Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Unicorns Rampant on a Field of Greed

"People who know nothing of God and whose lives are centered on themselves, imagine that they can only find themselves by asserting their own desires and ambitions and appetites in a struggle with the rest of the world.  They try to become real by imposing themselves on other people, by appropriating for themselves some share of the limited supply of created goods and thus emphasizing the difference between themselves and the other men who have less than they, or nothing at all.

There are crimes which no one would commit as an individual which he willingly and bravely commits when acting in the name of his society, because he has been, too easily, convinced that evil is entirely different when it is done ‘for the common good.’

It is true, political problems are not solved by love and mercy. But the world of politics is not the only world, and unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men.  

When a country has to be rebuilt after war, the passions and energies of war are no longer enough. There must be a new force, the power of love, the power of understanding and human compassion, the strength of selflessness and cooperation, and the creative dynamism of the will to live and to build.

Thomas Merton

As I had suggested a couple of weeks ago, the Street would keep stock index prices near these elevated levels while they concocted a few sizzling hot IPOs to squeeze out while the squeezing is good.

And yesterday Snap, the parent of Snapchat, has filed for the biggest new era IPO since Facebook. This one looks like a hot steaming pile of whatever passes for sound business valuations in this era of accounting relativism and asset bubbles, partie trois.  But who can judge, when the world of investing has gone to the clicks?

While the jobs came in 'higher than expected,' the wage growth portion of that report was disappointing to say the least, with the highly optimistic wage growth from the prior report being cut in half on revision.

There is no real sustainable recovery.  There is financialisation, fraud, and fiduciary FUBAR.

Let's keep an eye on the IPO, because once it gets out the door and is done, and the secondary platters licked clean, I think the US equity market has a good chance of posting a 5% retracement of these hopey valuations at which they are currently trading.  Note the emphasis on 'chance.'

If the retracement is a reaction to some of the wild West policymaking coming out of our new leadership, that might be closer to ten percent.

If Trump is a financial reformer, then Haiti's Papa Doc Duvalier was a social worker.  And it looks like Wall Street and Goldman are staffing up the leadership of the Donald's economic policies tonton macoutes.  They might even make the hapless boobs at the Fed look good, and that is something I never thought that I could say.

Maybe things will just continue to muddle along, while the oligarchs continue to tighten their stranglehold on this beacon of freedom for the world.

And maybe this latest unicorn can fly.

Have a pleasant weekend.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

It appears that there have been some additional share redemptions for physical gold in the Sprott Trust.

The gold/silver price ratio is 69.4.

Just Charts at 3:45 PM - Non-Farm Payrolls For January Tomorrow

Markets are sideways choppy ahead of the Non-Farm Payrolls Report tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Bread and Roses: The Lawrence Massachusetts Textile Strike of 1912

"What connects two thousand years of genocide (and the abuse of human rights)? Too much power in too few hands."

Simon Wiesenthal

People forget, and too often the schools and the media fail to remind us, that even within our own history reforms such as the eight hour work day, basic workplace safety, and the end to abusive child labor were won in a long and determined struggle, not only with ballots, but too often with great personal sacrifice and even blood.

Yes there is no doubt that regulation can go too far, and become counterproductive. But simple dispensing with it based on the romantic notion of naturally efficient markets has a long history of terrible human rights abuses.

This is why unrestricted globalization is always going to be in a problematic dynamic relationship with individual and national freedom and choices. 'Globalization' can be used as a soft coup d'etat against national laws and principles of government, ie. democracy with a Bill of Rights and certain compacts between the leaders and the governed.

If, for example, the US were still constituted as 'part free and part slave owning,' one can easily imagine how that would imbalance the determination of the freedoms of many who hold themselves together within a common monetary and fiscal union. Indeed, this is one of the great weaknesses of the EU, in that their monetary union advantages some and inflicts hardships on others. The fortunate are, of course, perfectly content with it, and tend to blame the disadvantaged in all the objectifying ways that people have always done throughout history.

The notion that there is some 'invisible hand' sorting out these markets across the globe without human intervention, known as 'rules,' is utopian nonsense that works only in the minds of sophists and apologists for the moneyed interests within their servile economic and too often elitist theories about natural superiority of some over others. Class warfare and colonialism are just other names for the tyranny of the few over the many, the power of might abusing justice and 'right.'

The more probable result of unrestricted trade and multinational arbitrage by powerful and essentially nationless corporate interests is to drive the standard of living and quality of life for the majority of the people down to the lowest common denominator of whatever tinpot dictatorship or repressive oligarchy that chooses to abuses its own people and nature with the abusive use of force.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Non-Farm Payrolls on Friday

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity...

And what rough Beast, its hour come 'round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming, 1919

The Fed did nothing today, and their jawbones must have been fatigued.

Stocks continued in a relatively narrow range.

Gold and silver continued to hover underneath overhead resistance.

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.  It just became much more interesting because the ADP private employment report came in today far to the upside.  Details are in the economic news slide below.

Everything seems to be a mixed bag in the news.

Trump is injecting plenty of uncertainty, but the rally of hope for change continues hanging in there.

There is a huge divergence between the 'soft surprises' and 'hard surprises' in the company earnings reports.   The hard data is of course money, and the soft surprises are found in clicks and tricks, and assorted metrics of the non-financial sort.

I have trouble taking a non-haven position in these markets, because I just cannot escape the feeling that we are in for a really serious breakout, one way or another.  But so far, no.

There will be a PET scan tomorrow for the queen to examine her torso, where most of the action has been for the past few years.  It was highly unusual for a colon cancer to move to the brain. The PET is a CAT scan with a couple of barium milkshakes thrown in beforehand to light up the areas of unusual metabolic activity.  Since cancer tends to be 'fast growing' it lights up the chart, along with any other faster growing processes.  Basic chemo is also based on this fact, and the chemicals kill cells as they grow, including cancer and other fast growing cells like hair, etc.

Now you may understand why the goal is to find more 'targeted' treatments like modified T cells that search out and kill the cancer cells, and not kill cells more widely, and make the patients sick, and weaken over time.  But the innovations are coming slowly.

I have been doing a lot more housework, and also have been 'pampering' the queen.  lol  She becomes very physically tired in the afternoon.

Our money and priorities are for the most part elsewhere, disconnected from many of the common realities of most people. This is part of the reason for our historic economic inequalities.  But there is an underlying goodness and kindness that you can find if you look for it, and let yourself become a part of it.  We just forget, because we see so much wickedness and greed, and it gets the most attention.

As William Butler Yeats put it in the aftermath of the first World War, 'the best lack all conviction, while the worst are filled with passionate intensity.'   Perhaps, but these things come and go.  And when it becomes bad enough, people rouse themselves from their torpor, and change comes, one way or another.

That is not what it is to be human.  Most do not even have a genuine understanding of what that means anymore.   They think, well, if Mother Teresa abandoned the poor and ran off to be an investment banker or an actress, well, that would only be human.

We are content to be trousered apes.  We make beasts of ourselves to avoid the pain of seeing what we really serve, and who we are slowly becoming.

At some point, not to become fully human in every sense of the word and to hold on to your humanity is, in the end, the only real tragedy.

Have a pleasant evening.