SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dog Days

 

An exceptionally boring day as the US markets reopened after the three day holiday weekend.

Stocks were weak for most of the day, but rebounded slightly off the lows into the close.

These are the real dog days of summer, and volumes are lackluster to say the least.

Have a pleasant evening.

Moyers: The Truth Versus Washington DC's Propaganda Machines

Related: Why I Left 60 Minutes by Charles Lewis

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Another Dog that Did Not Bark - Shanghai Silver

The 'headline numbers' for the Non-Farm Payrolls came in better than expected.

Gold and silver held their places well, and especially silver which is now the lead sled dog for my thinking.  This is because July is an active month on the Comex of course but also because of the levels of physical inventory, both here and abroad.

 

Shanghai silver bullion inventory levels fall to lowest on record.

I took a look at the payroll numbers and did not see anything brazenly out of line. Except of course that it is not the number of jobs being added that is important, unless you are some metric toting bureaucrat trying to hit some number as a symbolic victory.

No, it is all about the quality of the jobs, especially the median wage and personal income, as it feeds into and sustains the kind of mass organic buying that boosts and sustains aggregate demand.

I noticed that some of the Neo-Keynesians have been launching their flaccid attacks on the evil Austrians.

Now, as you may know, I am certainly no Austrian economist and have quite a bit of respect for Keynes himself, if not for all of his acolytes.  But the way in which the Neo-Keynesians are rallying around their phony recovery flag causes me to suspect that things behind the curtain are not going well, and that they are afraid. Not that this makes the Austrians right with their tough economic love for others less worthy, especially those of the lower classes as they would define them.  There are not too many of the common people heading for Galtopia, except as servants and cogs in the wheels of the ubermenschen.

Obviously setting public policy principles top down and then doing things to achieve them directly would be the thing to do, and dropping this newest canard that objective scientific economic principles dictate anything except what their puppeteers wish them to say. But alas, that all gets lost in the noise and the humbug of modern thinking, especially the thought for pay so prevalent these days amongst the disgraced professions.

July may still prove to be an interesting month, and I suspect that before the year end we will see some pet economic theories in addition to the efficient market hypothesis shot to hell.

For the Yanks, have a pleasant holiday weekend.

And for the rest of the world, please try to carry on.

See you Sunday evening. Remember the poor souls who have none to love or care for them. You may some day find yourself amongst them. If not in this world, then perhaps in the next.   As Jack Kerouac said,  'they build their own hells.'  And they are locked tight, from the inside.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Dow 17,000

The Dow Industrial Average closed over 17,000 for the first time today.

The markets are now closed, in early observance of the 4th of July national holiday.

The equity markets are becoming overextended here. They more become a little more overextended before this nonsense is done, and then we will see a pullback of sorts. Wash and rinse.

Have a nice holiday weekend.

PBS Frontline: To Catch a Trader

“The disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least to neglect, persons of poor and mean condition is the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.”

Adam Smith

Got inside trading information?

Got a co-located high speed trading server?

Got a privileged position of trust in society or even better, in the game itself?

Then buddy, you got edge.

Related: The Taming of the Trading Monster

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Stonewall Silver

Nothing really interesting happened yesterday in the warehouses of The Comex. And no surprise there.

And nothing really happened in the gold and silver markets in New York today.  Silver is still proving to be remarkably resilient in its active month.

This is a sleepy week, and bound to get a lot sleepier quickly after the Non-Farm Payrolls report comes out on Thursday morning. I assume the algos have been pre-programmed, the junior traders firmly instructed, and the second tier shills provided their talking points du jour.

I think we may have discovered that the best way to effectively muzzle some of the great dissenting voices of your time, including Greenwald, Scahill, and Poitras, is to have some fortunate billionaire fund an electronic journal with John Cook as rédacteur-en-vacances, and then let it falter.   The Intercept is remarkable chiefly for its lack of output, almost incredibly so since mid June.

At least Greenwald and Taibbi have their book tours to occupy their time, and twitter as a means of communication.  

Have a pleasant evening.