“Depart from me, you accursed. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, thirsty and you gave me no drink, a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not comfort me.' They answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not care for you?' He answered, 'Truly I tell you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it for me.’” Matthew 25:40-46
"You have to drill through mud and water to get oil; you have to sift through sand and silt to get gold; you have to chop and hack through stone to get diamonds. So why do so many people feel that the treasure of ideas should come to them with little or no effort?"
Sydney J. Harris
Since the mining stocks are some of the premier gainers for the Year-To-Date, I would expect them to be presenting some fat targets for shenanigans this week for the stock option expiration.
There will be the August metals contract option expiration on July 26th.
Gold was off a bit today, while silver held its gains.
Gold is treading water above support while it waits for silver to catch up a bit it seems
It would be hard to have seen a more technically perfect performance on the chart by gold today, as it came down and bounced off support and finished higher on the day.
Gold was a snoozer in the deliveries and the warehouse reports, as is befitting a normally dull July contract.
Let's see how things go next week.
Silver continues to bleed out, slowly but surely in the warehouse inventories, with JPM having a virtual corner on Comex physical supply.
Price-wise silver is looking very good, and approaching the first of a big set of potential cups and handles with an eye towards $54.
And so we'll put this week in the books.
There was a certain lawyer in the crowed who offered the appearance of respect by standing up, but sought to test him, saying, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
And Jesus asked him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"
And the lawyer said in reply,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself."
And Jesus replied to him saying, "You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live."
But the lawyer, wishing to make himself feel righteous and define the limits of his obligations, asked Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?"
And similarly, as Pilate the wily parser of the laws, wishing to make himself feel righteous according to the fashions of a worldly empire asked, "What is truth?"
Such is it with all those who deceive others, even as they deceive themselves. They wish to feel righteous in according to the laws, but only to the limit that they do not inconvenience themselves, and their personal desires and powers. They wish to serve God, but not too much.
And so they look to the law, not in the spirit of love and service, but as a game or worldly bargain, in all its particulars and in twisted interpretations of it, in order to bend and distort it to their own will and desires. They may serves with their mouths, but not with their hearts, the word of the law, but certainly not the spirit of it.
The thunderstorms are booming outside, and I hope this breaks the heat which has been oppressive all day. Whoops, we just lost power. Luckily I have my PC and internet access routers/modem all on UPS.
Stocks staged a rally today after the Non-Farms Payrolls came in hot and heavy.
I spent several hours today plugging all the heavily revised BLS numbers into my excel spreadsheets.
The seasonality is nonsensical, but I have not finished plugging all the numbers and analyzing them yet.
I do suspect that they might try to 'smooth the way' for Hillary by goosing the economic numbers until at least November. Today's number, with the prior revisions lower, makes a case for a rolling headline boost to make things look better than they are. And the Fed may go along with the hope of squeezing out another 25 basis points of policy room for themselves.
Wall Street sees things rolling their way. Jobs are coming so they can ignore the last few months. Note that the last two months were revised lower still.
But the Fed is going to find it a hard go to raise rates with the rest of the world cutting, and engaging once again in competitive currency devaluations to support exports, in a 'beggar your neighbor' strategy.
And there comes the power back on. I will try and post this before the next hit. lol
And finally it looks like it will be Hobson's choice for the corporate candidate of your choice.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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