"You are the very cause of your ignorance, yourselves. 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 (Gethsemane), Tower of London, 1535
"Do not fear your enemies. The worst they can do is kill you. Do not fear friends. At worst, they may betray you.
Fear those who do not care; they neither kill nor betray, but betrayal and murder exist because of their silent consent."
Bruno Jasienski
Did I mention this is the week of the July stock option expiration?
And there are a lot of precious metal mining stocks with very fat gains, and a lot of leveraged bullish bets that are aching to be tested by the market bed bugs, aka the parasitic algos and 'market makers.'
Today the wiseguys were feeling fearless, and were tossing their hot money back into the risk trades, mostly to squeeze the other guys who had sought safer, calmer waters from bonds to precious metals.
Let's see how things progress. So far this is a normal retracement in the precious metals from a short term overbought condition.
We saw some continuing movement into assets that had gotten clobbered with the risk aversion sparked by Brexit.
This is an option expiration week in stocks.
Earnings and other economic will continue to influence the market action, but on the lower volume days the 'technical action' takes the whip hand easily, and tends to look for opportunistic plays to be gained in shoving prices around.
Words like 'whistling past the graveyard' comes to mind. But that is what bubbles are made of.
However, once this technical trade has been passed, and the shorts have been squeezed, I see the market falling into a 'chop' that will not resolve until something exogenous provokes a move. And that move could be significant.
"You have to drill through mud and water to get oil; you have to sift through sand and silt to get gold; you have to chop and hack through stone to get diamonds. So why do so many people feel that the treasure of ideas should come to them with little or no effort?"
Sydney J. Harris
Since the mining stocks are some of the premier gainers for the Year-To-Date, I would expect them to be presenting some fat targets for shenanigans this week for the stock option expiration.
There will be the August metals contract option expiration on July 26th.
Gold was off a bit today, while silver held its gains.
Gold is treading water above support while it waits for silver to catch up a bit it seems
It would be hard to have seen a more technically perfect performance on the chart by gold today, as it came down and bounced off support and finished higher on the day.
Gold was a snoozer in the deliveries and the warehouse reports, as is befitting a normally dull July contract.
Let's see how things go next week.
Silver continues to bleed out, slowly but surely in the warehouse inventories, with JPM having a virtual corner on Comex physical supply.
Price-wise silver is looking very good, and approaching the first of a big set of potential cups and handles with an eye towards $54.
And so we'll put this week in the books.
There was a certain lawyer in the crowed who offered the appearance of respect by standing up, but sought to test him, saying, "Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?"
And Jesus asked him, "What is written in the law? How do you read it?"
And the lawyer said in reply,
"You shall love the Lord, your God,
with all your heart,
with all your being,
with all your strength,
and with all your mind,
and your neighbor as yourself."
And Jesus replied to him saying, "You have answered correctly;
do this and you will live."
But the lawyer, wishing to make himself feel righteous and define the limits of his obligations, asked Jesus,
"And who is my neighbor?"
And similarly, as Pilate the wily parser of the laws, wishing to make himself feel righteous according to the fashions of a worldly empire asked, "What is truth?"
Such is it with all those who deceive others, even as they deceive themselves. They wish to feel righteous in according to the laws, but only to the limit that they do not inconvenience themselves, and their personal desires and powers. They wish to serve God, but not too much.
And so they look to the law, not in the spirit of love and service, but as a game or worldly bargain, in all its particulars and in twisted interpretations of it, in order to bend and distort it to their own will and desires. They may serves with their mouths, but not with their hearts, the word of the law, but certainly not the spirit of it.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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