Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Surprising Decline By Half In Physical Gold For Immediate Delivery in NY

"What is good? All that enhances the feeling of power, the will to power, and the power itself in man.  What is bad? All that proceeds from weakness.  What is happiness?  The feeling that power is increasing--that resistance has been overcome.  Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but competence.

The first principle of our humanism is that the weak and the failures shall perish. And they ought to be helped to perish. What is more harmful than any vice? Active pity for all failure and weakness— christianity."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist


"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12


“A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death— the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.”

Czesław Miłosz

Stocks were doing well today as investors continued to pile into the 'relative safety' of the small caps of the Russell 2000.

Big cap tech put its moonshot in place, but fell off into the close.

The Dow continued its string of losses, the longest since March 2017.

This may be late stage blowoff top action. We'll have to keep an eye on where we go with this next.

The market was cheered that Trumpolini signed an order putting some modification into the wholesale separation of immigrant children from their parents. The manner in which he phrased the words around this were interesting. Like Obama he seems able to look at something that he has done, and address it in the non-involved third person.

I think caution in US equities is advisable, and it may be time to take some profits off the table, especially if we get the kind of initial drop and breakdown with a failure to recover that I had been discussing with examples from history yesterday.

I'll let you know if I see a major tsunami warning, but even now caution is advisable.

The Dollar was a little higher with gold and silver off a bit.

I was a little surprised to see the dual drop in gold marked available for delivery on the Comex. Gold in the NY warehouses dropped by half to only 230,000 ounces!

This matches up with a similar drop in the gold in the inventory in Hong Kong. Let's see what happens next there. I will be curious to see what amount of gold shows up in Hong Kong to meet delivery demands there.

There will be an option expiration next week on the Comex, that is not likely to be consequential for gold. August is the month for gold trading action.  It may be of more interest for silver.

Bloomberg had some transmission problems in my area in the last hour, and so I flipped over to CNBC. Now I recall why I had stopped watching that infomercial channel some time ago.

I found a short article titled A 'Zero Tolerance' Immigration Primer that is worth reading for some insight into the current situation.  The vileness and bald-faced hypocrisy of what is going on is probably worse than we think. 

Two of my wonderful goddaughters came over for a visit today. We (they) did a nice job tidying up some things that did not meet with their approval. I have to admit that I lack their touch. Like my son, they are my joy and my consolation.

People are funny.  They just don't get it.  They think that they are in the know, that they are some kind of superior beings, and that they are winning the game.  They don't even understand what the game is really all about.   It can be almost heart-breaking to see what they do to themselves and to others, for less than nothing.  For what does it profit a man...

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Scraping By - Every Mother, Every Father

"Every mother, every father
Called to raise up sons or daughters
May your heart be patient
May your mind be clear
May our God be with you
And calm your fears."

Porter's Gate Project, Every Mother Every Father (Assad, Zach, Cunningham)


"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 familiality with all mankind."

Dietrich Bonhoeffer

O Lord, pierce our hardened hearts, enlighten our willful blindness, and break our chains of pride and self-deception, so that we may choose life for ourselves and for our children.

As usual US stock futures plunged overnight on the threats from Trumpolini to ratchet up the stakes in the developing trade war with China.

And as usual, after the market close in Europe, the stock futures were walked up slowly, in relatively quiet summer-like trading, to close far off the lows towards unchanged.

I suspect that one day soon the markets may slip. And all the king's men won't be able to prop it back up and make it look pretty again.

The signature will be a big drop that sticks, and then an attempt to rally out of it that fails, and then a plunge that begins to bite more deeply. This is essentially what happened in 1987 and over a longer period of time in 1929. It is still a low probability event, but things are going along rather riskily with an almost willful indifference to it.

Gold and silver were also hit in the early NY trading hours after moving higher overnight.

Once those two genies pop out of their bottles, there is going to be quite a chore to bottle them back up again.

Physical inventories of gold ready to be delivered are quite low.

One wonders how unsustainable, or perhaps more correctly unstable, the current situation in the markets may be at these valuations and assumptions.

I watched the World Cup games in the afternoon, and missed Trumpolini's far-ranging rant to the Independent Business Group. Darn.

It does seem like the world is holding its breath, to see what happens next.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

And may the peace of the Lord, which surpasses all understanding, guard our hearts and our minds.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - We're Not In Kansas Anymore, Toto

Stocks were much lower today in the US markets, but managed to come back to nearly unchanged in very sluggish summer trading.

Gold and silver were marginally lower, and the Dollar was essentially unchanged.

As I noted earlier here, President Trump has directed the Department of Defense to establish a sixth branch of the military to be called the Space Force which is to be 'separate but equal' with the US Air Force. The Air force, which has a long established and fairly broad and well-maintained infrastructure, has an annual budget of about $150 billion per year. Yikes!

Interesting, considering that the US is so underinvested in its space technology and infrastructure that is has been buying rocket engines from Russia to launch its satellites.

Russia indicated that they are watching this announcement of a new militarization of space by the US with interest, and might consider an embargo on selling their rockets to support such an endeavor.

Let them eat Space X.

The illusions are many, and the reckoning may be painful.

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant evening.

We Come In Peace

It's the real illegal alien threat!

You know your boys are on the shit when they make General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis look like a bleeding heart dove.

Trump directs DOD to establish a Space Force
‘We are going to have the Air Force and we’re going to have the Space Force, separate but equal’

President Donald Trump directed the Department of Defense and the Pentagon to establish a Space Force as the sixth branch of the Armed Forces in a meeting with the National Space Council today.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Winds and Whirlwinds - Quad Witch Option Expiration

“It appeared that the whole world was one elaborate system, opposed to justice and kindness, and set to making cruelty and pain.  And he and his father were part of that system, and must help to maintain it in spite of themselves.

Their frail human nature was subjected to a strain greater than it was made for; the fires of greed had been lighted in their hearts, and fanned to a white heat that melted every principle and every law.”

Upton Sinclair, Oil


“A laissez-faire economic theory is maintained in an industrial era through the ignorant belief that the general welfare is best served by placing the least possible political restraints upon economic activity. 

The history of the past hundred years is a refutation of the theory; but it is still maintained, or is dying a too lingering death."

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932

It never really gets old, does it?  Evil that is.  It just keeps coming back, with different names and faces.   But the basic proposition remains surprisingly simple and the same.  You cheat, you win, you cash in, and there are no consequences.

Today was a quadruple stock option expiration in US markets.

Stocks were initially smacked lower, but gradually regained most of their losses into the close.

Gold and silver were utterly hammered by the dumping of large numbers of contracts in their futures markets, with a fairly clear intent to drive the prices lower, breaking out of their recent trading range.

The US dollar did not do much. The Chinese Yuan did gain some in value against the Dollar.

Why did these things happen?

Today was a quadruple stock option expiration in US markets.

Those who were playing leverage on leverage, that is, playing positions using stock options on mining companies or even paper gold pools were most likely feeling a bit put off.

Perhaps a stance supporting little to no regulation in the markets and in life in general might be reconsidered when one sees the abuses to which powerful insiders, aka 'market forces,' may engage. Some might say that history shows that this is the very reason why men and women combine to create a least some semblance of the rule of law, and not the rule of money and power.

Apparently a small group of civic minded citizens named Kushner, Giuliani, and Mnuchin are urging Trumpolini to grant a presidential pardon to the disgraced junk bond king, Michael Milken.

How come?  Is he not completely free now, and living very well, an influential public figure with his own well-attended annual conference?  Excepting that he is prohibited from re-involving himself in public financial markets as a part of his plea deal.  He was rather guilty, as noted in this 1990 NYT article.

What is the purpose of such a pardon now?  I am sincerely curious as to the point.  I thought presidential pardons were intended to be clemency for a worthy cause?   Or a hefty campaign contributions to the cause.   Yeah, that Marc Rich.

Perhaps this blot on the record of one of the well-connected is a reminder of a barbaric past when the law meant something for the professional class.   Bad example and all that.  Especially when they seem to be back at it all over again.    They have a distinct advantage this time—  we've lost our moral moorings in general, and a number of us have pretty much gone nuts.  Barking.

"Most of us are still too sane to piss in our own cistern, but we allow others to do so and we reward them for it. We reward them so well, in fact, that those who piss in our cistern are wealthier than the rest of us. How do we submit?  By not being radical enough.  Or by not being thorough enough, which is the same thing."

Wendell Berry

Maybe we are just too forgetful, so easily bored and distracted.  So tired of thinking that we are begging to be duped and misled.

Today was a quad witch option expiration in US markets.

Are you not entertained?

Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.