SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Risk On - One Question For the Candidates

For whatever reasons, probably the poor economic data making the marketeers doubt that the Fed will be increasing rates anytime soon, it was a risk on day in the equity markets.

Tomorrow will be the September options expiration.   Notice the big 'wash and rinse' swings we have been getting in the past few days after a couple week of a sideways chop snoratorium.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Blast Radius

Gold and silver bounced back a little bit today as the dollar gave up some of its recent gains.

It is not always this way, but at this time at least the precious metals seem to be price driven by the forex traders, who care not a whit about supply and demand.

That is setting up a real witches brew of malinvestment, because they are attempting to sustain the unsustainable with increasing use of force of leverage and market dominance.

Sometimes you have no choice but to let someone in power have their way, and try to stay out of the blast radius when the inevitable reckoning comes.   Even when it is long past time for a change in strategy and style, and apparent to most that their approach is beyond all rational expectations.

Then hard reality intrudes, and their dreams of fame, vindication, and conquest collapse and burn in failure.  And the innocent suffer.

I am sure you are familiar with that axiom from your experience at work, especially if you have worked at a large organization staffed with 'very serious people' at the top.

I am not sure how far the monetary blast radius will extend, but it will almost certainly be fairly impressive.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Elitist Economic Knuckleheads

"Several economists I know seem to have assimilated a norm that the post-real macroeconomists actively promote – that it is an extremely serious violation of some honor code for anyone to criticize openly a revered authority figure – and that neither facts that are false, nor predictions that are wrong, nor models that make no sense matter enough to worry about."

Paul Romer, The Trouble With Macroeconomics

If Bloomberg television quoted his views correctly today, then a well known academic economist they cite explains that we have full employment, even though the labor participation is so low, because the video games available to consumers have gotten so good that people would prefer to stay at home and play them rather than work.

And so they don't work, and therefore we can ignore them and the economic engineers of the Fed can claim full employment with a straight face.

If the games were not so good, then people would get bored staying at home and would go to work. It is just a rational actor's choice.

Since when is work, for the majority of people at least, an optional choice for one type of pleasure and entertainment and diversion compared to others? Let's see, shall I go to the movies, go fishing, or go to work today?

How many moons are there on this guy's planet? What a knucklehead application of economic models and ideological stereotypes that makes reality into a kindergarten caricature.

Of course people would rather do whatever they wanted if they had the choice, rather than work at something that someone else gives them to do, especially for the 90% whose jobs are tedious and repetitious.

Why is it that the stooges of the moneyed interests always run to monetary economic incentives models to examine the choices of their masters, but do not seem to be able to apply them to the people who do the day to day work?

If anyone dare propose something that would diminish the elephantine incomes of their patrons by a few percent, they have a holy conniption fit about these 'job creators' being discouraged about building businesses. Why, if I get a penny less than $120 million this year for spending so much of my valuable time creating and promoting financial frauds, I don't think I will even bother to get out of bed.

Perhaps Mr. Economist should consider the time honored, common sense proposition that people are reluctant to take menial shit jobs for poverty wages, unless they are absolutely coerced into it. So rather than enhance the incentives, let's increase the coercion, for them.

Perhaps Mr. Economist might consider the revolutionary notion, a corollary to their own economic incentives models, that more people would be working if there were more jobs that paid living wages?

How much anecdotal information about people staying in long lines over night for decent jobs can they ignore in their stereotypical models?

When people say, I cannot attract good talent for jobs, do they ever consider raising the pay to attract a better caliber of candidate? Oh no, the free market only works from the top down.

What a world we have, that has such creatures in it. In fairness, the rubbish emanating from the left of the economic auditorium is often equally nonsensical. And that is because economics is too often a science that is flexible enough to serve whomever pays for it in a culture that considers greed to be the highest good, and for the market to be god.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Central Bank Blather and Stock Option Expiration

"People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage. Intellectual myopia, often called stupidity, is no doubt a reason. But the privileged also feel that their privileges, however egregious they may seem to others, are a solemn, basic, God-given right."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"Countries such as Great Britain and the United States became rich because their citizens overthrew the elites who controlled power and created a society where political rights were much more broadly distributed, where the government was accountable and responsive to citizens, and where the great mass of people could take advantage of economic opportunities."

Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, Why Nations Fail


"I don’t think there’s any doubt that quantitative easing enabled the rich and the quick. It was a massive gift… I hope that we do indeed succeed in being able to say in the end the wealth effect was more evenly distributed. I doubt it.”

Richard Fisher, former Dallas Fed President

Freedom is not an objective to be reached and then forgotten.  It is a way of life.

Gold and silver were lower today, largely on a stronger dollar and what I like to think of as stock market option expiration for September which is this Friday.  The options on miners are lucrative enough to warrant the attention of some of the pigmen.

It is fashionable but fatally myopic to blame everything on government manipulation when the regulatory bodies and their bosses are as ideologically and financially compromised as they are today, and the moneyed interests buy and sell politicians almost openly, and even then quite brazenly.

But still, these fluctuations in the metals themselves are just short term 'wiggles' for the most part, and the overall trend remains bullish.

So if you chase and fret about with these fluctuations, you may get dizzy, and a bit poorer, from chasing your own tail.  Especially if you are over-playing your hand and your temperament with excessive leverage.

The economic news starts trickling in tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Stock Option Expiration Week Shenanigans

Stocks have been gyrating the last couple of days, largely on little things like comments from central bankers.

I think much of the 'action' and the increased volatility has more to do with the stock option expiration this Friday the 16th as with anything that could be considered fundamental.  Stocks are in bubble valuation territory however, and the 'real' volumes remain light compared to the algo driven volumes.

This is a corrupt system which you tolerate, so get used to it or seek to change it and make it just for everyone.

Have a pleasant evening.

Just Charts At 10 PM

Stocks have given up some of their gains after hours.

Gold and silver recovered all of their early losses and then some.