Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ashes, Ashes They All Fall Down

 

"If the moderates fail to act now, history will have to record that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition was not the strident clamor of the bad people, but the appalling silence of the good people. Our generation will have to repent not only for the acts and words of the children of darkness but also for the fears and apathy of the children of light."

Martin Luther King, Stride Toward Freedom, 1958

"As with many personality disorders, those who are severely flawed of character, but especially the narcissist, when they face public disgrace, when they are outed as criminals or for their misbehavior, or when they fail in a very public way—that is when they become metastable, placing us as family, friends, co-workers, corporations, the public, or a nation in greatest danger.  When things begin to sour for the narcissist, here is what we can expect:

1.  They will falsely claim that everything is fine and that there is nothing wrong.  They will try to first misdirect us or claim there is nothing to the allegations or circumstances.

2.   If evidence is presented, they will seek to have it invalidated or claim that it is false, fake, or a product of vague conspiracies, but most certainly not true.

3.   Any evidence presented, and those that present it will be attacked aggressively and vindictively.  The better the evidence, the more aggressive the attack.  Individuals who are doing the right thing by reporting criminal acts, unethical behavior, or failings are to be discredited, humiliated, hounded, and bullied—not even their families are to be spared if need be.  The narcissist will engage supporters or enablers to simultaneously attack those who offer proof or evidence, even if it embarrassingly exposes their poodle-like behavior as that of spineless sycophants.

4.   Foolproof evidence will be portrayed as false and the result of pettiness, jealousies, bad actors, malicious individuals, negativity, haters, enemies, losers, conspirators, opposition, gain seekers, the faithless, or as we are seeing now in American politics, 'fake news' or 'deep state' actors.  There is always a large constellation of people to blame, the narcissist casts wide to see which vacuous claim resonates, especially with their supporters.

5.   As they lash out with vindictiveness, the malignant narcissist will continue to talk about themselves in glowing terms; irrespective of their actual situation, as they are incapable of introspection, much less contriteness.  They will trumpet their greatness, their real or imagined achievements, their faux infallibility, and even portray themselves as worthy of being revered rather than reviled.

6.   They will seek to find someone to blame for their troubles or downfall, preferably someone that cannot defend themselves.  A scapegoat is always useful and when there is not a real one, one will be invented.  If they are not promoted or fired, it is because a cabal at work was against them. If they cheat their business partners, it was because they deserved it. If the wife gets the kids in a divorce settlement, it is because of her dastardly attorney, not his abominable behavior. If they lose an election it is because of campaign managers, unappreciative voters, trickery, fraud, or some other kind of malfeasance on the part of a conspiracy.  Conspiracies are useful to the narcissist because they conveniently require no evidence.  As they are not married to the truth, they will prattle countless baseless reasons that all point away, never at themselves.

7.   As circumstances become dire, the narcissist will not take any responsibility—ever.  Anything that has gone wrong is the responsibility of others.  They will blame spouses as undeserving of their greatness, ignorant colleagues who just don’t measure up, the disloyal, those who abide by rules and laws because ironically, they abide by rules and laws, or those that just clearly did not understand the very specialness of the narcissist.  Everyone, and I mean everyone from people long gone, to the peripherally connected, to the earthly departed will be blamed for the failure or downfall of the narcissist.  Once more it is never their fault.

8.   In the process of casting blame, even the most loyal and stalwart will be discarded and denigrated if needed with reptilian indifference.  For the malignant narcissist, there is only the 'good' — those that provide blind, unwavering loyalty and who are useful, and everyone else who is an enemy, useless, and thus 'bad.'  Whether you are in or out, good or bad, is not determined by history, by friendship, sacrifices, or how well you have performed in the past—it is determined by the capricious and selfish needs of the narcissist, and that can change in a moment.

9.   Expect lies to increase and to be repeated exponentially.  They will, even in light of factual evidence to the contrary, lie more profusely and adamantly.  Lies are and always will be the number one tool of the malignant narcissist.  The only difference now is that in facing failure or public ridicule, the lies must increase in frequency and audacity to the point of incredulity.  The narcissist will expect supporters, the unethical, and enablers to lie for them or even create plausible alibis.  That they imperil others by compelling them to lie is the collateral damage the malignant narcissist does as they thrash in despair when they are failing or caught.

10.   And while lies will increase, so too will be the need to devalue others in order to further value themselves.  They will attack everyone and anyone in the most vicious and vindictive ways.  This is when we see their rage come through.  Not just anger, but unbridled rage.  They will say things that shock the conscience and they expect everyone to swallow what they say, much as their enablers do.  The most decent of persons will be attacked, mocked, ridiculed, and turned into a human chew-toy as the narcissist unleashes untethered rage and hatred.  They will dip down into a bottomless cauldron of antipathy and like an arterial spurt, will spew this toxic brew far and wide with metronomic regularity.

11.   The malignant narcissist, lacking guilt or a conscience, is only concerned with respect and not being publicly shamed.  Any kind of public embarrassment will cause them further anger, further rage, further attacks, further unethical comportment, and unprecedented incivility.

12.   If the narcissist is going to be brought down, they will also seek to bring everyone else around them down to vindictively make them suffer.  How the narcissist vilifies, lashes out, or destroys others (spouse, friends, business partners, workmates, the general public) is up to the morbid creativity and depravity of the malignant narcissist, the viable tools they have available, and of course how dire or desperate the situation.  The internet and social media are certainly useful as lives can be ruined with a single tweet.  But so are guns and rifles, poison, and even assassins for hire.  And if they command a country, they can put the security organs or the military to work on their behalf.

13.   In certain situations, as the end nears, the suffering of others is paramount to the malignant narcissist.  It is their way of elevating themselves—sick as that sounds—by malevolently paying back society with even more suffering.  As they lash out, they will show no concern or empathy because they have none.  If others are suffering because of their actions, the narcissist simply does not care.  Lacking a conscience or any kind of remorse, much like Robert Hare’s psychopath, they sleep very well at night while everyone else is anxious, worried, stressed, physically or psychologically traumatizes all the while nervously and justifiably pondering what further malevolence will take place.

14.   As they face failure, arrest, indictment, or dismissal, they will endlessly air their grievances.  Narcissists are natural wound collectors and as such, they have been collecting and nurturing social slights and perceived wrongs just for this occasion.  They will wallow in victimhood claiming they have been relentlessly and needlessly persecuted.  They, of course, expect their attorneys, followers, or enablers to subserviently echo their flatulent claims.

So, what happens in the end?  Difficult to predict.  Each circumstance is different.  Some will kick and flail and disappear for a while, intentionally or thanks to incarceration—biding their time until they can do it all over again.  Others regroup, plan, scheme, and prepare another triumphant entry into the lives of the unsuspecting to victimize them when the opportunity arises.  

Others, unfortunately, will seek to do harm as they face a breakup, a divorce, are fired from a job, are outed for their crimes, or are removed from office.  Others will hound, stalk, or just make life intolerable for those they deem responsible. Their past can often give us insight as to what they might do, but one can never be sure—humans are terribly complex and as with many afflicted with a personality disorder, sensitive to the smallest of unrecognized but catalytic triggers.

In the case of narcissistic cult leaders, the cult members often pay with their lives as they did in Jonestown Guyana when Jim Jones came under investigation.  In interpersonal relationships, violence is always something to be concerned. "

Joe Navarro, FBI Behavioural Analysis Veteran, When the Narcissist Fails, Psychology Today, 2 January 2024


The conflict in the Middle East was heating up quite a bit on the overnight, with even more missiles and drones on the fly. 

And not even rumors of imminent peace deals could stem the realization of risks, long ignored.

Stocks fell.

VIX rose.

The Dollar chopped around.

Bitcoin fell but is hanging on near the top of the intermediate trading range.

Gold and silver were hit hard.  No telling what was driving that one but one might speculate.

Oil rose sharply, as traders lost patience with the ever looming shortages and lack of coherent energy strategy.  There is a 'cup and handle' formation on the US oil futures chart calling out to 116 if activated.

What is concerning me is that none of the primary player/aggressors on the board look to be relenting from their narrowly selfish positions in what history will easily note as a pivotal event in the first half of this century.

Not a statesman or great figure of conscience to be found among these clerks and errand boys for the plutocracy.  

And then there is the Ukraine, whose economy and ability to sustain armed conflict is slowly sliding into the Black Sea. 

"The humility of the righteous will guide them, but the deceitfulness of the proud will destroy them."   Proverbs 11:2-3

The wages of sin are Trump.

Have a pleasant evening. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Downfall

 

“All tyrannies are virtuoso displays over many years of cunning, risk-taking, terror, delusion, narcissism, showmanship and charm, distilled into a spectacle of total personal control. Tyrants are the greatest of all actor-managers — omnipotent impresarios.

For a dictatorship to last long, it has to ensure a degree of economic prosperity and justice.  When these are no longer assured, their fall is inevitable.  A dictator meticulously collects around himself, people who feed him with 'facts' and 'assessments' he likes to hear rather than truth.  He shuts himself from the harsh reality outside and indulges in actions that only increase the wrath of the masses."

Simon Sebag Montefiore, Dictators Get the Deaths They Deserve, October 26, 2011

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it. People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it. Real change in politics or society cannot occur under the orthodoxy because if it did, it would threaten the legitimacy of the professional class and all of the systems that helped them achieve their status."

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 4, 2016

"Most people do not realize that it was Adam Smith who wrote in The Wealth of Nations the famous characterization of England as a 'nation of shopkeepers.' He was writing about narrowly mercantile nature of the British Empire and its colonial markets strategy. The exploitation of the Empire's resources and peoples by a few legendary companies is well known.

If one substitutes 'crony capitalists' or 'financiers' for 'shopkeepers' it might well be a decent fit for these latter years of the American Century, which is based on a regime of guns and dollars.  Why is the American moment running out of steam? 

It is probably the failure to move to a non-military based economy after the cold war, and invest the peace dividend into domestic infrastructure and basic technology development for peaceful purposes and the improvement of life, instead of financial legerdemain, economic hoaxes and frauds.  Having fed so well for many years on war, the crony capitalists have had to expand their operations at home again, and create new wars, to maintain their exorbitant privilege."

Jesse, A Nation of Financiers, 12 August 2011

“It could be argued that we are now in the midst of a coup d’état in slow motion.  Democracy is weakening; few people would disagree.  Corporatism is strengthening; you only have to look around you.  Yet none of us has chosen this route for our society, in spite of which our elites quite happily continue down it.  Certainly corporatism is creating a conformist society. It is a modern form of feudalism.”

John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization, 1995

"Indeed, one can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true."

Søren Kierkegaard, Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, SKS vol.9, 1847

"Over the past 30 years the plutocrats have used their vastly increased wealth to capture the flag and assure the government does their bidding.  This marriage of money and politics has produced an America of gross inequality at the top and low social mobility at the bottom, with little but anxiety and dread in between, as middle class Americans feel the ground falling out from under their feet.  Millions of Americans have awakened to a sobering reality: they live in a plutocracy, where they are disposable."

Bill Moyers, Bill Moyers Journal, 30 April 2010

Stocks flopped this morning on the news that the US and Iran are once again engaged in active warfare, with missiles flying in both directions.

Oil rallied on this news.

VIX took some notice but then went back to sleep.

Stocks rallied in to the close to take back much of their losses.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

Gold and silver took some light selling that dwindled a bit in the afternoon.

To me things now seem somewhat inevitable.  

Not that one can ever become complacent in trading markets.

But at the end of the day, what a man sows so shall he reap.

I don't think most people have really internalized what it means that our president, JFK, was assassinated in public by a coalition of the deep state, the CIA, and law enforcement because he opposed the expansion of war in southeast Asia, an escalating confrontation with the Soviet Union, and the acquisition of nuclear weapons by Israel.

We were witness to a coup d'état that was covered up brazenly with a heavy hand. And we have been living with the results of this, being overwhelmed by the subversion of our liberties in the face of a growing and parasitical oligarchy. 

We in the West are being inundated with 'information' and distractions, cleverly mixed in with force and fraud, so that most average people just their minds spinning with trying to determine what is true and just.

We seem to be reaching a pivot point, where the lies that have been laid on heavily are being exposed with almost embarrassing regularity, to be met by stubborn reinforcement by pathological liars and their bully boys.

This is going to end, and the reaction could be energetic.

But at the end of the day, we are going to be asked what WE have done, how WE have responded to his command to love one another as he has loved us. 

It's almost funny how most simply do not 'get this.'   It could not have been made more clear.

It is easier to judge and to look down upon others, than to think and to serve with our actions.

This is all that matters.  And we lose sight of it with reckless abandon. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Being on the Right Road

 

"While some were speaking about the temple, how it was beautifully adorned with precious stones and rich memorial offerings, Jesus said, 'All these things that you see here — the day is coming when there will not be left one stone upon another that is not thrown down.'"

Luke 21:5-6

"And each of you this morning in some way is building some kind of temple. The struggle is always there. It gets discouraging sometimes. It gets very disenchanting sometimes. Some of us are trying to build a temple of peace. We speak out against war, we protest, but it seems that your head is going against a concrete wall. It seems to mean nothing. And so often as you set out to build the temple of peace you are left lonesome; you are left discouraged; you are left bewildered.

Well, that is the story of life. And the thing that makes me happy is that I can hear a voice crying through the vista of time, saying: "It may not come today or it may not come tomorrow, but it is well that it is within thine heart. It’s well that you are trying." You may not see it. The dream may not be fulfilled, but it’s just good that you have a desire to bring it into reality. It’s well that it’s in your heart. Thank God this morning that we do have hearts to put something meaningful in.

And this brings me to the basic point of the text.  In the final analysis, God does not judge us by the separate incidents or the separate mistakes that we make, but by the total bent of our lives.  In the final analysis, God knows that his children are weak and they are frail. In the final analysis, what God requires is that your heart is right.  Salvation isn’t reaching the destination of absolute morality, but it’s being in the process and on the right road."

Martin Luther King, Unfulfilled Dreams, 3 March 1968

"Hubris calls for nemesis, and in one form or another it's going to get it, not as a punishment from outside but as the completion of a pattern already started."

Mary Midgley, The Myths We Live By, 2003

"As Jesus left the temple area and was going away, his disciples approached him to point out the wonders of the temple buildings.  And he said to them in reply, 'You see all these things, do you not?  Amen, I say to you, there will not be left here a stone upon another stone that will not be thrown down.'

As he was sitting on the Mount of Olives, the disciples approached him privately and said, 'Tell us, when will this happen, and what sign will there be of your coming, and the consummation of the age?'  And Jesus said, 'Take care that no one leads you astray.  For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah,’ and they will deceive many.

You will hear of wars and reports of wars; see that you are not alarmed, for these things must happen, but it will not yet be the end.  Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be famines and earthquakes from place to place.  All these are the beginning of the labor pains.  Then they will hand you over to persecution, and they will kill you.  You will be hated by all nations because of my name.

And then many will be led into sin; they will betray and hate one another.  Many false prophets will arise and deceive many; and because of the increase of lawlessness, the love of most will grow cold.  But the one who perseveres to the end will be saved.  And this gospel of the kingdom will be preached throughout the world as a witness to all nations, and then the end will come.'" 

Matthew 24:1-14

It was an interesting day in the markets as things bounced around in a fairly energetic manner.

Gold and silver were smacked lower.  A predictable follow up to the recent Comex option Expiration.

The Dollar spiked and fell.

Bitcoin slipped off the top of its trading channel.

Crude oil continued to make moves on paper that have only a tenuous connection to physical reality.

Stocks spiked higher, and then promptly flopped into a loss on the day.

I wonder if Trump and His Merry Pranksters were looking to unload some positions before the weekend.

This is not sustainable.  

 Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Slaking Moloch

 

“The lamp for the body is the eye.  If your eye is healthy, your whole body will be filled with light. But when your eye is unhealthy, your whole body is filled with darkness.  And if the light that you think you have is actually darkness, how great that darkness will be.

No one can serve two masters.  For they will hate one and love the other, and will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and Mammon."

Matthew 6:22-24

"All men, of course, desire pleasure and safety.  But all men also desire power and all men desire the mere sense of being ‘in the know’ or the ‘inner ring’, of not being‘outsiders’: a passion insufficiently studied and the chief theme of my story.  When the state of society is such that money is the passport to all these prizes, then of course money will be the prime temptation.  But when the passport changes, the desires will remain.

If Mammon were the only devil, it would be another matter.  But where Mammon vacates the throne, how if Moloch takes his place?  As Aristotle said, ‘Men do not become tyrants in order to keep warm.’"

C.S. Lewis, A Reply to Professor Haldane, 1966

"The oligarchs are flush with victory, and feel that they are firmly in control, able to subvert and direct any popular movement to the support of their own fascist ends and unslakable will to power.  But my model says that the oligarchs will continue to press their advantages, being flushed with victory, until they provoke a strong reaction that frightens everyone, like a wake up call, and the tide then turns to genuine reform."

Simon Johnson, The Quiet Coup, August 2010

"A life is either spiritual or not spiritual at all.  No man can serve two masters.  Your life is shaped by the end that you live for.  You are made in the image of what you desire."

Thomas Merton, Thoughts in Solitude, 1956


And so we have another day of Operation Economic Outcast.

The Dollar did its usual sideways chop, going nowhere.  

Gold inched higher.  The money lenders view gold with deep suspicion.

Silver rallied after its option expiration beat-down.

Oil rallied higher, straining against the manipulation on paper.

I don't know if they can hold it off until after the midterm elections, but this is a very explosive situation fraught with economic risk that is being willfully mispriced.

These snakes do not care about you, your family, or their oaths and honorable obligations to God and country.

We are in a time of darkness rising, and it ends in disillusion and blood.

The leaders consecrate their nations to voracious, unloving gods through vile abominations and child sacrifice. 

Stock up, stack up, and remember what is, in the end, most important.

The faith and the church is not an exclusive club, or a mark of honor and privilege.  Strike the idea of being 'select' and better than your neighbor from your hearts.  That is the leaven of the Pharisees.

We are to be a field hospital for the kingdom of God, for his innocent and the broken, in the midst of worldly darkness and despair. 

You know what you have been called to do. 

Have a pleasant evening.