SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Quiet Trade On Options Expiration - Shamelessness

Today's stock market action was relatively quiet for an option expiration ahead of a three day weekend.

The economic news this morning was better than expected.

From the oligarchy is audacious department, the BP crisis manager was fined by the SEC for front running the Gulf Oil spill, selling all his family stock holding before the extent of the disaster was revealed.

The US markets will be closed tomorrow for Good Friday.

Have a pleasant weekend. See you Sunday evening.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Hubris Incorporated

“I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I’m not stopping to be interviewed.  I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It’s not even close.”

Michael Bloomberg, Billionaire Financier and Master of the Universe, I Have Earned My Place In Heaven

Ah, the rich miscalculating their fit through the eye of a needle.  Its an old, old story.  Memento mori.

I am sure he is not intending this seriously, and we ought not to take it as such.  As we should with most of the gauche things that he and his fellow financial sharpers and masters of the universe say.

Speaking of dull financial people miscalculating their place in the cosmos, this looks like it is going to be a dull week for the precious metals, except for the major bear raid yesterday.

Nothing much happened in the Comex warehouses yesterday. The number of ounces claimed in the April delivery continued on, reaching a total of 461,400 ounces for the month.  It will be interesting to see if anyone decides to actually do anything with them that will show up in the warehouse reports, or just continue to pass their warrants around like hot potatoes.

The Comex is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the world markets, and a bit of an anachronism in the current influence it still has over price.

Hubris.  It means that they never see it coming. That is what makes the reckoning so often spectacular.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Quiet Holiday Week, Before the Storms

VIX is back down to more complacent levels.

This is a holiday shortened week, with Friday trading closed for the Easter holiday.

Let's see if the traders can carry this rally into a three day weekend with the Ukraine bubbling along. I suspect that some squaring up may be in the cards.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - From Sea to Shining Sea

"Plunderers of the world, when nothing remains on the lands to which they have laid waste by wanton thievery, they search out across the seas. The wealth of another region excites their greed; and if it is weak, their lust for power.

Nothing from the rising to the setting of the sun is enough for them. Among all others only they are compelled to attack the poor as well as the rich. Robbery, rape, and slaughter they falsely call empire; and where they create a desolate wasteland, they call it peace."

Tacitus, Agricola

Today was an absolute classic.

From one market to the other, from one lie to the next, they seem to have no fear, and certainly no shame.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Another Turnaround Tuesday

LOL. ROFLMAO.

How'd you like that market action today.  A Robert Rubin special with the SP futures leading the markets higher out of a deep hole on 'Turnaround Tuesday.'

A bewildered reader asks, 'Do they realize what they are doing?'

To which I responded, 'Let's keep this straight.  Almost by definition, sociopaths and narcissists really don't give a fuck what happens as long as they are getting what they want now.  And you wonder why things are as they are?'

Have a pleasant evening.

Why Gold? 85% of Pension Funds Will Go Bust in 30 Years

I have not seen the scenarios run by Bridgewater Associates, but I do have respect for their name and their work.  I would like to know their assumptions.

In an inflation, stocks may do quite well, as their inflated valuations keep pace with inflation. Bonds are likely to get obliterated. In a stagflation not so much.  The Fed and the Treasury would like a modest inflation to provide a controllable dilution of debts without opening the door to a debt jubilee for the hoi polloi.  The Fed serves the Banks, and therefore the creditor class.  But a parasite must also preserve the relationship with their hosts.

The system is broken and the oligarchs do not wish to fix it, because they like things just the way that they are.    They have bought the politicians and are running the regulators.  What could go wrong?

It is hard to credit the Fed with a policy error when their actions seem to be so conscious and wanton.  But I am sure when the time comes they will claim ignorance as usual.

In line with a time of general frauds, Grant Williams has a particularly good essay this week, and you may wish to read it.  I admire his writing and insight as always.  The only slight quibble I might have is that a 'rigging' that is out in the open is hardly as foul and as fraudulent as one that is conducted under cover of denials and opaqueness.

So for example, I would not equate the Fed's 'rigging' interest rates through their well publicized open market operations with the same critical eye as I might consider the manipulating of certain commodity prices and inflation measures to hide its effects.  There is war and there is war profiteering, and there is war crime, as there is a difference between conducting a financial war, and machine-gunning the life boats full of innocent refugees in order to hide the effects of your misguided policies.

The point of a control fraud is deception and secrecy.  And I think the amount of it in our markets is unsustainable, and the moral hazard that nourishes this has its roots in the monied interests and their corrupted leadership.

"The 'pensions timebomb' keeps on ticking and as societies we become less prepared by the day.

Yet another report shows that the U.S. public pension system is in dire straits. This one comes from renowned hedge fund manager Bridgewater Associates.

The study estimates that public pension funds will earn an annual return of 4% or less in coming years due to near zero percent interest rates and financial repression. That, in turn, would cause bankruptcy for 85% of the pension funds within 30 years, the study warns.

Public pension plans now have only $3 trillion in assets to invest so that they can pay out $10 trillion of retirement benefits in coming decades, according to Bridgewater. The funds would need an annual investment return of about 9% to meet those obligations, the report says.

It is likely that many pension funds will go bust in the medium term and this may be a crisis that looms large sooner than the Bridgewater research suggests...

Pension funds traditional mix of equities and bonds may underperform in the coming years as many stock markets appear overvalued after liquidity-driven surges in recent years and bonds offer all time record low yields and are at all time record highs in price and can only fall in value in the coming years.

Pensions allocations to gold are exceptionally low internationally and yet gold has an important role to play in preserving and growing pension wealth over the long term.

Pension funds’ overexposure solely to paper assets and lack of diversification has cost pension holders dearly in recent years. This will almost certainly continue in the coming years."

Mark O'Byrne, Futures Mag

Read the entire article here.