Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quad Witch for Options Expiration Tomorrow

There will be a 'quad witch' option expiration for US equities tomorrow.

Stocks are stalled here just below their prior highs.

Gold and silver seem to be on hold as well.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fed Lightly Spikes Punch Bowl, But Fails to Roll Out the Barrel

"Experience, however, shows that neither a state nor a bank ever have had the unrestricted power of issuing paper money without abusing that power; in all states, therefore, the issue of paper money ought to be under some check and control; and none seems so proper for that purpose as that of subjecting the issuers of paper money to the obligation of paying their notes either in gold coin or bullion."

David Ricardo


"When depreciated, mutilated, or debased coinage or currency is in concurrent circulation with money of high value in terms of precious metals, the good money automatically disappears.

Bad money drives out good."

Thomas Gresham

The Fed cut 25 basis points today as was broadly expected by the markets.  Or at least aware market observers.

What surprised the markets was the somewhat hawkish flavor to their rate outlook, which apparently took any more cuts for 2019 off the table.

Indeed, there is clearly less enthusiasm at the Fed for easy money to stimulate the economy than many of the beta-seekers in the markets had expected.

So the Dollar went higher, the precious metals went lower, and stocks sold off.

During the press conference Fed Chair Powell indicated the reasons for what they had done and their data dependency in future decisions.   And probably most importantly there will be a bias towards expanding the Balance Sheet to accommodate the needs for liquidity demands of an economic expansion, in addition to as needed interventions by the NY Fed to relieve any short term overnight liquidity concerns.

In my own estimation the liquidity problems stem from the unusual amounts of debt that the Treasury is having to shove into the market, coupled with the Fed's own contraction of its Balance Sheet after years of QE.  This seems to be confirmed by the FOMC, but so what.

I think some of the hysterical warnings were due to the Banks and their enablers lobbying for more easy money and lower reserve requirements, so that they might carry on their campaign of leveraging themselves into an increasingly large piece of our financialized economy.

Trumpolini had a tweet fit as one might expect.  You can discount anything he says about interest rates heavily, because he knows less about money and banking than he does about foreign policy, or astrophysics for that matter.   But like most NY real estate developers he likes easy money.

Can you imagine if the Trump Treasury held the power of the printing press, independent of a central bank or the discipline of the debt markets or some other external standard?

MMT = LOL²

There will be a stock market option expiration, a quad witch no less, this Friday.

I bought back gold positions today that I had let go of some days ago.

Let's see how that works out.  

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Managed Complacency - The Grand Equilibrium

“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


"Definite signs that business and industry have turned the corner from the temporary period of emergency that followed deflation of the speculative market were seen today by President Hoover. The President said the reports to the Cabinet showed the tide of employment had changed in the right direction." -

News dispatch from Washington, January 21, 1930


"The even larger problem is that there is a kind of chronic complacency that has been rotting American liberalism for years, a hubris that tells Democrats they need do nothing different, they need deliver nothing really to anyone – except their friends on the Google jet and those nice people at Goldman. The rest of us are treated as though we have nowhere else to go and no role to play except to vote enthusiastically on the grounds that these Democrats are the 'last thing standing' between us and the end of the world.It is a liberalism of the rich, it has failed the middle class, and now it has failed on its own terms of electability."

Thomas Frank, 2016

The markets want to see a 25 basis point cut from the Fed's FOMC meeting, which will announce its decision around 2 PM.

They are also going to be listening very carefully to Chairman Powell's press conference, and are expecting some kind of reassurance of the Fed's support for equities and the Banks.

Stocks were a bit wobbly today but managed to rally into the green in the late afternoon.

The Dollar was lower, while gold and silver edged higher. The VIX fell.

After the bell Fedex announced a miss in earnings. They also cut their outlook, citing global macro slowdown. The stock was being spanked rather thoroughly after hours.

Adobe also missed its results after hours.   Smells like teen spirit.

There will be the September stock market options expiration on Friday.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - JP Morgan Metals Desk a 'Criminal Enterprise' - FOMC This Wednesday

"U.S. prosecutors took an unusually aggressive turn in their investigation of price fixing at JPMorgan Chase & Co., describing its precious metals trading desk as a criminal enterprise operating inside the bank for nearly a decade.

The prosecutors charged the head of JPMorgan’s global precious metals trading operation and two others on Monday, accusing them of “conspiracy to conduct the affairs of an enterprise involved in interstate or foreign commerce through a pattern of racketeering activity.”

Tom Schoenberg and David Voreacos, JPMorgan’s Metals Desk Was a Criminal Enterprise


"From the very beginning of the year to the last two days of 2013, JPMorgan has dominated and controlled the price of silver and gold.

JPMorgan’s short market corners at the start of 2013 amounted to a 21% net share of the entire COMEX gold futures market (minus spreads) and an astounding (but typical) 35% of the entire COMEX silver market.  No single entity had ever held such outsized and anti-competitive shares of any important regulated futures market.  It is unreasonable not to associate such extreme market corners with what followed in price."

Ted Butler, 3 January 2014


"Holder doubtless seriously believed at first that in a time of financial crisis, he was doing the right thing in constructing new forms of justice for banks, where nobody but the shareholders actually had to pay for crime.  You've heard of victimless crimes; Holder created the victimless punishment.

But in the end, it was pretty convenient, wasn't it, that 'the right thing' also happened to be the strategy that preserved Democratic Party relationships with big-dollar donors, kept the client base at Holder's old firm nice and fat, made the influential rich immeasurably richer and allowed Eric Holder himself to crash-land into a giant pile of money upon resignation.  What a coincidence!"

Matt Taibbi, Eric Holder, Wall Street Double Agent


"Und der Haifisch, der hat Zähne
und die trägt er im Gesicht
und Macheath, der hat ein Messer
doch das Messer sieht man nicht."

Berthold Brecht, Die Moritat von Mackie Messer, 1928

Today was more 'risk off' than the major stock indices might have demonstrated.

Both the Dollar the the precious metals rose.

Oil was substantially higher on the attack on the Saudi oil fields that is being blamed on the Yemen Houthi, and by association and supply of weapons, Iran.

The US announced that three traders at JPM were being charged with criminal manipulation of the precious metals markets.

Indeed, the prosecutors used racketeering and criminal enterprise language that suggested the possible application of RICO statute to the Bank.

Let's see if anything genuine comes of this. It has not done so in the past.

And the usual stiffs and hacks will say that this is just a few traders gaming some deals. Nothing to see here. Move along. We like things the way they are.

After all we have seen in so many markets, how anyone can just dismiss this as just a few bad apples seems to be almost incredible.  

They have no good judgement and no shame.  They have blinded themselves with their egos, their greed, and the love of the familiar favor of corruption.  It is best to see things as they are and judge accordingly.

It is important to note that this criminal activity occurred over a long period of time, during the Obama Administration.

Eric Holder and Gary Gensler had an awful, chronically negligent, and inexcusable track record of upholding the law when it came to the Banks, and with their friends and donors on Wall Street.

The Fed, that other chronically negligent and shockingly conflicted and compromised regulatory body will announce their rate decision on Wednesday. The Fed is expected to cut 25 bps.

We will see the September stock market option expiration on Friday.

The revelations are just beginning. There is so much more.

Have a pleasant evening.

Precious Metals Holdings and Commitments of Traders

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - As Old as Babylon, and Evil as Sin - Risk On

"All through history the ways of truth and love have always won.  There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall.  Think of it— always."

Mohandas K. Gandhi


"No one can serve two masters, for he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one, and be neglectful of the other. And so you cannot serve both God and Mammon."

Matt 6:24


"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


"The extreme greatness of Christianity lies in the fact that it does not seek a supernatural cure for suffering, but a supernatural use of it."

Simone Weil


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

Matthew 24:12

Wall Street continued to push the risk envelope today.

My sense is that this is a 'wash and rinse' operation, designed to clean out the shorts and especially the holdings of weak hands who trade for the short term.

But we will see how much follow through these jokers can squeeze out next week, with or without tweet effects and support.

Gold and silver had a rough week to say the least, especially silver which has had quite the fall from a recent high.

This is not government intervention per se in my judgement in the metals markets.  Perhaps it is with stocks, and for obvious reasons.

With the metals it seems more likely that some of the big banks are cleaning up on their oversized short positions, albeit with the government standing idly by and doing nothing to regulate and ensure 'fair markets.'

But isn't that what so many utterly propagandized free marketeers want? To allow powerful interests to have their way with markets, and healthcare, and insurance, and the distribution of wealth, enforcement of the laws, and just about everything else?

The huge disconnect between what people say that they believe and what they want is very typical of people who have been molded into a particular pattern of thought by repeated arguments that, upon closer inspection, are obviously founded in wicked self-interest.

But in the short term there is no helping people who have reached their 'opinions' by emotionalism. They reject thought and facts, and cling to the delusions fostered in them by the crowd that surrounds the demagogue.  They insulate themselves from reason with a kind of fervor.

I am not overly concerned myself. This is nothing new, and we have seen it all before. I have seen it and I am not even all that old really.

Could it get worse? Absolutely. Will it get worse? I don't think it will get any worse than it was in the 60's and 70's.

We do live in dangerous times.  But all times are dangerous, to the individual.  This is the nature of this world, since recorded history.

My biggest concern is for people that I like to hold on to their souls, myself included.

That is the real game. That is the crux of the battle.

That is the only investment you have that, at the end of the day, truly matters.

Things will unfold as they will, slowly at first then in a rush.

But in the end, we are never far from the campfires of gentle people, who go about their daily lives.

We must steel ourselves against hate and fear, and the lure of the anger of the mob.

And ironically enough, the only way to do that is love.

So despite the urge to let go of your concerns and scruples and join in, join the team, lose yourself in the excitement and certainly of some tribe, don't do it.

Could it be any more clear who serves the power and the darkness of this world, with all its fear and hatred and anger?   Could it be any clearer who it is that despise love, and who will not serve anyone but themselves?

Is this the one to whom you wish to pledge youself, to give yourself away?

There are times when you hold your whole self in your hands. If you open your fingers to grasp something else, some shiny object that promises you worldly acceptance and success if you just let go of your foolish love of the word, your very soul can slip out and be carried away.

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

Have a pleasant evening.