Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Carelessly into the Abyss

 

“He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career.”

George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara

"Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried, the little children died in the streets."

W. H. Auden, Epitaph To a Tyrant

"Man is equally incapable of seeing the nothingness from which he emerges and the infinity in which he is engulfed."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Poems, City Lights

"The rules are simple: they lie to us, we know they’re lying, they know we know they’re lying but they keep lying anyway, and we keep pretending to believe them."

Elena Gorokhova, A Mountain of Crumbs, 2010

"They live out their days in prosperity, and slide peacefully down into the abyss."

Job 21:13 


Time magazine named the 'Hawk Tuah' girl one of the Top 100 Creators of the Year.

Look on our works, ye mighty, and despair.

I just don't have the words.  

Stocks attempted to continue on their rally.

Bitcoin enjoyed a midday burst up to a new high.

We are in Trump's crypto country now.

Whatever we say, is.

Gold and particularly silver rallied today.

Silver in particularly rallied up to a new near term high.

And this was noticeably ignored by the equity market in the miners.

Crypto country.  

VIX fell again.

The Dollar is chopping around on the 97 handle.

How do do we know that the spokesmodels of empire are lying?

Their lips are moving.

How do we know that Trump is lying?

We no longer care. 

We will look back on this and wonder, 'what were we thinking?'

We weren't.

We were sleepwalking in silent submission to the worst of us. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - I Will Do Justice Says the Lord

 

"The people ask, “Why should we fast if the Lord never notices? Why should we go without food if he pays no attention?”

The Lord says, “At the same time that you fast, you do what you want, and oppress your workers. Your fasting makes you violent, and you quarrel and fight. Do you think this kind of fasting will make me listen to your prayers? When you fast, you act like you suffer; you bow your heads low like a blade of grass and spread out sackcloth and ashes to lie on. Is that what you call fasting? Do you think I will be pleased with that?

The kind of fasting I want is this: remove the burden of oppression and the yoke of injustice, and let the oppressed go free. Share your food with the hungry and provide homes to the homeless poor. Give clothes to those who have nothing to wear, and do not refuse to help those around you."

Isaiah 58:3-7

"Anyone who does not do what is good is not God’s child, and neither is anyone who does not love their neighbor."

1 John 3:10

"Let your love be sincere.  Hate what is evil, and hold on to what is good.  Love one another with with the love of a family.  Be an example in showing respect to others.  Do not be neglectful in your service, but enthusiastic in spirit, as a servant of the Lord.  Rejoice in hope; be patient in suffering, and faithful in prayer.  Contribute to the needs of the holy ones, and provide hospitality to strangers.

Bless those who provoke you.  Pray for them, and do not curse them.  Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.  Live in harmony with one another.  Do not be arrogant, but associate with the humble.  Do not claim to be wiser than you are.  Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but have a regard for what is good in the sight of all.  If it is possible, as best as you can, live peaceably with all.  Friends, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the judgement of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine, and I will do justice, says the Lord.'”

Romans 12:9-19
 

I have somewhere to be around the close of the market so I will post the charts as they are now, and update them tomorrow.

As the first chart below shows, the current market bubble is underpinned by leverage, debt, speculation, and the gross mispricing of risk.

This will end badly.  

They know this.

They do not care.

They know all of it.

They do not care. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Crypto Country

 

"America is different. America is special.  America is rich.  And, yet, we've somehow find ourselves in the grip of the same sort of crisis and the same sort of oligarchs.   It's a small group with a lot of power.   A lot of wealth.   They don't necessarily - they're not necessarily always the household names that spring to mind, in this kind of context.  But they are the people who could pull the strings.  Who have the influence.  Who call the shots.

The powerful people are the insiders.  They're the people who pay themselves the massive bonuses at the end of the last year.  Now, those bonuses are not the essence of the problem, but they are a symptom of an arrogance, and a feeling of invincibility, that tells you a lot about the culture of those organizations, and the attitudes of the people who lead them.  But it really shows you the arrogance.  They think it's over. They think it's won."

Bill Moyer's Journal, Interview with Simon Johnson, February, 2009

"Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty.  Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction.  Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates.  The truth is, no one really possesses it.  Power is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the latter it crushes, the former it intoxicates. The truth is, no one really possesses it."

Simone Weil, War and the Iliad, 1939

"The perpetrators were scholars, doctors, nurses, justice officials, the police and the health and workers’ administration. The victims were poor, desperate, rebellious or in need of help.  They came from psychiatric clinics and children's hospitals, from old age homes and welfare institutions, from military hospitals and internment camps."

Aktion T4 Commemorative Tablet, Tiergartenstraße 4, Berlin

“Violence does not necessarily take people by the throat and strangle them.  They are required merely to become accomplices in its lies.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Nobel Prize in Literature Speech, 1970

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?  Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'  The answer is, you're doing it.  Right now.  This is what the ruling class has decided is normal."

Aaron Bushnell, Last words, 26 February 2024

Stocks meandered around today, despite some efforts from the powers that be to stir up another rally.

The Dollar fluctuated, ending the day at almost exactly the same place as yesterday's close.

VIX is wallowing in complacency.  

It's reaction to the inevitable wake-up call may be quite noticeable.

Gold and silver were hammered, as an afterthought to the Non-Farm Payrolls gambit.

Miners were on the receiving end of aggressive sell programs.

I get the feeling that Club Trump likes the more squishy and malleable items like crypto.

Very fitting.

How does Trump know that he's lying?

He doesn't care. 

Well, this is the way of the world.

Have a pleasant evening. 

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.