Jesse's Café Américain

18 December 2014

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Dona Nobis Pacem

"Any investor or analyst of any world commodity must be able to account for and rationalize a 9% price move in less than two trading days; otherwise he or she couldn’t possibly understand the dynamics of that commodity. Yet I received virtually no requests to explain the price drop.

The facts are clear – the price of silver did decline by nearly 9% and there were no actual supply/demand developments to explain the decline. Therefore, something else had to account for the sudden silver price decline and judging by the lack of readers questioning why, the actual cause of the decline must have been fairly widely known.

Of course, the only possible explanation for what would normally be a massive price drop in any world commodity is trading activity on the COMEX. While this is nothing new to subscribers, my sense is that COMEX price rigging has reached such an incredibly dominant influence over the price of silver (and other commodities, like gold and copper) that it is more widely understood than ever before.

I believe it has gotten to the point where it is impossible to even attempt to offer an alternative plausible explanation for large price moves in silver and other metals apart from COMEX trading without looking like a fool. I also believe that the growing and widespread recognition that prices are set on the COMEX greatly undermines the life expectancy of continued future price manipulation."

Ted Butler, Butler Research

And in this analysis of the market, Ted is absolutely right, giving a nod to some cross currency actions.

The Anglo-American banking cartel is effectively setting the key prices for the world, in a sometimes arbitrary, almost capricious manner, according the intent of its policies and the private profits of its Banks.

And woe to the country that fails to use the United States Dollar for whatever they may choose to buy or sell under the two great empires, of the sea and of the earth. For those with eyes and ears open, let them see and hear.

But empires rise, and rage for their time upon the stage, and fall.

The glory that was Greece, and the grandeur that was Rome.

"And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings."

Gerard Manley Hopkins

Ubi sunt? Where are they now?

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Voilà Tout

There was intraday commentary about this stock market rally here.

With a little follow through that might be it for now. The market will most likely get quiet after tomorrow with an upward drifting bias. It probably has more upside into year end and maybe even the first week in January *unless something happens.*

Reading this market as some indication of economic fundamentals is a mistake.

We are in the midst of a white collar crime wave. It will not end well.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metals Trust and Funds - Time To Get Real

'How did you know?'

So asks the new reader(s) at Le Café, during some protracted exchanges over the past week in which I characterized this drop in stock prices as a corrective move, à la the familiar wash and rinse, that was likely to end around the time of the FOMC meeting.

Things are dire. The economy is awful. War is breaking out. Stocks are in a bubble. Ack, ack. Yada, yada.

And in the face of all this faux fundamental turmoil, I suggested one or two price levels at which stocks would turn around, and almost to the day. Well actually some might say I nailed it to the day of the FOMC announcement.

Yeah, yeah, but what are they going to do next? With dates and details. All the finer people and financial channels provide such information on demand. We want to be rich!!

So what is my secret?

Have I mastered sailing over the Elliot Waves? Found the long lost secret of the Roger Babson method? Learned the art of stock chart reading from my famous forbears who were mavens of the markets? Gotten in tight with insiders, and have been given the secret gnostic knowledge? Am I a legend?

No, hardly, as if, hell no, and just ask my wife. I read the tea leaves from a broad sampling of cups, and put out a forecast that was a good one. It sometimes happens that way.

After watching the tape, almost every day for the past fifteen years and trading part time for about twenty five before that, you can get a feel for the action, and the convergence of events. And my particular method of charting helps one to find the lay of the land, to map out the likely progression of actions without being internally predictive.

Yes, there is always room for the unexpected, the unanticipated event, but if you want to keep standing in the pits you quickly learn from the school of probability. Or go sit down.

The 'events' that are taking place were nothing new. There has not been a recovery for what, six years? The US has been aggressively extending its power overseas for how long? What was new was the volume and tenor of the commentary, designed to make people think a certain way. It was becoming so shrill that the time for a bottom was getting closer, GIVEN the light volumes and non-committal character of the action. What I call a 'technical trade.' And the timing for a year end rally was dominant, almost a given.

This was a professional job, which I sometimes euphemistically call 'technical trade,' and nothing could have been more clear. They were washing out their dogs for the year end, and taking some profits to raise cash, and positioning their portfolios for the year end pump. 'They' are not always homogenous, but there are certain times where professional courtesy becomes widely accepted. Mostly bonus times.

I don't know anything. No one knows for sure, and no one can 'beat the market' regularly over a long period of time unless they are just collecting rents, or cheating, whether it is being done under legal cover or not. You can earn a decent return if you work very hard at it and practice sound money management principals, and don't get all full of yourself or your system. Value investing works over long time scales, especially during swing periods of growth.

There is a lot of cheating going on. There is always cheating but now we are in a white collar crime wave. It is one of the few things that you can count on. And it is becoming such an accepted practice that they hardly bother to hide it anymore. And the number of people that are 'in on it' either indirectly or directly is surprising, from the media to the Congress.

At some point this will fall apart, and it won't be pretty. I have said how many times that a raw deal like the US Dollar hegemony is run by fraud and force, and as the fraud weakens the force must increase? There will be a reckoning. And we are not necessarily the good guys in this one.

Some consensus issues are more 'natural' than others. Nine out of ten people in recorded history valued gold and silver. The fiat paper currency is a recent phenomenon, and founded on power disparity. It is a modern god that will suffer none other, whether it be metal or labor or anything else that is of historic value. It may cloak itself in traditional values, but it is a beast that seeks to price everything according to its will.

We are in a currency war. Most things flow from that. The markets have been ruined by HFT, insider trading, pervasive rigging supported by the moral hazard of handing out wrist slaps for million dollar thefts.

We live in historic times, and a number of macro trends seem to be building to a crescendo. Better to take the longer term view of things to see what is really going on. Stay flexible, but skip the short term trading. Grab something real, and hang on to it. And that often involves something more than just money.

Need little. Want less. Love more.

David Cay Johnston: Keynote Address to Symposium on Wealth Disparity In America

David Cay Johnston is an American investigative journalist and author, a specialist in economics and tax issues, and winner of the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting.

Since 2009 he has been a Distinguished Visiting Lecturer who teaches the tax, property and regulatory law of the ancient world at Syracuse University College of Law and Whitman School of Management.' From July 2011 until September 2012 he was a columnist for Reuters, writing, and producing video commentaries, on worldwide issues of tax, accounting, economics, public finance and business. Johnston is the board president of Investigative Reporters and Editors.

17 December 2014

Gold Daily And Silver Weekly Charts - Patience Patients, the Clinical Monetary Trials Will Continue

The Fed brought out not so much the jawbone, but perhaps its dentures, and changed 'considerable' to 'patient' and set some expectations for a rate hike perhaps as early as April.

Of course this is all rubbish, and the Fed will do what they need to do to protect the US' financial paper, especially in the time of currency war.

Gold took a somewhat perfunctory hit by the little wiseguys sometime after the announcement, almost as an afterthought, and silver pretty much held its level.

If they can't keep the genie in the bottle we might be getting ready to rock 'n roll. Can you feel things winding up, getting tighter and tighter, as the paper kings keep pushing it to the limit?

We can be patient too, Bubbe Yellen, while we wait for some potentially considerable changes to come.

I am leaving a bit early today to do things related to family and the holidays. These things will remain. The trappings and vanities of Empire are already turning to dust.

Gold and silver will be fine I suspect. But we must be wary of the desperation of those who are both corrupt and powerful.

Happy Hanukkah to all my Jewish friends, acquaintances, and patrons of Le Café.

Have a pleasant evening.