Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The King In Yellow

"Love is not easy; it is not our natural state. It seems weak and foolish, and is despicable to the fallen of this world and the next, who by the declaration of their hearts and minds say non serviam, I will not serve."

Jesse, Love Is the Refuge of the Way

Stocks bubbled sideways today, digesting the recent gains, and treading water as additional earnings and economic news comes out.

I have made no secret of it, that the US equity markets seem very fully valued at this point, and are overdue for a stiff correction in the neighborhood of ten percent. That they have not even had a 3 percent correction in quite some time is a testimony to the amount of hot money and speculative froth underpinning them.

Peak hubris. We're there on a number of fronts, socially, financially, and politically. I have not seen anything like this since the tech stock bubble. The housing bubble was much broader and deeper, and much more profound in the levels of its corruption. This one seems more like an 'echo bubble.'   In all three instances the primary actors were the Wall Street financiers, the Banks, and the Fed.

The amount of potentially destabilizing situations geopolitically are daunting, almost breath-taking. I won't bother to list them here, but things in Asia, the Middle East, and Europe are showing signs of heaving the landscape out of place. Domestically things in the US are much more tense under the surface than anything I can remember in many years. The elite are doubling down on their winnings with a kind of race to the oncoming wall of bad karma.

And yet, it is all overlaid with a very devil-may-care mindset, bolstered by the most pernicious type of pride in a culture of death.   All one has to do is to consider the recent choice of leaders from the mainstream political parties:  Lady Macbeth and the narcissist Duc l'Orange.

Gold and silver continue to wind sideways. Bitcoin is an absolute speculative bubble, no doubt about it. It is a kind of tulipmania.

Politically both US parties are betrothed to big money special interests. The Republicans are unabashed and almost feral in their service to Mammon, to the point of being repulsive. The Democrats seek to cover their moral nakedness with the kind of hypocrisy that is the special provenance of the fallen. And fallen is about the best word I can think to describe them. Both of their houses are falling.

There are parallel situations to this in all of the developed countries. The best lack all conviction, and the worst are driven by passionate intensity.

So what is one to do? Perseverance seems to be the order of the day, as it has been so many times in the past. We have seen much worse, even in the past century, as anyone who studies history will know.  Things now may be bad.  In the last century there were madness and horrors.

As we used to commonly say a long time ago, 'keep the faith,' especially in an era of faithlessness and general apostasy. This is our command and our cross—
uphold the light of love in a darkening world.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Plus c'est la même chose

Gold and silver bounced back nicely after the Non-Farm Payrolls smackdown.

Stocks managed to eke a little upside today driven mostly by energy.

We are still in earnings season, and misses are leading to stocks being hauled out behind the woodshed and thrashed.

The geopolitical risks are changing from a simmer to what may grow to be a running boil.

The Republicans and Democrats are shameless in their pursuits of personal power and money. It is becoming hard not to notice, unless you are a true believer and willfully blind.   And there are plenty of those kinds of behaviours on display now.

The increase in wickedness has proven contagious to the weak willed and morally ambivalent.   It is almost hard to believe at times as more and more of the nominally principled give up and stand down.  No one can serve two masters.  They will eventually hate the one and love the other, even as they fool themselves and make allowances for their own 'harmless practicality' which is really just expediency.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Just Stand

"In our own times we see that politicians raised under neoliberalism are unwilling and unable to effectively use real Keynesian policies: they can’t do stimulus, when they try, they give the money primarily to the rich.

They grew to power by being neoliberals; faced with new times they cannot change. In France we saw the main center-left party (really a neoliberal party) implode because it would just not change, and throughout the West center-left neoliberal parties are dying for just this reason. The world has changed, the people who run those parties cannot change...

Our societies have failed to run themselves acceptably since 2008, and the youngs have no attachment to the status quo since it never ever worked for them. Change is thus not only possible, it is now inevitable."

Ian Welsh, When People and Societies Change

Stocks were rallying off the jobs report.

The American dream is now a nation of low paid bartenders and waitresses, living from paycheck to paycheck, and preyed upon by corporate behemoths in healthcare, housing, and finance.

They are a force of nature, a sleeping giant, that awakened may be filled with a terrible resolve.

And because of the increase in wickedness, the love of many will grow cold. But those who stand firm to the end shall be saved. 

Have a pleasant weekend.

Lies, Damned Lies, and the Democratic National Committee

The Democratic Party establishment has learned nothing from their failed strategies and electoral disasters, and are still lying and denying over and over with condescending smirks.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Winning.... - The Great Dictator

"Then, in the name of democracy, let us use that power— let us all unite.  Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.  By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie!   They do not fulfill that promise.  They never will!"

Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator

Stocks managed to rally back off their losses to close largely unchanged.

Gold and silver held relatively steady in price.

Trump named Jay Powell as the new Fed Chair today.

Tomorrow is the Non-Farm Payrolls report.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Hi Ho Nickel? - The World Is Mad

Put another nickel in
In the nickelodeon
All I want is having you
And music, music, music.

Teresa Brewer, Music, Music, Music


"A nickel's not worth a dime anymore."

Yogi Berra

The FOMC did nothing with rates, but remarked that in their judgement the growth in the economy has changed from 'moderate' to 'solid.'   The market is looking for a rate increase at the December meeting.

I am solidly willing to speculate that the Fed will flip their judgement faster than a flapjack in a NJ diner in the not too distant future. But let's see what happens.

The markets are widely pricing in a rate increase from the Bank of England this week.  Let's see if they get it.

Donald l'Orange will be spilling the beans on his pick for Fed head tomorrow.  Presumably it will be someone not currently under indictment.   It is said by insiders that his pick will be Jay Powell.  As the Wall Street hot money hopheads say, 'Pass that J my way.'

I have included the chart for the little followed industrial metal nickel futures directly below.  It has been on a tear of late. And, (want yearn), is taking a crack at the kind of breakout attempt that we have looking for in gold and silver.   From what I hear this is an electric car play.  Or blockchain. lol

We are still looking for the results and effects of the Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

Here is a link to a paper from Artemis Capital titled Volatility and the Alchemy of Risk. It does a decent job of describing the setup for a hyper-correction that may occur based on the systematic mispricing of risk and market manipulation by the Banks, both global and central.  In other words, the third collapse of a major financial asset bubble since the repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999.

At some point in this correction I expect the Bankers to try and stop it, and restore confidence, in the manner of what was done in 1929.  They will have more time and ways to do this than in 1987, if they wish to avail themselves of it.  Circuit breakers, cooling off periods and all that.  Still, fortunes may be lost, and made.

That no one can see it coming is utter rubbish, although the timing is problematic.   But as Walter Bagehot once famously observed, 'Life is a school of probabilities.'

Or in other words, as Dirty Harry phrased it, "you've gotta ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"    Since we have established the principles of too big to fail (or jail) and government bailouts, they may indeed be feeling rather lucky, playing heads I win and tails you lose with other people's money. And that is the moral hazard of the system as it feeds the snakes of Wall Street today.

Have a pleasant evening.

Further Down the Russian Rabbit Hole...

"They're all corrupt, and they all work together."

John Kiriakou