Bill Black: Financial Craziness on Three Continents

Another interesting commentary from Bill Black.

Would someone show Bill Black how to change the battery in his smoke alarm? Every time he comes on the Real News the background chirping on my computer system's surround sound has me reflexively checking my own. lol.

Closer Look at Gold Chart's "Cup and Handle" and the Handle Details - Blitzsilberkrieg

As a reminder there are option expiration in gold and silver on the Comex next week on Tuesday the 27th.

My friend Dave says he sees a bulge around 1800 in the gold option positions that could mark the heart of the resistance. This coincides with my own thinking.

As you know, I have anticipated this inverse H&S targeting that outer perimeter from 1790 to 1810 of the bears' Maginot line at 2000-2100.

Let's see if gold can be broken out by a distracting run from silver that shocks the bullion banks in a blitzsilberkrieg, a quick advance from out of this trading range to to upper limits of resistance at 40.

The terrain is easily marked as in the last chart below, and the potential for it is in the market positioning of bullion demand and the big paper shorts.

Net Asset Value Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

The dichotomy in premiums between the Spicer Funds (CEF, GTU) and the Sprott Funds (PHYS,PSLV) is remarkable.

Either the Sprott Funds have now become large and liquid enough to become trading vehicles for the desks, including those who have underwritten the shelf offerings, or investors have become shy given the repeated and somewhat heavy-handed treatment of the expansions. Perhaps a bit of both.

A highly simplified pair trade would be to go long SLV and to short PSLV, for example, to take the premium on PSLV. This would tend to compress the volatility in PSLV into sharp bursts as these trades strengthen and weaken, and then fall apart. The pros can manage the risk in it, but the specs will get something more than the premium handed to them on the breaks. This is one of those 'LTCM trades' that look quite good on paper, and supply some nice gains, with a hidden barb of risk.

Next week is an option expiration in gold and silver bullion futures, and there is a fairly obvious attempt to 'hold the line in price' before then. As I have said, the next big resistance on my charts is in the 1790-1810 area. It is the outer permimeter bears' Maginot Line at 2000-2100.

From a Nov 19 posting:

"The inverse H&S pattern measures to 1810 as a minimum objective. That is also the point at which the handle would be at a breakout to validate the entire cup and handle formation.

I would expect gold to break out and run to that point, with resistance heavier around 1790-1810. There may be some time to actually break out, as the shorts will attempt to hold a strong line there and at the next major objective at 2100 or so, which is the first objective of the cup and handle."

Nov. 27 Comex December gold options expiry
Nov. 27 Comex December silver options expiry
Nov. 27 Comex December copper options expiry
Nov. 28 Comex December miNY gold futures last trading day
Nov. 28 Comex November copper futures last trading day
Nov. 28 Comex December E-mini copper futures last trading day
Nov. 28 Comex December miNY silver futures last trading day
Nov. 30 Comex December gold futures first notice day
Nov. 30 Comex December silver futures first notice day
Nov. 30 Comex December copper futures first notice day
Nov. 30 Nymex December palladium futures first notice day

Chris Hedges and Marc Maron On Break Room Live

"When I despair, I remember that 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


"For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places."

Ephesians 6:12

"Good men and bad men alike are capable of weakness. The difference is simply that a bad man will be proud all his life of one good deed - while an honest man is hardly aware of his good acts, but remembers a single sin for years on end...

Human groupings have one main purpose: to assert everyone’s right to be different, to be special, to think, feel and live in his or her own way. People join together in order to win or defend this right.

But this is where a terrible, fateful error is born: the belief that these groupings in the name of a race, a God, a party or a State are the very purpose of life and not simply a means to an end.

No! The only true and lasting meaning of the struggle for life lies in the individual, in his modest peculiarities and in his right to these peculiarities...

I have seen that it is not man who is impotent in the struggle against evil, but the power of evil that is impotent in the struggle against man.

The powerlessness of kindness, of senseless kindness, is the secret of its immortality. It can never by conquered. The more stupid, the more senseless, the more helpless it may seem, the vaster it is.

Evil is impotent before it. The prophets, religious teachers, reformers, social and political leaders are impotent before it.

This dumb, blind love is man’s meaning. Human history is not the battle of good struggling to overcome evil. It is a battle fought by a great evil, struggling to crush a small kernel of human kindness.

But if what is human in human beings has not been destroyed even now, then evil will never conquer.”

Vasily Grossman, Life and Fate

I do not know if I would call it senseless kindness, but selfless, in the sense that if you lose yourself to love, you will find a true happiness and lasting life.