Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Plus C'est la Même Chose - Mandatory Quarantines

Gold and silver were stopped in their tracks, as the price dominant Comex continues to exert its inordinate influence over the real world economies.

There was apparently little activity in the Comex delivery and so they did not bother to issue a report yet today. In silver there was a rather large deposit of silver bullion of about 2,258,516 ounces into the HSBC warehouse as you can see below.

Next week is a Tuesday precious metal option expiration on the Comex. There is also an FOMC rate decision on Wednesday.

The big changes always take longer than we expect. And once they start, they come much more quickly than we had imagined. 

So the most fruitful perspective for the precious metals is that of a long term investor.  Short term traders may find little to interest them here.  And when they do, it may be too late to climb on board.

So we must take the markets as they are. There is no sense to criticize a lifeboat for not being a motorcycle.

Do we need lifeboats? Do you trust the central banks and the politicians to safeguard your wealth and the integrity of the money and the financial system?

Only you can provide the answers for your own peace of mind. But it is hard to think back to the overwhelming wave of global goodwill that the States were riding in the aftermath of 9/11, and compare that with how things are now. How are the mighty fallen.

In breaking news after the bell NY and NJ have announced mandatory quarantines for all health workers who may have been exposed to ebola in foreign countries.  This came on the heels of a new individual quarantined on arrival at Newark Airport this afternoon.

Have a pleasant weekend. See you on Sunday night.

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - V Bottom Back To 50 DMA

“America is the wealthiest nation on Earth, but its people are mainly poor, and poor Americans are urged to hate themselves... Americans, like human beings everywhere, believe many things that are obviously untrue. Their most destructive untruth is that it is very easy for any American to make money. They will not acknowledge how in fact hard money is to come by, and, therefore, those who have no money blame and blame and blame themselves.

This inward blame has been a treasure for the rich and powerful, who have had to do less for their poor, publicly and privately, than any other ruling class since, say Napoleonic times. Many novelties have come from America. The most startling of these, a thing without precedent, is a mass of undignified poor. They do not love one another because they do not love themselves.”

Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse Five

The Fed and the ECB were able to reverse last week's market plunge to key support through the generous application of jawboning about stimulus.  

The Fed made happy talk about possibly extending QE. That will be tested in their announcement from their latest meeting next Wednesday.

And as for the ECB buying corporate debt, I will be interested to see the meetings between Signor Draghi and the stern German bankers.

The cash SP 500 has made it all the way back to its 50 DMA and some key resistance.  If they can break that and hold a couple daily closes above, they may have a shot at making a decent fourth quarter for their bonuses.  

The Banks and their minions care little for the real economy.  The poor results from consumer staples are a glaring alarm in the financialised economy. 

There will be more earnings reports and more geopolitical drama next week. Let's see if the Fed can deliver, and if traders' memories will last more than a week.  This is doubtful.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Audacious Oligarchy - Ten Tonnes of Gold Taken Out of JPM

"When, O Catiline, do you mean to cease abusing our patience? How long is that madness of yours still to mock us? When is there to be an end of that unbridled audacity of yours, swaggering about as it does now?

Marcus Tullius Cicero,  In Catilinam I

There was little of note in the Comex delivery report but there was a sizable withdrawal of gold reported from storage at the JP Morgan warehouse, about a third of the total at ten tonnes.   Let's see if that turns up anywhere, or is another fat finger.   An individual event is of less matter than the significance of the trend.  And the trends are apparent.

Wall Street is drawing pictures on the Comex price charts, and there are those who will keep their heads down and continue to read them as if it is business as usual.  They will not look at the reports from the new markets in Asia.  They will ignore the uncomfortable and the unfamiliar.  They are oblivious to the approach of change.  Quite a few do not look at all.

They do not understand what is occurring in the world's financial and monetary structures. They only know what they have seen in their short lifetimes, and in their familiar places.  And they often do not respect what they do not understand.  Well, this is what makes a market interesting.

Gold is moving from West to East.  And therein lies both risks and opportunity, to those who will have an eye willing to see it.

There is a Comex option expiration next Tuesday the 28th, and an FOMC rate decision on the 29th.  It might be a hard week for the metals bulls. 

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Do HFT Algos Dream of Electronic Sheep?

Stocks were off to the races this morning as the short squeeze gathered some new momentum from the 'better than expected' results in global PMI overnight.

Stocks were interrupted in their ascent in the later afternoon on a flash report that a doctor who had been caring for the sick in Africa is being tested for ebola at Bellevue Hospital in NYC.

Stocks lost almost half their gains quickly as the algos saw the headline and triggered selling, and then recovered a bit into the close.

This is a thin, technically traded market. A simple headline such as this was able to knock it back on its heels. Be aware of this and take it into account if you are anything but a daytrader.

After the bell Microsoft posted better than expected earnings and revenues, while Amazon posted a horrendous miss, losing .95 per share versus an expected .74 per share. And their revenues missed badly as well.

It was a nice rally today, and it may continue tomorrow if nothing happens to scare the machine trading. Wall Street has a chance to post its best week in a year, and they may go for the headline if reality does not intrude.

Have a pleasant evening.

Henry Giroux On the Rise of Neoliberalism As a Political Ideology

"There is a lack of critical assessment of the past. But you have to understand that the current ruling elite is actually the old ruling elite. So they are incapable of a self-critical approach to the past."

Ryszard Kapuscinski

Mammon in the City of London, 1889

Are they incapable, or merely unwilling?  That is the credibility trap, the inability to address the key problems because the ruling elite must risk or even undermine their own undeserved power to do so.

I think this interview below highlights the false dichotomy between communism and free market capitalism that was created in the 1980's largely by Thatcher's and Reagan's handlers.   The dichotomy was more properly between communist government and democracy, of the primacy of the individual over the primacy of the organization and the state as embodied in fascism and the real world implementations of  communism in Russia and China.

But we never think of it that way any more, if at all.  It is one of the greatest public relation coups in history.  One form of organizational oppression by the Russian nomenklatura was replaced by the oppression by the oligarchs and their Corporations, in the name of freedom.

Free market capitalism, under the banner of the efficient markets hypothesis, has taken the place of democratic ideals as the primary good as embodied in the original framing of the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution. 

It is no accident that the individual and their concerns have become subordinated to the corporate welfare and the profits of the upper one percent.  We even see this in religion with the 'gospel of prosperity.'   In their delusion they make friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, so that after they may be received into their everlasting habitations.

The market as the highest good has stood on the shoulders of the 'greed is good' philosophy promulgated by the pied pipers of the me generation, and has turned the Western democracies on their heads, as a series of political leaders have capitulated to this false idol of money as the measure of all things, and all virtue. 

Policy is now crafted to maximize profits as an end to itself without regard to the overall impact on freedom and the public good.   It measures 'costs' in the most narrow and biased of terms, and allocated wealth based on the subversion of good sense to false economy theories.

Greed is a portion of the will to power.   And that madness serves none but itself.

This is a brief excerpt. You may read the entire interview here.

Henry Giroux on the Rise of Neoliberalism
19 October 2014
By Michael Nevradakis, Truthout

"...We're talking about an ideology marked by the selling off of public goods to private interests; the attack on social provisions; the rise of the corporate state organized around privatization, free trade, and deregulation; the celebration of self interests over social needs; the celebration of profit-making as the essence of democracy coupled with the utterly reductionist notion that consumption is the only applicable form of citizenship.

But even more than that, it upholds the notion that the market serves as a model for structuring all social relations: not just the economy, but the governing of all of social life...

That's a key issue. I mean, this is a particular political and economic and social project that not only consolidates class power in the hands of the one percent, but operates off the assumption that economics can divorce itself from social costs, that it doesn't have to deal with matters of ethical and social responsibility, that these things get in the way.

And I think the consequences of these policies across the globe have caused massive suffering, misery, and the spread of a massive inequalities in wealth, power, and income. Moreover, increasingly, we are witnessing a number of people who are committing suicide because they have lost their pensions, jobs and dignity.

We see the attack on the welfare state; we see the privatization of public services, the dismantling of the connection between private issues and public problems, the selling off of state functions, deregulations, an unchecked emphasis on self-interest, the refusal to tax the rich, and really the redistribution of wealth from the middle and working classes to the ruling class, the elite class, what the Occupy movement called the one percent. It really has created a very bleak emotional and economic landscape for the 99 percent of the population throughout the world."

 

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The gold/silver ratio is over 71, even with the relative strength of silver today.

The premium on Sprott Silver is high relative to historical norms, while the fund's cash levels are at an historically low percentage of assets.

The Spicer Fund and Trust have premiums that are almost prostrate.

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