Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Love Is Moving

Wife: Would you like dinner?

Husband: Sure! What are my choices?

Wife (with a narrowing look):  Yes or no.

Someone sent that joke to me today, and I thought it was funny. And true.

Stocks were sluggish today, with tech showing a little more resilience than the broader markets. They all finally ended up pretty much unchanged.

The carnival continues in the nation's capital, with testimony before the Congress ongoing about the involvement of the Trump Administration with Russia.

All I will say is when the mud-slinging starts in earnest, everyone gets dirty.

The ruling class and their enablers seem to be in a self-obsessed frenzy. And the people are sick of it.

Gold and silver are feeling heavy around the 1230 and 17.50 areas respectively. Let's see if they can gain any momentum to take themselves over the key resistance levels as noted on the chart.

Busy day today, with the queen visiting relatives in Georgia.   Her weather there is much nicer than ours.  I am taking some time to catch up on doing some minor repairs around the house, paying bills, setting up access to bureaucratic web sites, processing healthcare claims and forms, an odd computer glitch, and ugh, doing our tax returns.

It was the kind of day when it seems as though something was always going wrong, or some mistake had been made, or something was not working as it should.  Small things, but they can be aggravating when they arrive in numbers.

There are always so many little things that can distract and perturb us, and catch us up to the exclusion of other, more important things.  It takes a certain discipline and perspective to keep things in their proper places, and priorities, and to remember what is important, what we are really all about, what it means to be fully human.

Change and adversity are a great cause of friction among peoples.  But love seems to smooth things out, and keep us moving steadily forward, through the darkness together.

Have a pleasant evening. I remember you, as always.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quad Options Witching

"May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind always be at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
and rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of His hand."

Today was the quad witching options expiration for stocks.

Stocks finished largely unchanged.

The economic data is coming in mixed as usual. It is very subject to interpretation and bias.

However, one of the clearer things to me at least is that without a decent increase in median wages and quality of jobs, full time and benefits versus part time 'gig' jobs, there will be no sustainable recovery.

This preoccupation with wage growth by the Fed and related economists is hard to stomach, when they turn such a blind eye to gross inequity and financial asset bubbles. Well, we love those whom we serve, and despise the others.

I have been preparing the queen for Spring break. She will be going with one of the god-daughters down South for a week's vacation. And I will certainly miss her, but enjoy a week to myself.

The young man went to Boston with his friends for St. Patrick's Day.  He has now moved out of our house, having just come back last year from Brooklyn to help when the queen was physically disabled.  He wanted to be closer to his university in NYC, and the two hour each way train and subway trip was getting old.   He was a huge help and great company.  He is my joy and my consolation.

So, a week alone with just Dolly. I think after I clean things up a bit, and catch up on the laundry, I might just enjoy some time off. Remodeling the bathroom did cross my mind, but it was a quick crossing. Why spoil a good thing.

Remember God's creatures, and the poor for whom life is hard and who are too often despised by the fortunate as deserving their misfortune. Our failings are bad luck, and our wins are all due to our hard work and natural talent. Little do we realize how 'there but for the grace of God go I.'

Have a pleasant weekend.

Bernie Sanders Goes to West Virginia To Speak With Trump Supporters

But earlier in the week, he [Bernie Sanders] said in a CNN interview that “a total transformation of the Democratic Party” was still in order, and that he had also not yet given the D.N.C. — which he called the “establishment’s house” — access to his campaign email list. “It’s not some magical system,” Sanders told me, disdain dripping off the word “magical.” “How do we bring in, how do you raise money from, those people?  You know what?  You’ve got to stand for something.”

I asked him if he thought the Democratic Party knew what it stood for. “You’re asking a good question, and I can’t give you a definitive answer,” he said.  “Certainly there are some people in the Democratic Party who want to maintain the status quo.  They would rather go down with the Titanic so long as they have first-class seats.”

Charles Homans, NY Times Magazine, The New Party of No

Caution on Language