Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Sideways

Gold and silver took a sluggish drift higher that was challenged several times without much enthusiasm after the move higher in the overnight, with London and then New York weighing in to the downside, as they are often wont to do.

There was a little more 'delivery' action in gold as shown in the report below, but as the warehouses reflect, the bullion is mostly just moved around the plate.

What can one say about an exchange that is so heavy and volatile on wagering, but so lacking in actual exchange of real products?

Bucket shop.

The real world action is that gold, and to a lesser extent silver, are moving from West to East.

I watched Janet Yellen's testimony to the House today, and it was painful. Deer in headlights all the way. At least the Senators were a little more polite, but Janet Yellen,  whatever quality her economic credentials may be, is not a suitable political foil for the verbally acute, mentally and morally light, denizens on the Hill.

The exchange she had with Elizabeth Warren yesterday can be seen here. It was clearly not Janet's 'A game.'  And Liz Warren was not being particularly tough.  She was throwing relative cotton balls with some well thought precision, but was nevertheless knocking Chairperson Yellen for a loop. I think Warren was genuinely surprised at how off kilter Yellen became.

 

I was imagining how the great prevaricator, Chairman Greenspan, would have parried all those questions, turned them on their ears, and rope-a-doped his way through the entire testimony uintil the Congressmen were spinning like tops.  Yellen is clearly not in his obfuscatory league.

 

One thing I will give to the careless few and their marketing crews, they are excellent in role casting and selecting their players.   Obama was a great choice as the maverick 'change agent.' 

And now we have the hapless but lovable grandmotherly type, just as cute as a button, who valiantly battles on behalf of the Western Bank syndicates, the moneyed interests, and one of the most corrosive forces in Western democracy, the Federal Reserve.  The World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) could not pick and preen their heroes and villains any better.  And the action is just about as scripted, and designed to distract from the reality.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - The Technical Fundamentals

This market feels heavier than it looks.

It is hard to judge 'sentiment' because the market is being almost totally dominated by a few institutions, a handful of very large trading desks, and a swirling crowd of HFT hit and run predators.

So given this concentration of power, the market can move in just about any direction that external events, or the lack thereof, may permit.

The 'fundamentals' are not in play, at least for now.  And so the markets may continue to diverge from the real economy, until they cannot.  And then the reckoning comes.

The Fed is absolutely NOT blameless in this exercise, as they were not blameless in the tech and housing crises past.  They publicly denied there was a stock or housing bubble, while discussing them in private. 

They just let their bubbles run their course without even taking the minimal actions which they possessed then as a regulator, which are much greater now.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

US Crude Oil Supply Landscape In Four Charts

"Total U.S. liquid fuels consumption rose by an estimated 60,000 bbl/d (0.3%) in 2014. Motor gasoline consumption increased by 80,000 bbl/d (0.8%) reflecting an increase in highway travel that was partially offset by fleetwide increases in fuel efficiency...

In 2015, total liquid fuels consumption is forecast to grow by 290,000 bbl/d (1.5%). Lower pump prices contribute to an 80,000-bbl/d increase (0.9%) in motor gasoline consumption."

EIA, Short Term Energy Outlook, 10 February 2015

The charts below are from today's This Week in Petroleum Report from the US EIA.

 

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - There For All To See

“He did not care for the lying at first. He hated it. Then later he had come to like it. It was part of being an insider, but it was a very corrupting business.”

 

Ernest Hemingway, For Whom the Bell Tolls

"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne

und die trägt er im Gesicht

und Macheath, der hat ein Messer

doch das Messer sieht man nicht."

Berthold Brecht, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer

It was a remarkably quite day for the precious metals, as the option expiration for the inactive month of March contract went by quietly enough.

 

Madame Yellen, American Viceroy of Wall Street's careless few, paid a visit to the Senate, where the august personages threw posies and puffballs for the most part, with a little side muttering for the benefit of groundling in the pit. 

 

And between inanities and well trod but unremarked policy errors she reminded us that the Fed can consider raising interest rates at any meeting, and if they remove the word 'patient' from their pronouncement, it does not mean that they are losing theirs.  The patience which they have shown to their serially recidivist patrons at the Banks, for example, is legendary.

 

Speaking of recidivism, JP Morgan, which is currently on a mockery of 'two years probation' for a crime spree almost too long to comprehensively recount here, is once again under investigation with ten of its fellow Banks for rigging the London Precious Metals market.  Unashamed of course, it appears that the House of Morgan will now start charging for the privilege of given them your money. 

 

That's all rich, in its own way.  The mighty US regulators cast their eyes at the transgressions in London, which is of course their right since the plottings were apparently undertaken in the Banks US offices, while they turn their regal noses aside from the greasy, noisome bucket shop that is just a light breeze away in lower Manhattan.

 

The Greek government apparently accepted a document as it was handed to them by the Die Neue Reichskanzlei, according to the usual non-mainstream media suspects.  I suspect that the plot here might have a few more twists and turns ahead, and some additional complexities.

 

Let's see if gold and silver, which has been acting surprising well all things considered, can find some footing after Madame Yellen meets with the surlier House tomorrow.

 

This is the 6500th post on this blog.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - NASDAQ Hits a New 15 Year High - Death By Overdose

"Easy is the descent down to hell;

Its gates stand open, day and night.

But to retrace one's steps, to return

To see again the pure clean air, and cheerfulness and life:

That is the real task, that is our true labour."

Vergil, Aeneid

I cannot believe it, they are going to do it all over again.

All the fraudulent securities, the wanton bubbles in paper, the watered stocks, the wildly overvalued IPOs, the lies and double dealing, the financial deception, the mispriced risks, the abuse of language, the widespread corruption of public policy, and then the inevitable, sickening crunch.

 

Never have so many sacrificed so much, for such an underserving, careless few.

 

If heaven is seeing and in turn being seen, transformed and made new, by the beatific face of Pure Love in resplendent glory, then hell must be seeing, at the last and forever, one's own dark and miserable soul, as it really is, alone.

Finally, I can believe it, what I could never really accept before, believe in the reality of a place and people with a will that is beyond redemption.

 

Have a pleasant evening.

 

What Then Is Your Point, Mr. Potter?

"The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too."

Stephen Covey, The Speed of Trust

"The greatest crimes of human history are made possible by the most colorless human beings. They are the careerists. The bureaucrats. The cynics. They do the little chores that make vast, complicated systems of exploitation and death a reality... And they do not ask questions."

Chris Hedges, The Careerists

 

If, as Jamie Galbraith has put it, economics is 'a disgraced profession,' what does it matter, when almost all the professions from medicine to law to finance have also given themselves over to the darkness of this world in high places?

 

Can they be so aloof that they do not see it, see what they are becoming?  See what they serve?

Are they such bystanders that they can no longer even see themselves and where they stand?

Can such a lack of self-awareness be attributed to the blindness of egoism? Or some more profound denial of conscience that rips the very fabric of their reality and its consequences?

Have we finally approached the tipping point of corrosive indifference in our leadership and the careless few, again?

Have the wages of supreme narcissism and exceptionalism finally come to be paid with a third financial crisis, and then another?  And finally the unleashing of madness?

 

It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world... but for a stipend?

 

And when the hard winds of nemesis start howling across the land, where do they think it will end, and who and what do they think will remain standing?