possess, and then thankfully remember how you would crave for them if they were not yours.”

Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 180 AD 

"To escape the pain caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to His good Providence, and give the present wholly to His love by being faithful to His grace.”

Jean-Pierre de Caussade, L'Abandon a la Providence Divine, 1861 

"The stoking of fear and hate ends in the blood of innocents, always.  Over time it spares no one.  Have we learned nothing?  Have we sunk so low that we no longer fear the reproach of civilized people, or the judgement even of God?  We seem to have no shame, no sense of history, no compunction about lying and wallowing in lies, and relatively little enough decency left in our public life.  It is all about power and money.  People are just tools, objects, and collateral damage.  When you unleash the madness, the unspeakable, you do not control it— it controls you."

Jesse, Political Power and the Virus of Fear, 10 October 2018

"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 familiarity with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, The Cost of Discipleship,  1937

Stocks retreated a bit from their recent bubble highs, despite Treasury Bessent's efforts to front run some new trade deals coming soon.

Gold and silver were under some pressure as the Dollar bounced a little higher into the 97 handle.

VIX came back for a little breather from its sleepwalking.

Bubble end generally badly.

And those who live by bubbles evaporate — back to the nothingness which they have served.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Shattered Ornaments of Grotesque Vanity

 

"The fact he could publicly project an Antichrist image with pride, having no fear of reprisal, and his seeming diabolical art of escaping all punishment when others who were considered heretics had burned at the stake for less, would certainly signal that an unnatural individual walked in their midst.  It is true in many respects he assumed the role of the charlatan, yet how apropos, considering his willingness to follow the Father of Lies and deception.”

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World, 2008

"Because of your hard and unrepentant hearts you store up wrath for the Day when God's righteous judgement will be revealed, who will render to each according to what they have done."

Romans 2:5-6

"Whoever today still doubts the reality, the existence of demonic powers, has failed by a wide margin to understand the metaphysical background of this war.  Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: the struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich, 1942

"We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”

Hilaire Belloc

"But if not, I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, But If Not, Ebenezer Baptist Church, 5 November 1967 

Having tired of blowing bubbles, the boys of Wall Street have left for their havens in the Hamptons.

Stocks finished at all time highs.

Gold and silver were hit and then recovered a bit.  Silver itself was impressive.

The Dollar edged higher.  As the epitome of world power, how could it not?

VIX is sending out quiet SOS signals.

Bitcoin closed unchanged from yesterday after the usual sturm und drang of the insubstantial.

It appears as though the GOP's signature 'Big, Beautiful Bill' will be passed.

The masks keep falling away as the boldness of the darkness gathers and grows.

And the day of reckoning draws nearer. 

Have a pleasant holiday weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Idylls of Betrayers and Conmen

 

"The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered.  The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government.

A society that is merely expedient does not produce men of conscience.  A society that narrows the meaning of ‘success’ to the big money and in its terms condemns failure as the chief vice, raising money to the plane of absolute value, will produce the sharp operator and the shady deal.  Blessed are the cynical, for only they have what it takes to succeed."

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956

"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 Generation of Economists Helped Get Us Into This Mess, September 13, 2019

“Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. And what is this liberty which must lie in the hearts of men and women?  It is not the ruthless, the unbridled will; it is not freedom to do as one likes. That is the denial of liberty, and leads straight to its overthrow.  A society in which men recognize no check upon their freedom soon becomes a society where freedom is the possession of only a savage few, as we have learned to our sorrow."

Judge Learned Hand, The Spirit of Liberty, 21 May 1944

"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. Thus the American dream turned belly up, turned green, bobbed to the scummy surface of cupidity unlimited, filled with gas, went bang in the noonday sun."

Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, April 5, 1965

"Injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."

Martin Luther King, Letter From a Birmingham Jail, April 16, 1963

"For these are a rebellious people, deceitful children.  They say to their seers,‘Do not see!’ and to the prophets,‘Say nothing of what is right!  Tell us only things that please us, prophesy illusions."

Isaiah 30:8-10

The markets will be watching for the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow morning.

The volumes on the market, barring something unforeseen, will be increasingly subdued as Wall Street slides into a three day, holiday weekend.

Markets will be closed on Friday in observance of July 4th.

Bitcoin is hovering near its all time high.

Stocks managed to squeeze out another rally.

Gold and silver rebounded.

VIX is submissive to complacency.

The Dollar looks to be comfortable on the 96 handle.

It is hard to believe how badly things have turned out, as the masks of deceit continue to fall away. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Wild Chase

 

"The days of chastisement are coming, and judgement is at hand. Their sins are many, and their hatred great. They think prophets fools, and the righteous mad. Even the faithful are deep in their corruption. God is mindful, and holds them to account for their lawlessness."

Hosea 9:7-9

"As dawn was breaking angels urged Lot, saying, ‘Hurry! Take your wife and your daughters who are here, or you will be swept away when the city is punished.’ When he hesitated, they grasped his hand and the hands of his wife and daughters and led them to safety out of the city, for the Lord was merciful to them...

Then the Lord rained down fire and brimstone from the sky on Sodom and Gomorrah. He devastated them, along with the other cities and villages of the plain, wiping out all the people and every form of vegetation. Lot’s wife looked back as she was following, and turned into a pillar of salt.

Abraham rose early that morning and hurried out to that place where he had stood in the Lord’s presence. He looked out across the plain toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and watched as dark columns rose from the cities like smoke from a furnace."

Genesis 19:15-16,24-28

"To enter hell is to be banished from humanity. What is cast (or casts itself) into hell is not a man: it is 'remains.'  To be a complete man means to have the passions obedient to the will and the will offered to God: to have been a man – to be an ex-man or 'damned ghost' – would presumably mean to consist of a will utterly centered in its self and passions utterly uncontrolled by the will."

C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 1940

“When pride comes, then comes disgrace. But with disgrace comes humility, and with humility comes wisdom. The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."

Proverbs 11:2-3


And so we toddle on into the second half of 2025.

I have trouble finding reliable sources of information these days. 

And when it comes to making careless, clickbait statements of speculation,  excess is considered the rule.

This is the age of puffery.  And the cheeto-bandito is the puffiest.

Stocks finished the day unchanged to lower.

Gold and silver rallied higher, but gave up a chunk of their gains as the day wore on.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report this Thursday in a holiday shortened week.

VIX is low and complacency is high.

The Dollar has firmly slid off the 97 handle.  

The Euro is not a suitable replacement for the Dollar as a global reserve currency.

I would think that a basket of leading currencies, and at least gold, might be more acceptable.

And those currencies should reflect the current state of the world economy.  

But before then, we have to get past the current crop of growing and festering world crises.

So, in the short term, gold looks like the best bet, with some additional allocation to silver.

Other metals are primarily an industrial play that may be quite profitable.  But not from a monetary perspective.

As the Dollar falters, it is likely to be a wild chase. 

Have a pleasant evening.