Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bullshit Reigns - Stock Option Expiry This Week

"If the world hates you, remember that it hated me first. If you belonged to the world, it would love you as its own.  But you do not belong to the world,  as I have chosen you from it."

John 15:18

Suffering is a means by which God saves us, afflicting us so we do not lapse into vain self-sufficiency, a pride and a perverse individualism that gathers us blindly into ourselves, and separates us from His own.   To suffer is how we grow in humility, and conform ourselves to do what He commands, rather than as we may will.

Prayer is how we sustain ourselves in times of both suffering and joy, with humility in this life, as we resort not only to ourselves or to the world, but to all things with God.

And so we find comfort in His will, and the conversations that we keep with His many tender mercies.  The world can not see this, and in not seeing does not understand.  To the world we are fools.

His consolations and comforts are hidden, delivered to us in quiet moments, heart to heart. And so He gathers us together to Himself, and keeps us safe, and slowly takes us from this world and the dark powers therein, that search endlessly for souls to make their own, and to devour.

Stocks and the precious metals slumped today as yields on US Treasuries climbed.  The ten year Treasury yield finished at the highest level since 2011.

This in turn greatly strengthened the US Dollar.   Bloomberg characterized this as a 'risk off' reaction to something or other that was not clear.  North Korea or Jerusalem?   The VIX took a leg higher.

The retail sales number was rather weak, which would not support higher interest rates per se.   Although there was an upward revision last month, and Empire Manufacturing did come in a big stronger.  All in all a zzzzzz.

The SP 500 yield has fallen below the 3 month Treasury yield.  And this is just the market to buy stocks for clipping coupons, right? lol.

Perhaps the market has decided that the Fed will be raising rates no matter what the productive economy is doing, which is not all that bad of a bet.  Unless there is an economic cataclysm.  The Fed seems to be self-absorbed and self-referential to a remarkable degree, having painted themselves into a corner with few places left to hide.

I suspect that gold was in an over-reaction   Many punters have noticed gold's tendency to bottom off the NFP-FOMC combination, and probably placed too many weak bets ahead of the curve.  Well, that is one possibility at least.

Or maybe the masters of the universe were just having a day.  Anything is possible when bullshit reigns.

I just checked and there it is, a stock option expiry this week.   The calendar included below.  Mary is not normally that big of a month for stock options as I recall.

"On Wall Street he and a few others - how many? - three hundred, four hundred, five hundred? - had become precisely that— Masters of the Universe. There was no limit whatsoever! Bullshit reigns."

Tom Wolfe, Bonfire of the Vanities

Bullshit and faithlessness reign in our amoral wilderness.    And you-know-who is the King of the May.

Have a pleasant evening.

Real News: 'A System In Which Sociopaths Rise to the Top'

“It’s no accident that the size of the financial sector today as a percentage of GDP is at levels equaled only on the eve of the Great Depression. Like the decade leading up to the financial crisis of 2008, the Roaring Twenties were marked by not only financial boom and technological wonder, but also massive income inequality. Worker wages stagnated and those of the upper classes grew, bolstered in large part by stock prices. Another similarity was a rise in debt, both public and private, which was used to mask the declining spending power of the lower and middle classes and its dampening effect on GDP growth."

Rana Foroohar, Makers and Takers

Paul Jay interviews Rana Foroohar on the global economy, debt, and financial crises.

Rana Foroohar is an associate editor and global business columnist for The Financial Times. She’s also CNN’s global economic analyst and she joins us in the studio.

Here is a link to the original interview and transcript, as well as five additional interview segments.

The Western establishment is caught in a credibility trap. And this intransigence to change and to even rationally discuss genuine reform is going to lead to severe economic and civil dislocations before it is resolved.  And they don't care, because they have been winning for so long that they no longer can even imagine what they might lose.

"The big thing that happens for 10 years [upwards of 20] is that you have asymmetric economic growth where 80 percent of the income distribution gets none of the rewards of the growth after the recession.  Of course you get populism after that. It’s natural. It’s just the way it works.  Bernie Sanders is a populist. Bernie Sanders’ populism is all about scapegoating. It’s rich people, it’s bankers, it’s Republicans [and the corporate Democrats]—it’s all these people who got your stuff. That’s the kind of populism that we frequently see as opposed to a kind of ethical populism, which basically says we have good values, let’s go share."

Arthur Brooks, President American Enterprise Institute, ‘Americans are Being Held Hostage and Terrorized by the Fringes’

I could not believe that Politico had the stones to label Brooks 'center right.'   If he is center right, then Abbie Hoffman is center left. 

Notice in the first sentence that Brooks admits that there is a terrible disparity that has been built into the system, although he does not say how. But he then goes on to excoriate and delegitimize anyone who dares to point that there is a systemic problem out, and suggest that it needs to be changed. As opposed to an 'ethical populism' in which the effectively disenfranchised approach the politically rapacious figureheads for the powerful and ask, 'may we please share?'

It really frosts the corporate tools that the public did not stick to the script and vote for 'reform' with Hillary. Or Jeb.

Where the powerful use the channels of a society to crush and distort ideas, they will soon enough turn to crushing people while casting a distorted image of them to across the public channels of communication which they monopolize.

And if there is dissent from the system as it is, this if fueled by terrorists, lunatics, and of course, the Russians and their accomplices who have been sowing dissatisfaction.

When disruptive change finally breaks out, no one could have seen it coming—  because they have tightly shut their eyes to it, and deafened their hearing with slogans and ideologically slanted catch phrases fed to them by think tanks and the mainstream media.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - All Is Well

"As you have willed your house is now yours— but is made desolate.’”

Stocks initially rallied, continuing their overnight strength, based on a tweet from Trump about seeking some relief from the sanctions being imposed on a Chinese telecoms company ZTE.

However during the day the Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross cast doubt on this, causing stocks to reverse and the dollar to gain back a bit on the flight to safety of sorts.

The US opened its new embassy in Jerusalem.

Gold and silver finished lower.

The Comex gold inventories set for immediate delivery continued to diminish.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Confronting the Unspeakable

"Those who are at present so eager to be reconciled with the world at any price must take care not to be reconciled with it under this particular aspect: as the nest of The Unspeakable. This is what too few are willing to see... Be human in this most inhuman of ages; guard the image of man for it is the image of God."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable

And so another week has ended.

The Dollar gave up a bit of its overbought gains, allowing gold and silver to rise back up a bit.

Stocks held their levels, after another remarkable run higher, prompted in part by weaker than expected data on inflation.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - On the Sunni Side of the Street

"U.S. support for the Sunni camp was made clear by the fact that Trump made Riyadh his first foreign stop as president, by his willingness to sell the Saudis $110 billion in military equipment, and by his repeated criticisms of Iran during his speech.  Why the United States would want to tilt toward either side in the Sunni-Shiite divide is mystifying.

These two sects have been at odds for centuries, with no signs of a detente. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, the world’s most dangerous terrorist organization, is Sunni. The same goes for al-Qaeda, the group founded by Osama bin Laden that brought down the World Trade Center on 9/11."

USA Today, In Saudi Arabia, Trump turns Sunni


"I served in all commissioned ranks from a second Lieutenant to a Major General. And during that time, I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer for capitalism.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses."

Smedley Butler, USMC


“I just got this down from upstairs” — meaning the Secretary of Defense’s office— “today.”  And he said, “This is a memo that describes how we’re going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.”  I said, “Is it classified?”  He said, “Yes, sir.”  I said, “Well, don’t show it to me.”

General Wesley Clark, Seven Countries in Five Years


"The enormous gap between what US leaders do in the world and what Americans think their leaders are doing is one of the great propaganda accomplishments of the dominant political mythology."

Michael Parenti

The inflation numbers came in weakly this morning, prompting stocks to rally on the notion that the Fed will stick to the minimum schedule of raising rates in order to give themselves sufficient room to cut rates when their latest financial asset bubble begins to implode.

And with this softness in rate increases, the dollar dropped and gold and silver rallied a bit in response.

There are lots of things that barely make sense that tend to dominate the mainstream news and discussions.   I would imagine that you have noticed.

This is the credibility trap in action. And it will get even weirder, and make a whole lot less sense.

But very important public and media figures will become ever more hysterical, and indignant about it, with a fury designed to whip up the people into—  confused and servile obedience.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - In Time of Plague

"Beauty is but a flower
Which wrinkles will devour;
Brightness falls from the air;
Queens have died young and fair;
Dust hath closed Helen’s eye.
I am sick, I must die.
Lord, have mercy on us."

Thomas Nashe, A Litany In Time of Plague


"He prompts you what to say, and then listens to you, and praises you, and encourages you.  He bids you mount aloft.  He shows you how to become as gods.  Then he laughs and jokes with you, and gets intimate with you; he takes your hand, and gets his fingers between yours, and grasps them, and then you are his."

J.H.Newman, The Times of Antichrist


The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism


“It isn't that they can't see the solution.  It is that they can't see the problem.”

Gilbert K. Chesterton

They can't see the problem, or they will not allow themselves see the problem, or admit that they have seen it.

They love their pride and their paychecks, more than the truth, and His commandments to love and to serve.

Nothing becomes too vile, too dreadful, or too awful for them, in the end.

And that is the credibility trap.

Do not join them, no matter how attractive or rewarding or fashionable it may seem.

It is to embrace the unspeakable; it is more obscene than you can imagine—  it is a dalliance with the abyss.

Thank you for remembering me in your prayers.

Have a pleasant evening.