Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - O Brave New World

 

“When we serve the poor and the sick we serve the Lord.  Apart from the cross, there is no other ladder by which we may get to heaven.”

Isabella Flores de Oliva

“God creates out of nothing.  Wonderful you say.  Yes but he does what is still more wonderful— he makes saints out of sinners.”

Søren Kierkegaard

"In concentration camps we watched and witnessed some of our comrades behave like swine while others behaved like saints.  We can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."

Viktor E. Frankl

"Sin is not a distance, it is a turning of our gaze in the wrong direction."

Simone Weil

“The ordinary life is like the life of the saints.  They all seek satisfaction, and differ only according to the object in which they hope to find it.”

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

"The only real tragedy, at the end, is not to have been a saint."

Léon Bloy, La Femme Pauvre

Stocks had another wide ranging day, finishing mostly to the downside.

The Dollar fell back a bit off yesterday's grab at the 109 handle.

Gold and silver bounced back after six straight trading days of decline.

VIX was largely unchanged, hovering just below its 200 DMA.

I think we will see the risk markets continue to waffle back and forth until some additional guidance is given to them regarding the Fed's intentions, probably this Friday at Jackson Hole when Jay Powell speaks. 

Having no burdensome memory, and paying little attention to even recent history and reality, allows a people to go forward as if each day is brand new and open to their imaginative creation, without worry, moral impediments, and shame. 

In some ways the very definition of psychosis, formerly known as the 'lunatic fringe.' 

O brave new world, that has such people in it.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down

 

"Financial repression is sometimes the effect of policy even if it is not the intent.  It manifests itself, for example, when policy makers react more forcefully to declines in asset prices than to increases.

Price increases tend to be treated with benign indifference.  But declines often lead policy makers to respond with force, deploying fiscal stimulus and monetary accommodation. Market participants then conclude that governments have their backs.

Efforts to manage and manipulate asset prices are not new.  But history provides little comfort that these practices work. Interfering with market prices occasionally buys time, but rarely do policy makers seize the window of opportunity to enact structural reform.  Financial repression embeds the wrong incentives—obfuscation begets delay, and a robust recovery becomes unattainable."

Kevin Warsh, The Financial Repression Trap, 2011

"Through a set of economic policies designed to bail out and subsidize failed and often tainted corporate enterprises, while actively promoting a false sense of confidence to support those policies, the public has become exposed, by those very people entrusted to protect them, to dangerously high levels of hidden counterparty risks.

The cautionary functions of the media, the political class, and the regulatory bodies have been routinely directed, distorted, and even silenced for the benefit of a highly compromised and increasingly self-serving elite. And this corruption has begun feeding on its own momentum, resulting in increasingly blatant examples of deception, distortion, and outright theft. This is crony capitalism, and its deadly credibility trap."

Jesse, April 2012

“All make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”

Sophocles, Antigone

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Upton Sinclair


Nine out of ten Americans who actually notice these sorts of thins (which are not many) would have noticed that today was a decidedly risk off day in financial asset markets.

With distractions like political yahooism and the Kardashians who can spare the time for such arcane machinations? 

VIX took a leg higher to tag its 200 day moving average.

Gold and silver moved lower, and there will be a Comex option expiration on Thursday the 25th.

I still greatly prefer the higher ground, with a little dabbling along the shoreline here and there.

Buy I actually made money today in some select gold mining positions, go figure.  

All eyes and ears will be on Powell at Jackson Hole this Friday.

Why?  Because although we are probably après-bubble peak, the Fed still has the juice to keep it going or let it slide, at least for now.

At some point an exogenous event will probably take their favorite toy away from the Banksters.

We had almost 2 1/2"" of rain today, starting very early this morning, to it had time to soak in.   

That more than doubles what we have had so far this summer.  

I have had the garden, and even mature and hardy shrubs, on life support for some time now.  

So far we have canned eight quarts of San Marzano and roma tomatoes.

The lawn, alas, looks blow-torched.

Little Daisy is thriving, and slowly but surely taking over things here.

Have a pleasant evening.

Remembering Prague - Freedom

 

"Even a purely moral act that has no hope of any immediate and visible political effect can gradually and indirectly, over time, gain in political significance."

Václav Havel, Letter to Alexander Dubček, August 1969

"The impulse to freedom and democracy always seems weak and hopeless when matched against the forces of oppression, because aggressive oppression is always more single-minded, having already crushed internal dissent and perspective, and is generally better organized and equipped.

And yet even the greatest tyrannies have fallen, always.  This is because they carry within themselves the seeds of their own renewal and return to balance, or utter destruction.

As in most human things, their greatest strength is also their greatest weakness, and it is their inability to master and evolve that strength, to reform and achieve sustainability, that brings them crashing down, every time.  Their strength is their weakness, in its overreach and self-absorption."

Jesse, 8 June 2012


Marta Kubišová's song Prayer for Marta became a symbol of national resistance against the occupation of Warsaw Pact troops in 1968 as well as the Velvet Revolution in 1989. 

The name Velvet Revolution refers to the final protests against the communist regime that started in November 1989, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Nazi assault on the students at Prague University in which 1200 were arrested and 9 killed without trial.

Compared to the protests in other former communist states, Czechoslovakian protests were considered much more peaceful and smooth, like velvet. 

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Another Stock Option Expiration Boogie Woogie

 

"When the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together, and one of them, a scholar of the law tested him by asking, 'Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?'  And Jesus said to him, 'You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.  This is the greatest and the first commandment.  The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.  The whole law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.'”

Matthew 22:34-40

"If anyone says, 'I love God,' but hates his neighbor, he is a liar; for whoever does not love a neighbor whom they have seen cannot love God whom they have not seen."

1 John 4:20

"'For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.'  Then they will answer, 'Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?'  Then he will answer, 'Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it for one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.'”

Matthew 25:42-45

“Then the rich man said, ‘I beg you, Father Abraham, send Lazarus to my father’s house.  For I have five brothers for him to warn, so that they also will not come to this place of desolation and torment.’  But Abraham said, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets. Let them listen to them.’

But the rich man again said, ‘No, Father Abraham, but if someone from the dead comes back and speaks to them, they will repent.’  And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, neither will they listen if someone tells them who has risen from the dead!’”

Luke 16:27-31

Stocks took a dive today, going out near the lows.

The VIX edged higher.

The US Dollar rallied higher, and took back the 108 handle.

Gold and silver were thumped.

Next Thursday the 25^th is a precious metal option expiration on the Comex.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Cult of Mammon - Old as Babylon and Evil as Sin

 

"McKinsey advised Purdue how to avoid FDA and pharmacy restrictions. They later advised Purdue on how to enter the market for opioid rescue and treatment medications, because McKinsey knew that people were overdosing and dying and getting sick from OxyContin.  So, McKinsey's fingers are all over this.   It's exactly that, profit at all costs.

McKinsey consultants were about the business of advising their clients on how to make as much money as possible from this deadly epidemic.  It shows a callousness that really is beyond the pale.   The fact that they knew — I mean, they knew how dangerous these opioids were, that they went so far as to try to propose to Purdue how it could pay insurance companies rebates for every patient who O.D.ed on OxyContin is gross.  It's disturbing."

Maura Healey, A Powerful Corporate Consulting Firm Helped to Create the Opioid Crisis

"In their heavily self-biased opinion, if they want something, by rights it should be their's.  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."

Leon F. Seltzer

"Market Fundamentalism has its own economic orthodoxy that, for the most part, is unquestioningly accepted.  It is an idolatrous religion, because it makes a god out of the Market.  It puts money above all else.  This religion has its own high priests, those economic advisors, corporate executives, and government officials who make the rules and oversee the functioning of the economic system as a whole.  It has its own saints, people who have attained the success that the system promises."

Sharon Delgado, Shaking the Gates of Hell

"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags."

Harvey Cox, The Market As God

"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."

Thomas Merton

"It was as though in those last minutes he was summing up the lesson that this long course in human wickedness had taught us: the lesson of the fearsome word and thought defying banality of evil.”

Hannah Arendt

"You put away the light, yourselves; you first pluck out both your own eyes, yourselves; and after that other men’s too, so that the blind may lead the blind, until you both fall into the pit.”

Thomas More, The Sadness of Christ


This prevalence of self-deception and disregard for truth and ethical considerationss amongst the world's elite is nothing new.  It is the old and cyclical ascendancy of Mammon, which seems to rise in every 'gilded age,'  

It infects the whole of society, and is marked by the rising prominence of disordered minds and hardened hearts, who are drawn into shameless servitude to Moloch and the darkness of this world.

And with the darkness comes madness, and the madness serves none but itself.

Even among the faithful, the taint of the gospel of prosperity has caused the love of many hearts to draw inwards, lose their way, and grow cold with worldly pride and selfishness.

Do not be deceived, for God is not mocked.  Whatever a man sows, so shall he reap.

Today was highlighted by economic weakness and uncertainty in Europe and especially in the UK.

As such the Dollar, the douleur du monde, moved sharply higher by comparison and of course the design and weighting of the DX index.

Stocks managed to turn their usual morning slump around and finished a little higher in the green.

Gold and silver were whipped lower again.

Some of the miners were starting to show a little resilience by the afternoon.

Friday will be a stock index option expiration.

Next week on the 25th there will be option expirations for the metals on the Comex.

I watched the HBO documentary, Four Hours at the Capitol, today. 

It was well done and informative.  Well worth watching if you can.

The madness serves none but itself.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Alarrmmm! - Das Fed

 

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.  Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

General Dwight Eisenhower

“In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

George Orwell, 1984

"It has become a mathematical certainty that Hitler is leading the German people into the abyss.  Hitler cannot win the war; he can only prolong it.  The guilt of Hitler and his minions goes beyond all measure.  Retribution comes closer and closer.  But what are the German people doing?  They will not see and will not listen.  Blindly they follow their seducers into ruin.  Victory at any price! is inscribed on their banner.  'I will fight to the last man,' says Hitler— but in the meantime the war has already been lost."

The White Rose, Fifth Leaflet, Munich 1943

"They made us all train for this day.  'To be fearless and proud and alone. To need no one, just sacrifice. All for the Fatherland.'  Oh God, all just empty words.  It's not the way they said it was, is it?  I just want someone to be with.  The only thing I feel is afraid. "

Leutnant Werner, Das Boot

"Throughout history, it has been the inaction of those who could have acted; the indifference of those who should have known better; the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most; that has made it possible for evil to triumph."

Haile Selassie

Stocks popped and flopped today, but managing to claw back some of their intraday losses.

The metals and miners were mugged again, all in the scheme of things, customary for a stock option expiration week.

The Dollar gained marginally.

The FOMC minutes cheered the risk markets for a short time today, with the lack of hawkish unanimity amongs the participants.

RIP Wolfgang Petersen, director of the classic war movie Das Boot. 

Perhaps we can look forward to a real life financial version of this, Das Fed.

Have a pleasant evening.