SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Key West and the Weekend

Today's Non-Farm Payrolls report was mediocre, and the lack of wage growth was discouraging.

Markets had big swings up and down early on before they settled into their own form of low volume mediocrity.

The big resistance is fairly obvious underneath this pricing action here, and I suspect strongly that the next moves will be determined by the course of geopolitical events, or the lack thereof.

Some years ago I used to take the occasional trip down to Key West when I was in the southern Florida area on a long business trips, and visiting friends in the Miami and Tampa areas. My wife often came with me before the children arrived.

On one trip we rented a big green station wagon we nicknamed 'The Shark' and drove down the keys to Key West.  It was a wonderful, generally unspoiled place.  I wanted to see Hemingway's house down there, which is a great stop, and also wanted to stand at the beginning of US Route 1, and the southernmost point of the US.

I had a chuckle or two at Hemingway's.  The receptacle he had tiled and turned into a fountain for the cats from the original Sloppy Joe's Bar is a hoot.  And the way in which they constructed the brick fence and the backing for it made me laugh out loud. I won't give anything away. You'll have to go down to see it.   I was never much of a Hemingway (or Fitzgerald fan) much past high school, but he was certainly interesting, and I liked his house there quite a bit.  It would have suited my tastes quite well..

 I flew in one time, and the airport was a one room building with a little area for baggage. It was remarkably simple.  We had been there a few times a year, but on the last few visits in the late 1990's the town and beaches seem to have gotten much more built up and touristy, like Las Vegas. The housing prices had gone through the roof, and hotel and resort developments have changed the character of the place.  From the pictures it looks like they have jammed the place up with condominiums.

Still, I am sure that it is still nice to have some fresh lobster and conch chowder, and go down to the quay at Mallory Square for the sunset if you get a chance, and watch the natives gather.  lol.  We still have some baskets of shells which we had gathered while walking hand in hand on the beaches in the 1970's. 

It's the weekend.  Have a good one.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - Into the Storm: Sharknado II - Embracing the Con

Today was not unexpected.  Let me repeat.  I was not surprised. 

The markets today were so boring, in the manner of a staged match in professional wrestling, that I actually broke down and watch a DVR'd copy of 'Sharknado II.' 

 

It was absurd to the point of being clichéd and campy but without genuine laughs, just like the current US Congress.

This was the 'wash and rinse' that was being written all over the charts.

Stocks dropped about 2%, and gold and silver were under continuing pressure for most of the day.

It did not seem like a panicky sell off, based on the Argenine default, although the VIX spiked pretty hard.

 Rather, it looked like the type of very cynical market move that has characterized almost everything we have seen from the equity markets Matrix for some time now.  Now that we have run them up, let's do a quick dump of stocks to once again try to skin the pension and mutual funds, along with mom and pop.

The gold and silver sell off, despite the big drop in stocks, ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow, was just too much.   Wow, precious metals hit ahead of a Non-Farm Payrolls Report.  What a surprise.

Well, let's see how things progress. This *could* turn into something else, but for now it seems about as manufactured and orchestrated as the crisis in the Ukraine, and the neo-con beating of the war drums with Russia. 

 

The markets are not as invincible as this newest crop of the Masters of the Universe think that they are, even though they have been on quite a market-rigging, justice fixing roll.

Doesn't this whole thing with Russia seem about as weird as the sudden push for war in Iraq that we saw in the Bush Administration?  Its pretty clear what the motives were then in terms of making the most of a phony crisis.  I wonder what they are up to now?

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Don't Worry Baby

Today was 'laundry day' at the US markets, as the foamy stock peak of the past month took a hard turn in the old 'wash and rinse' cycle, that blew off the froth.

That's what it was.  Pure and simple.  Any talk of 'gloom and doom' and imminent collapse is pretty much rubbish, although the economy is certainly grossly underperforming its potential despite the rosy numbers the bureaucrats like to display.  And we know what the problem is, pure and simple.  The system needs to be reformed, and is caught in a credibility trap.

So what happened today?  The wise guys and chuckle heads have been driving up stock valuations pretty steadily for the past few months as you can see from the charts.  They hit some stiff resistance which they pounded against for the past two or three weeks.

And today with the growing troubles in the Ukraine and Gaza, the default of Argentina, and the extremely dodgy impulse of the US to lead the G7 into another cold war with Russia, the boys just decided to have a day.

Stocks dropped about 2% today.  It seems like a lot because we have not seen such a thing in quite a while.  But the market's underpinnings were made of highly compressible foam, which I had warned about a few times.

The 'tell' was the selling of gold and silver along with stocks today.  This was no flight to safety of cash on geopolitical jitters.

Let's see if we get some follow through off the Non-Farm Payrolls report tomorrow.  But I suspect that if the Alibaba IPO were still scheduled for August 8 this decline would be a one day affair.  As it is they gave up on the 'lucky numbers date' of 8/8, and have pushed it back into September.

I think it is hard to be too cynical about this market, with its hot money, computerized trading games, and pervasive dark pools.

Have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

It is interesting that the precious metals are moving with the equity markets today.

I suspect it is more about the events of the week with regard to monetary policy and economic reports than anything else.

The gold/silver ratio remains historically high around 62.5.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts - All Along the Watchtower

“We’ve had a lot of bombs being thrown around the world, and this is America throwing a bomb into the global economic system. We don’t know how big the explosion will be — and it’s not just about Argentina.”

Joseph Stiglitz

Gold took a little hit today, and silver held its price.

Very anti-climactic given such an impressive sign of recovery in the real economy!

Nothing much happened on the Comex exhibit at Madame Tussaud's.  The clearing report for all metals (gold, silver, platinum, copper) was simply 'no data' as shown below. 

The tragicomedy that is the Argentine debt default continues on 'to the wire.'

As for the markets, there will be a lot of noise created, the stock and bond touts will all be out there making their pitches, but the bottom line is that the death and misery of the hoi polloi will leave the markets unfeeling, and the Fed isn't going to be doing anything except to continue to taper, but provide easy money for the fortunate few for quite some time.  

The currency war has taken a hotter turn than I might have expected at this stage, with the US out banging the war drums very actively as a distraction. I suppose that one might not be so surprised. The privileged will do almost anything rather than surrender the status quo.

Have a pleasant evening.

SP 500 and NDX Futures Daily Charts - Triumph of the Swill

GDP was 'better than expected' this morning, coming in at 4.0% growth.

Well, it was not better than expected if you read my forecast about what they would do with it and the revisions.

 They even improved the fourth revision of that anomalous one-off please ignore it Q1 to only  -2.1% vs. a -2.9% decline. Progress!

The tech bulls are riding high, laughing it up on bubblevision. 

It's a new paradigm, don't you know?  They are feeding this bubble on swill. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Victorian Britain: 'Yoke Up the Children'

"Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Are there no prisons?"
"Plenty of prisons."
"And the workhouses." demanded Scrooge. "Are they still in operation?"
"Both very busy, sir."
"Those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Scrooge, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."

Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol

Efficient markets, the glory of Empire.




Britain and the Victorians were not alone in this of course.  In the face of stiff opposition from industrialists who enjoyed a supply of inexpensive and pliable labour, and of course their servile politicians preaching the value of work and the evils of compassion and kindness, child labor was finally regulated by the US federal government in 1938.  

I find it fairly remarkable that laws against the exploitation of child labor are under assault again, as 'a socialist impediment to the free markets.'  The usual arguments and distortions are applied.

'Free trade' with the benign and universal benefits of globalisation is another economic myth that is used by greedy multinationals to erode the force of sovereign laws, and the will of democratic government, whether it be in child labour, human trafficking, or financial fraud and repression.  

"It would be better for a man if a millstone were hung around his neck and he were thrown into the sea, than if he would cause harm to any of these little ones."