SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily - Holy Volatility!

The upcoming election seems to be setting a chill on the financial class.

Today was the eighth consecutive down day for US stocks, the most since 2008.

The declines, however, have been relatively modest, with the indices showing what appears to be a normal correction of less than 10%.

Volatility as measured by the VIX, which might be better called 'uncertainty,' continued rising as can be seen from the chart below.

Non-Farm Payrolls tomorrow may move the markets, but I suspect that the bigger overhang is the upcoming US elections next week Tuesday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Much Ado About Nothing

There was a posting on the NAV of some of the precious metal trusts and funds intraday here.

And there was also a short piece on the competing crime families that are our two established political parties here.

Gold and silver had a nice spike higher earlier in the day on a lower dollar as you can see in the charts below.

The metals gave back some of their gains into the close.

The FOMC did not seem to affect them much despite its dovish waffling and wistful desire to raise rates at least once before the end of the year in December.

The clearing (delivery) reports were brisk for gold and meh for silver.   And the reverse for the warehouse reports as silver keeps moving metals in and out, and the gold bullion sits there and looks pretty while the punters swap a pyramid of IOUs per ounce for it.

Let's see if the metals can keep the move going higher.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Sixteen Tons

Election and geo-political jitters still had stocks slump for yet another day as even a largely dovish sounding statement from the FOMC could not cheer the markets.

The selling is starting to look a little overdone for the short term, and VIX seems a bit 'peaky.'

Facebook beat their numbers after the bell. And the market greeted the news with yawns, focusing on one of the mobile numbers apparently.

Fitbit posted a big loss and lower guidance, and the stock was being monkey-hammered after hours.

Let's see what happens.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metals Trusts and Funds

Sprott continues to add units for cash and metals.

CEF has decreased their cash and the number of units outstanding since the last time that I noted their holdings.

I did not see a recent press release with regard to any buying back of units for cash.

Competing Crime Families Crony Capitalism - The Dark Heart of the Credibility Trap

The Republican and Democrat insiders seem like two competing crime families, struggling for control of the spoils—  like the Marranzanos and Lucianos, for example, in 1930s New York.

Or maybe Bill and Hillary are just a better educated, more fortunate, white collar version of Bonnie and Clyde.  Someone certainly selected Bill for 'greatness' and quite a few breaks for a kid from Hot Springs early on.  And Hillary wears her ambition like Lady Macbeth.

As for Trump, the outsider, in the end he may be less like Thomas Dewey than Dutch Schultz.

"They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves...

The dramatis personae of the liberal class are all present in this amazing body of work [Podesta emails]: financial innovators. High-achieving colleagues attempting to get jobs for their high-achieving children. Foundation executives doing fine and noble things. Prizes, of course, and high academic achievement.

Certain industries loom large and virtuous here. Hillary’s ingratiating speeches to Wall Street are well known of course, but what is remarkable is that, in the party of Jackson and Bryan and Roosevelt, smiling financiers now seem to stand on every corner, constantly proffering advice about this and that. In one now-famous email chain, for example, the reader can watch current US trade representative Michael Froman, writing from a Citibank email address in 2008, appear to name President Obama’s cabinet even before the great hope-and-change election was decided (incidentally, an important clue to understanding why that greatest of zombie banks was never put out of its misery)...

Hillary Clinton staffed her state department with investment bankers and then did speaking engagements for investment banks as soon as she was done at the state department. Of course she appears to think that any kind of bank reform should 'come from the industry itself'. And of course no elite bankers were ever prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Read these emails and you understand, with a start, that the people at the top tier of American life all know each other. They are all engaged in promoting one another’s careers, constantly.

Everything blurs into everything else in this world. The state department, the banks, Silicon Valley, the nonprofits, the 'Global CEO Advisory Firm' that appears to have solicited donations for the Clinton Foundation. Executives here go from foundation to government to thinktank to startup. There are honors. Venture capital. Foundation grants. Endowed chairs. Advanced degrees. For them the door revolves. The friends all succeed. They break every boundary.

But the One Big Boundary remains. Yes, it’s all supposed to be a meritocracy. But if you aren’t part of this happy, prosperous in-group – if you don’t have John Podesta’s email address – you’re out."

Thomas Frank, Podesta Emails Show Who Runs America and How They Do It


"Most of them became wealthy by being well connected and crooked. And they are creating a society in which they can commit hugely damaging economic crimes with impunity, and in which only children of the wealthy have the opportunity to become successful.   That’s what I have a problem with.   And I think most people agree with me."

Charles Ferguson, Predator Nation


"Larry [Summers] leaned back in his chair and offered me some advice. I had a choice. I could be an insider or I could be an outsider. Outsiders can say whatever they want.

But people on the inside don’t listen to them. Insiders, however, get lots of access and a chance to push their ideas. People — powerful people — listen to what they have to say. But insiders also understand one unbreakable rule: they don’t criticize other insiders."

Elizabeth Warren, A Fighting Chance


"Our plutocracy, whether the hedge fund managers in Greenwich, Connecticut, or the Internet moguls in Palo Alto, now lives like the British did in colonial India: ruling the place but not of it."

Mike Lofgren, The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, 5 January 2016

Related: The Bullet or the Bribe
               Changing the Culture of Wall Street Requires Ending Continuity Government in Washington

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Gold and Silver Rally on Uncertainty, Worries For the Status Quo

The VIX spiked higher today, and gold and silver rallied with the Swiss franc as the market felt a chill of Winter run up their backs.

Conventional wisdom points to the sudden rise of Donald Trump in the polls, pulling even with Hillary, at least in the popular vote.

To sharpen it down to a fine point, today was all about the fear of the unknown, for those who are so comfortable and accustomed to be winning.

The 'establishment' does not care one bit for this added uncertainty.

But we also have the central banks mucking about, and plenty of global tensions to go around that are normally pushed aside by the market mavens.

But every once in a while they pause in their exceptional giddiness, and begin to wonder, and to think about the real future may hold for them.

Let's see if gold and silver can add to the gains, or at least get past the FOMC and the NFP numbers on Friday unscathed.

Have a pleasant evening.

"Wonderful providence indeed which is so silent, yet so efficacious, so constant, so unerring. This is what baffles the power of Satan. He cannot discern the Hand of God in what goes on; and though he would fain meet it and encounter it, in his mad and blasphemous rebellion against heaven, he cannot find it.

Crafty and penetrating as he is, yet his thousand eyes and his many instruments avail him nothing against the majestic serene silence, the holy imperturbable calm which reigns through the providences of God. Crafty and experienced as he is, he appears like a child or a fool, like one made sport of, whose daily bread is but failure and mockery, before the deep and secret wisdom of the Divine Counsels.

He makes a guess here, or does a bold act there, but all in the dark. He knew not of Gabriel's coming, and the miraculous conception of the Virgin, or what was meant by that Holy Thing which was to be born, being called the Son of God. He tried to kill him, and he made martyrs of the innocent children; he tempted the Lord of all with hunger and with ambitious prospects; he sifted the Apostles, and got none but one who already bore his own name, and had been already given over as a devil.

He brought into the world the very salvation which he feared and hated. He accomplished the Atonement of that world, whose misery he was plotting. Wonderfully silent, yet resistless course of God's providence! 'Verily, Thou art a God that hidest Thyself, O God of Israel, the Saviour;' and if even devils, sagacious as they are, spirits by nature and experienced in evil, cannot detect His hand, while He works, how can we hope to see it except by that way which the devils cannot take, by loving faith?"

John Henry Newman, PS 17