Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Keep Calm and Bubble On

 

"Price discovery is not a sexy function of markets, but it is critical to the efficient allocation of scarce capital and resources, and to the preservation of the long term wealth of investors and the economy as a whole.  If price discovery is compromised by manipulation, then we will all be gradually impoverished and the economy will be imbalanced and unstable."

London Banker, Lies, Damn Lies, and Libor 

 

"What is most offensive is not their lying— one can always forgive lying— lying can be a delightful thing, for it leads to truth. What is offensive is that they lie, and worship their own lying." 

 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment 

 

“A true opium of [worldly] people is a belief in nothingness after death— the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, and murders that we are not going to be judged.” 

Czesław Miłosz

 

“You cannot play with the animal in you without becoming wholly animal, play with falsehood without forfeiting your right to truth, play with cruelty without losing your sensitivity of mind.  He who wants to keep his garden tidy does not reserve a plot for weeds.  Your cravings as a human animal do not become a prayer just because it is God whom you ask to attend to them.  God does not die on the day when we cease to believe in a personal deity.  But we die on the day when our lives cease to be illumined by the steady radiance, renewed daily, of a wonder the source of which is beyond all reason." 

Dag Hammarskjöld, Markings

Stocks were off and running today starting with a boom in the futures overnight.

The Dollar was lower.

Gold and silver were lower.

Risk on!

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Sweet Nothings - Nothing Personal, It's Just Business

 

"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane.  I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.  If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand.  It is much worse to consider this calm, 'well-balanced,' unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder.  He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative.  He had a profound respect for system.

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing.  We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people.  We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction.  And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous.

The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless." 

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable 

 

"One of the primary characteristics of narcissists is their exaggerated sense of entitlement.  It's hardly surprising then that so many politicians somehow think they 'deserve' to game the system.  After all, from their self-interested perspective, isn't that what the system is for?  In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be theirs.  So, nothing if not opportunistic, they take from public and private coffers alike whatever they think they can get away with.  

And given their grandiose sense of self, they're inclined to believe they can get away with most anything.  Exploiting their privileged position in such a manner hardly leaves them plagued with guilt.  In general, guilt isn't an emotion they're prone to.  How could they be if they feel entitled to the objects of their desire? In their minds their very ability to attain something must certainly mean it was merited." 

Leon F. Seltzer

 

"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong. It's the system. The tragedy of life, Howard, is not that the beautiful die young, but that they grow old and mean." 

Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

And so we had another FOMC announcement today.

The Fed is clearly teeing up a tapering of their bond purchases.

I think the focus will be on the September Jobs Report.

Gold was a little lower on the cross Dollar trade.

Silver edged up a bit with stocks, which rallied.

The market is trying to have this both ways.

I think the downside risks for equities will remain pronounced though to November.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - FOMC Tomorrow - Evergrande Debt Contagion Concerns

 

"As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at his customs post.  And he said to him, 'Follow me.'  And he got up and followed.  While he was at table in his house, many tax collectors and sinners came and sat with Jesus and his disciples.  The Pharisees saw this and asked the disciples, 'Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?'  He heard this and said, 'Those who are well do not need a physician, but the afflicted do.  Go and learn the meaning of the words, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’" 

Matthew 9:9-13

 

“We are slow to master the great truth that even now Christ is, as it were, walking among us, and by His hand, or eye, or voice, bidding us to follow Him. We do not understand that His call is a thing that takes place now. We think it took place in the Apostles' days, but we do not believe in it; we do not look for it in our own case." 

John Henry Newman 

 

Stocks made a valiant attempt to rally off the bottom today— and failed.  At least in the futures markets, which both finished in the red as of this posting.

There will be an FOMC rate decision announced tomorrow afternoon, with the attendant press conference and other Delphic pronouncements.

Gold and silver managed to rally off their lows and held the gains.

The Dollar was slightly lower.

The scandal about the Fed Presidents actively trading the stocks and bonds whose prices they were actively influencing is growing, and it is not pretty.

I am still sitting in cash in my trading accounts. 

This market is skittish, and there is tension on the tape because of contagion risk from China's Evergrande.   

There will be a key debt deadline for that beleaguered behemoth  on this Thursday.

Let's see what the Fed has to say tomorrow, and if it is somehow reassuring.  Or not.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Lapse in Bubble Complacency - Flight to Safety

 

“It has been more profitable for us to bind together in the wrong direction than to be alone in the right one. Those who have followed the assertive idiot rather than the introspective wise person have passed us some of their genes. This is apparent from a social pathology: psychopaths rally followers.” 

Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Black Swan 

 

“The narcissist devours people, consumes their output, and casts the empty, writhing shells aside.”

Sam Vaknin 

 

"Satan’s monomaniac concern with himself and his supposed rights and wrongs is a necessity of the Satanic predicament.  Certainly, he has no choice.  He has chosen to have no choice.  He has wished to ‘be himself,’ and to be in himself and for himself, and his wish has been granted.  To admire Satan, then, is to give one’s vote not only for a world of misery, but also for a world of lies and propaganda, of wishful thinking, of incessant autobiography.  Yet the choice is possible." 

C. S. Lewis 

 

Stocks followed through on the weakness from last week and took a hard trip lower today.

This was a clear flight to safety, as money flowed out of its recent bubble vehicles and sought safer harbors.

Fortunately, at least for now, the SP 500 futures managed to find some footing at key support and rebounded a little from their intraday bottom into the close.

I am watching carefully to see if the two major stock indices that I watch will set a lower low or not.

Gold manged to rally back from the losses of last week.

Silver fell a little in sympathy with its industrial uses component.

The dollar was essentially unchanged.

I did not sense any real panic in the selling today, although the huge increasse in the VIX shows that the pros are buying downside protection with some vigor.

Bubble-vision was pointing fingers at Covid and China the dual scapegoats du jour.

I don't think gold was mentioned much.   

Mostly there were a series of strategists and pundits assuring us that there is no alternative to holding stocks, come what may.

Let's see how the rest of the week goes, and what the Fed does or does not do in reaction to this market weakness.

Do they ignore the stock market?    Are you serious?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Witch of September - And Now Into the Season of Risk

 

“What we would like to do is change the world--make it a little simpler for people to feed, clothe, and shelter themselves as God intended them to do.  And, by fighting for better conditions, by crying out unceasingly for the rights of the workers, the poor, of the destitute--the rights of the worthy and the unworthy poor, in other words--we can, to a certain extent, change the world; we can work for the oasis, the little cell of joy and peace in a harried world.  We can throw our pebble in the pond and be confident that its ever widening circle will reach around the world.  There is nothing we can do but love, and, dear God, please enlarge our hearts to love each other, to love our neighbor, to love our enemy as our friend.” 

Dorothy Day 

 

"Do you desire to be great? make yourselves little.  If you minister to the humble and despised, if you feed the hungry, tend the sick, succour the distressed; if you bear with the froward, submit to insult, endure ingratitude, render good for evil, you are, as by a divine charm, getting power over the world and rising among the creatures. God has established this law. Thus He does His wonderful works. His instruments are poor and despised; the world hardly knows their names, or not at all. They are busied about what the world thinks petty actions, and no one minds them. They are apparently set on no great works; nothing is seen to come of what they do: they seem to fail. They rise by falling."

John Henry Newman 

 

The market seemed a bit nervy today, once again.  Almost skittish and easily provoked.

The stock indices all fell, and with some significance.  

And they ended the day near the lows.

But the VIX has yet to show any greater level of concern for risk among the traders.

Stocks are on a decent support level now, but any follow through action to the downside next week should be viewed with increasing caution for the potential for a greater decline. 

Gold finished just slightly lower.

Silver dropped a bit more in sympathy with stocks.

The miners were under pressure most of the day.

The Dollar finished higher taking back the 93 handle firmly.

I am all in cash now again.   I want to see more from this market before being willing to incur any risk.

I do not like trading when I am feeling off.  

The Fed seems to be caught up in a widening inquiry of questionable trading and conflicts of interest.

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Mini-Me - Fed Reform and Quad Witch Option Expiration

 

"A man who lies to himself is often the first to take offense. it sometimes feels very good to take offense, doesn't it?  And surely he knows that no one has offended him, and that he himself has invented the offense and told lies just for the beauty of it, that he has exaggerated for the sake of effect, that he has picked up on a word and made a mountain out of a pea--he knows all of that, and still he is the first to take offense, he likes feeling offended, it gives him great pleasure.” 

Fyodor Dostoevsky 

 

“The point of modern propaganda isn't only to misinform or push an agenda. It is to exhaust your critical thinking, to annihilate truth.” 

Garry Kasparov 

 

"Unhappiness comes to each of us because we think ourselves at the center of the world, because we have the miserable conviction the we alone suffer to the point of unbearable intensity."

Jacques Lusseyran

 

“The official philosophies of the totalitarian regimes unanimously brand as nonsensical the idea that there exists a single objective truth valid for everybody. The official philosophies of the totalitarian regimes deny the inherent value of thought.  For them thought is not a light but a weapon: its function, they say, is not to discover reality as it is, but to change and transform it with the purpose of leading us towards what is not.”

Alexandre Koyré 

 

Stocks took a fairly convincing swoon this morning, falling straight down to underlying support.

But mirabile dictu, equities regained most of their losses in the late afternoon and finished with a small loss.

The Dollar rallied up to just short of the 93 handle.

Gold and silver were whacked pretty convincingly along with most of the associated miners.

I was sitting all in cash, in part because I didn't like the feel of the market.  And I still don't.

I did buy a couple of small mining positions in the metals today, on the of chance this is just quad witch shenanigans and not the beginning of something more profoud.

Nice save on the stock indices into the close.  That made me doubt the sincerity of this market.

But you never know.

There will be a quad witch stock option expiration on Friday, the third of this year.

The banks must be restrained, the financial system reformed, and the economy brought back into balance, before there can be any sustained recovery. 

Given the extent of the corruption of the major monopolized industries and the political system by big money I am not optimistic about when meaningful reform will happen. 

Certainly not with the 'self-review' of the Fed's ethics that Chairman Powell has just proposed. 

The best way to manage a scandal in your own house is to lead the investigation of it.

But as Hermann Hesse once wrote, 'When the suffering becomes acute enough, one goes forward.'

Have a pleasant evening.