SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Stocks Sell Off On Richmond Fed's Hawish Statements

The Richmond Fed President Jeff Lacker made some noise this morning about the need for much higher interest rates now to head off inflation, and the markets used that as an excuse to sell off. This looks and smells like a trading gambit that Lacker merely served to feed.

The US dollar gained some strength, and the miners were pummeled.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The Non-Farm Payroll activities seem to have kicked off earlier, compliments of a stronger dollar and the shenanigans of the usual suspects.

Freeing up ETF gold is one way to make up for any physical bullion shortfalls in London and Switzerland, when you have done wringing out the gold from states like Venezuela.

Below this is a sneak peek at gold deliveries on the Comex as of yesterday.  The green highlights the 'buyers' and the red indicates 'sellers.'

Below that is a sneak peek at the updated gold chart for tonight.

There are no reliable fundamentals for the short term.   Short term trading is a form of gambling for most people, and the honesty of the tables is not as well regulated. Most short term analysis is at best trying to read the minds of manipulators.

Those backed by big money and powerful connections do what they can get a away with, which is a lot.   If you feel the urge to trade, go to a casino instead.  They have free drinks and entertainment.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - When the Bubble Bursts

"The hypocrite's crime is that he bears false witness against himself. What makes it so plausible to assume that hypocrisy is the vice of vices is that integrity can indeed exist under the cover of all other vices except this one.

Only crime and the criminal, it is true, confront us with the perplexity of radical evil; but only the hypocrite is really rotten to the core."

Hannah Arendt

Gold and silver showed weakness during the London-New York trading hours today.

I suspect that we *could* see a bit of an overhang on price this week as the punters go for the sure thing of a decline in the metals for the upcoming Non-Farm Payrolls report this week.

Gee, I hope they don't get whipsawed. LOL

There was a remarkable amount of gold deliveries on Friday as you can see below, all things considered for recent history in this metals slump.

As usual we saw JP Morgan, and this time the house at Goldman, snuffling up those claim tickets on gold.

I was out for a while this afternoon, but this spent most of this morning working on an update on the amount of free float of gold in the London vaults.    The real work is being done by the same metals mavens and data wranglers at BullionStar and GoldChartsRUs.  

I am proofreading and trying to make the data easier to comprehend, and maybe a little 'pretty.'   I imagine that if I can understand it, then most others will as well.

I think you all know what I think about this.   There seems to be little doubt that there is a large amount of leverage with paper claims compared to unencumbered physical bullion, both in gold and silver, but especially with gold.

We have seen various estimates and data points in the 100:1 area for London and New York, and I think that there is some merit in those.

And as Kyle Bass was told with regard to gold, the trading system as it is now relies on only a very small percentage, about 2% of contracts held by traders, actually cashing in their gold claims in each contract period.

"The [gold] exchange is a fractional reserve exchange, and they think that price will solve everything."

Kyle Bass

If there is another financial disruption and there is a rush for physical gold for any reason, please be advised that there will be a very unequal distribution of the metal that actually exists.   And they will solve the imbalances by dictating price settlements that will likely not involve any physical assets going forward.

We saw this clearly in the case of MF Global.   And it is likely to happen again, and on a much grander scale.  It would be like having your insurance policy cashed in and settled for cash against your will on the day before the big storm hits and knocks your house down.

'And no one could have seen it coming.'

Could the mainstream corporate media make their biases any more obvious about their election preferences?   The news programs are starting to be more like infomercials.

Non-Farm Payrolls at the end of the week.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Quiet Trading Day On Rosh Hashana

“In poor countries, officials receive explicit bribes; in D.C. they get the sophisticated, implicit, unspoken promise to work for large corporations.”

Nassim Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes

Trading was quiet in New York today as a number of traders were off today for the Jewish holiday of Rosh Hashana.

Despite the lack of substantive follow up on the Deutsche Bank settlement rumours banks managed to bounce back a bit.

The markets were also cheered by 'better than expected' auto sales.   Better than the Wall Street analysts estimated that is, but year-over-year decline.

Non-farm payrolls and the Fed will likely dominate the trade this week, with any of the several floating crisis points like Deutsche Bank shuffled to the 'Mispriced Risks' bin.

Interestingly, an analyst from JPM has endorsed the idea that the Fed should start buying stocks to prop up the equity market.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls Report Next Week - Zimbabwe Express

"The mischief springs from the power which the moneyed interest derives from a paper currency which they are able to control, from the multitude of corporations with exclusive privileges which they have succeeded in obtaining in the different States, and which are employed altogether for their benefit; and unless you become more watchful in your States and check this spirit of monopoly and thirst for exclusive privileges you will in the end find that the most important powers of Government have been given or bartered away, and the control over your dearest interests has passed into the hands of these corporations."

Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address

The only funadmental in this market right now is fraud.

Gold gave up a little bit and silver gained some to close out the week.

The delivery reports for October are now coming in, and gold was off to a bang as Nova Scotia served up bullion markers for all those standing for delivery. Silver was relatively quiet.

Recovery Is Arriving On the Zimbabwe Express

Larry Summers thinks that it is time for more governments to start propping up their stock markets more overtly by the outright buying of stocks on a regular basis.  But he did somewhat ominously admit that

"we are fairly near the end of the rope. Perhaps there is scope to reduce short-term interest rates a little bit more and to make them a little bit more negative. But there is not much scope.”

He also went on to observe that: "In a world where cutting-edge technology companies are awash with excess cash, it can hardly be a surprise that there is substantial downwards pressure on the level of real interest rates. Low neutral rates will be around “for a long time to come,” requiring policy makers to think more dynamically.

I had a chill run up my spine when the thought of President Hillary bringing him back into government again.  Heavens to the downward-spiral-of-elitist-new-era-thinking.

No wonder economics is a disgraced profession.  Some of its biggest and brightest stars are so conflicted by selfish interests and blinded by ideology that they could not formulate sustainable policy for a glee club.

Non-Farm Payrolls next week as noted in the economic calendar below.

Have a pleasant weekend.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Jawboning Prosperity, For Some

Stocks rallied on a report that had been given from some source to the French wire service Agence France-Presse that Deutsche Bank was expecting to reach a settlement with the US Department of Justice of about $5.4 billion, considerably less than the $14 billion that the DoJ had been asking.

Favourable rumours notwithstanding, the US equity markets are surprisingly weak.

Their underpinnings bear little substance of firm and committed investment, which is a roundabout way of saying that they are in a bit of a bubble fueled by very short term speculation and price manipulation.

Therefore, one might expect that just about any significant exogenous event is going to bring this market to its knees. A failure at Deutsche Bank would certainly do the trick. But there are a number of other things that would also do serious harm to a fragile market structure based on hot money and fraud.

Have a pleasant weekend.