Stocks and Precious Metals Charts -The Beat Goes On - Hollow Men

“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars,
whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors
and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, New Poems, City Lights


"Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.”

W. H. Auden

The SNAP IPO continues lumbering on. Here is a recap of the deal.

As you may recall, I have a theory that the market does not correct until this oinker slouches towards Wall Street and is finally born.

The evening news is generally about the latest political outrage and stunt in Washington DC.

Gold and silver are moving higher towards the next serious level of overhead resistance, which is fairly prominently indicated on the charts.

While I like the action, I think it will be much more impressive later this year when it is moving fifty to one hundred dollars over for gold, and a dollar or two for silver.

Wild times, in other words.

It was 60 degrees and Springtime here today. Tomorrow we are expecting a storm to dump ten inches of snow on the NYC metro area. That may put a crimp in the wiseguys' commutes. Hide the women and children, and batten down the hotel bars.

Headpieces filled with straw. Alas!

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Snap Crackle and iPlop

Disney missed after the bell.

The Snapchat IPO is lumbering towards the market.

Sometimes they do ring a bell.

The precious metals were off a bit, but held their ground fairly well.

There has not been much in the way of economic news.

The Street is only going to be able to carry this market while the organic volumes remain low, and the bulk of the trading continues to be milliseconds worth of spoofing and arbitrage. That sort of 'liquidity' melts in the face of real selling.

Trump is going to own the next financial crisis. He is setting himself up for it rather tidily, whether he deserves it or not.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks And Precious Metals Charts - Send in the Clowns

As noted previously, stocks are wafting along on a cloud, anticipating some hefty new era tech IPOs.

I expect the market to correct shortly thereafter, based on the perspective that it is utterly mispricing certain risks, for a number of reasons.

But it may do so sooner, if The Donald stumbles over something essential while doing his Presidential imitation of Rodney Dangerfield in Caddy Shack.  He is certainly capable of better, even while pursuing his political objectives of 'draining the swamp.'  I am not sure his supporters expected him to bring a swamp of his own.

Gold and silver had a nice rally today, having passed the test of the Non-Farm Payrolls report, and the pull of the overhead resistance from which it broke and ran today.  There is still more to go.  Both in terms of resistance, and the struggles to overcome them and assert the dynamics of the physical markets in a highly leveraged and overly financialized casino.

Have a pleasant evening.

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.