Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Into the Weekend

"Seek the Lord, all you humble of the land,
who have observed his law;
Seek justice, seek humility;
And perhaps you will be sheltered
on the day of the Lord’s justice.

This was the triumphal city, high and mighty,
Saying to herself, ‘I am the one, and none dare stand beside me.’
How desolate now has she become, a place fit only for wild beasts.
Those who pass by her scoff, and shake their heads at her ruin."

Zephaniah 2:3,15

We have to be somewhere soon, so here are the charts at 3:30 PM.

The GDP number came in light for 4Q 2016.

Stocks were chopping with the broader indices showing weakness, and big tech still one of the mainstays.

They are lining up some IPOs on the if/come, so I don't think stocks will dump off these highs just yet. But if something 'happens,' then all bets are off.

The metals are holding their own, but need to move up and above this overhead resistance which is proving to be about as stubborn as expected.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Something Wicked This Way Comes

"Wall Street told US manufacturers to move their production to China in order to increase profits from lower labor and regulatory costs, or Wall Street would finance takeovers of the companies, and the new owners would raise the firms’ profitability by moving production offshore. Large retailers, such as Walmart, ordered suppliers 'to meet the Chinese price.'

When the jobs were in the US, most of the gains in productivity went to labor. Therefore, real median family incomes rose through time, and the consumer purchasing power this income growth provided drove the US economy to success for ever more people. When the jobs were moved to Asia, the growth in real median US family incomes stopped and declined."

Paul Craig Roberts


"A credibility trap is when the managerial functions of a society have been sufficiently compromised by corruption so that the leadership cannot reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without implicating a broad swath of the powerful, including themselves.

The moneyed interests and their aspirants tolerate the corruption because they have profited from it, and would like to continue to do so. Discipline is maintained by various forms of soft financial rewards and social coercion."

Jesse

I don't necessarily agree with Paul C. Roberts on many things, but I know the above to be true. I saw it happening up close and personal.  It was fairly obvious really to the objective and informed observers of history.   Ideologues of all persuasions, not so much—  they are always lost in some new era, with those things outside the boundaries of their reality proscribed by utterly inadequate models, selective facts, and self-defining truths.

The sophists in the professional class will say 'prove it,' and offer their tortured models and selective histories to show that this was merely the natural path of progress and technology, ie unavoidable.  But they will feel your pain, from a distance.

I am afraid that things are apparently way past that point of arguing futilely about it with a mind to finding an organic remedy, if you have not noticed.  Some have spoken about this for years, warning of your folly in vain.  And now, ladies and gentlemen, a banquet of consequences is being served by the Mad Hatter, once again.

The futures were gyrating after the bell as some big name companies like Paypal, Microsoft, Intel and Alphabet turn in their financial results.

The wiseguys want to unload a mass of big IPOs in the next two weeks, so they will attempt to support the markets as long as nothing happens to make that too difficult.

I suspect that the Republican dominated Congress will do their best to ruin the economy.  I wonder how much Trump may fall into line, or pursue his own instincts and legacy.

The Democrats are virtually sidelined, as they only slowly begin to digest the consequences of the failure of their neo-liberal economics, world power ambitions, and the 'better of two evils' political strategies.  As for their Republicans, they are obsequiously vile in the service of the moneyed interests.

Greed prevails as fear recedes.  The 'establishment' is firmly mired in denial of their failing policies.

Something wicked this way comes.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble

Cartoon with permission by artofmarkbryan.com

As suspected, the Dow Industrials hit their high note today, sticking a close over the 20,000 handle.

It has taken quite a few years for the Dow to double from its first foray over 10,000 in March of 1999. Remember that? I remember vividly the Dow crossing 1,000 for the first time in late 1972. And then we had the grinding bear market of the early 1970's, with no return to 1,000 until the arrival of Reagan.

I suspect we will soon be seeing the lipstick being applied, and a flurry of new IPOs hitting the market while the market is hot, full of speculative money. That will be a sign of a topping process. But until something happens to shake things up, greed springs eternal.

The Donald released his orders for The Wall today. His cabinet appointments are disturbing because they seem to place his feet in the oligarchy of the Republican establishment, moreso than fresh minds and new ideas for growth.

I had to laugh today, when some infomercial pundit suggested that Trump will bring us changes that will allow companies to permit capital formation, which will be good for employment and productivity.  Are you kidding me?

These jokers have been piling the rather healthy profits which they received after the bailouts of 2008 into stock buybacks and dividends, and were using legal gimmicks to park huge amounts of cash in tax havens offshore.

Ok, so perhaps they will be encouraged to spend that money here in different ways, but I doubt very, very much that they will be for the good for the general economy. Their model is greed, and the worst sort: short term and near sighted.   More gaming of the system is in the forecast.

This interplay between the Republican establishment and The Donald will certainly be interesting. They have their long knives out for Social Security and Medicare, and the Heritage Foundation is back in the saddle.  I wonder what Mr. Trump will do when the rubber meets the road between his goals of legacy, and the pitiless hearts of the monied interests.

Kyle Bass caught my attention with his interview on Bloomberg TV today.  He is very bearish on China, and believes that they will have to recapitalize their financial system, which will result in a profound devaluation of the yuan.  By contrast, Russia has already taken most of the pain of their economic problems and it had been reflected already in the rouble.

I wonder when America will take the consequences of many years of bad policy and political decisions that have resulted in historic imbalances and inequality.  Right now we are inclined to export it, as holding the 'reserve currency' status certainly does facilitate that sort of thing.

Gold and silver retreated a bit today, as it was another risk on fiesta. I liked the close on gold, holding above 1200, although that level is more psychological. Gold and silver have come quite a way in the past month, and a pullback is justified. Let's see where it goes and when, so we can assess its character.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Risk On to Dow 20,000

Today was one of those risk on days, when the porcine class sees things going their way, or they will make it so.

A primary driver may be the desire to get the Dow Industrials, which are now pretty much only industrial in name only, up and over the headline 20,000 number, the better to eat you with, my dears. Yes, it's a bubble. That's what the Fed and the financial system do these days, go from one bubble to another, bringing in the sheaves of hypocrisy and fraud.

Tech stocks were also breaking to new highs. The VIX slumped back down to the lower bound of its recent trading range. And gold and silver were off. Risk on, remember?

As for now, these equity markets are pretty clearly signaling a trading range, and not a post-election decline. I think that comes later.

The Trumpster is doing some good things and some dodgy things. The TPP was a neoliberal abomination, and canning that deal and putting NAFTA back on the table is a smart move, no matter what the the establishment's professional auxiliary may say.

I have some bad feelings about the Keystone and Dakota pipelines, and we will have to see where that goes, and to whom it flows. The Donald is hard to predict, because I do not think his mind is always fully engaged to his mouth, or a category of first order principles, other than profits. Opportunists and wheeler-dealers tend to have that difficulty.

But I don't have much sympathy for those who knock him for jawboning companies, and trying different tactics to generate jobs, decent full time jobs, for the working class, in a tangible leader-like manner. In this he is more like a Franklin Roosevelt. Yikes, did I say that? Yes, and Obama seemed much more like a Herbert Hoover, but with a much cooler panache, and significantly less operational experience.  Hillary?   It is not polite or fitting to compare a lady to Il Duce.  But as a pair of Clintons goes, it does come to mind.

Well, enough said, and it's probably better to move along and get something useful done.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals - Forget it Jake, It's Chinatown

President Trump continues to rattle markets with change, or at least the proposals for them.

Stocks were off a bit, as well as the dollar, as the Executive Orders started flowing, to dump the TPP among other things.

No internationalist love and support there. I suspect this will cause increasing displeasure in his own party, and the establishment of the Northeast power corridor and Silicon Valley in general.

Otherwise, most of the markets seem to be locked into a fairly tight one percent trading range, with a back and forth motion chopping the off-footed daytraders.

Let's see which way this breaks. And not only the markets.

It's been a long time coming.   Going to be a long time gone.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals - Options and Inaugurations

The stock option expiration was fairly quiet although there was a range in the trading, with tech finishing unchanged and the SP 500 gaining back what it lost yesterday.

Gold and silver both moved back up towards overhead resistance.

Donald Trump was inaugurated as the 45th president.   His speech was quite interesting in its bluntness.  Judging from the smirk on a few of the all too familiar political faces, I expect the Donald will have quite the fight on his hands with the long established swamp rats from both parties, if he indeed intends to do as he says.

Now we start the 100 days, during which I will try to retain an open mind and judge things by what happens, what is actually done, rather than what has been said and promised.

Larry Summers was speaking on Bloomberg TV from Davos of course, giving his economic and geopolitical advice to a president who presumably couldn't care less.   It is nice to see him on the sidelines, and not on the playing field.  He is almost the perfect Davos man.

Have a pleasant weekend.