Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Wild Swings Back and Forth In Equities

"For truth is precious and divine,
Too rich a pearl for carnal swine."

Samuel Butler


"Listen, and I will tell you a mystery."

1 Cor 15:51

During the Summer of 1929 the stock market was characterized by wild swings up and down that left market participants feeling almost dizzy and exhausted.

Now would be an excellent time to take inventory of your finances and provisions for the future, and perhaps to order yourself with regard to a more realistic stance towards mispriced risks.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Quiet Metals Options Expiration on the Comex

"Will I say there will never, ever be another financial crisis? No, probably that would be going too far. But I do think we’re much safer and I hope that it will not be in our lifetimes and I don’t believe it will."

Janet Yellen

Yellen issued what sounds on the surface like the kind of statement that Irving Fisher made famous in 1929.   Hi ho!

Today there was a quiet options expiration on the Comex for gold and silver.

The July contract is active for silver, but the gold action is already moved to August.

Stocks took a dive today and the VIX was up as you can see below.

The US Dollar took a real dive relatively speaking as well.  I have not looked at the key cross currency results to see what drove it, but the reaction in the precious metals priced in dollars was relatively subdued.

I am not going to say what I expect the price of gold and silver to do for the rest of the year.  But I do have a keen eye on the charts, and will let you know when the market tips its hand.

I came to the realization today that the US has largely given up its pretenses to a higher moral standing.    'Immoral' is the best way one could describe a healthcare reform bill that inflicts pain and suffering on the poor and vulnerable, almost gratuitously, in order to provide even more tax breaks for the wealthiest few who already have been taking the lion's share of growth in the national income.

Karma.  Ain't it a bitch.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Fat Fingers

"Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

John Stuart Mill

The 'fat finger' of fairly raw and obvious market manipulation hit gold in the early hours.

No one dumps that many contracts against a much thinner bid side without intent. We have exposed that here many times before.

There are those who are greatly exercised by the consequences of a system gone corrupt when it affects them. 

But they too often say nothing, or even nod pridefully according to some ideological formulation of their superiority, when that same corrupt system first preys on the weak and vulnerable.

Have a pleasant evening.

Seymour Hersh: Trump's Red Line

The intelligence made clear that a Syrian Air Force SU-24 fighter bomber had used a conventional weapon to hit its target: There had been no chemical warhead. And yet it was impossible for the experts to persuade the president of this once he had made up his mind.

“The president saw the photographs of poisoned little girls and said it was an Assad atrocity,” the senior adviser said. “It’s typical of human nature. You jump to the conclusion you want. Intelligence analysts do not argue with a president. They’re not going to tell the president, ‘if you interpret the data this way, I quit.’”

The national security advisers understood their dilemma: Trump wanted to respond to the affront to humanity committed by Syria and he did not want to be dissuaded. They were dealing with a man they considered to be not unkind and not stupid, but his limitations when it came to national security decisions were severe.

"Everyone close to him knows his proclivity for acting precipitously when he does not know the facts," the adviser said. "He doesn’t read anything and has no real historical knowledge. He wants verbal briefings and photographs. He’s a risk-taker. He can accept the consequences of a bad decision in the business world; he will just lose money. But in our world, lives will be lost and there will be long-term damage to our national security if he guesses wrong. He was told we did not have evidence of Syrian involvement and yet Trump says: 'Do it.”’


Read the entire article by Seymour Hersh here.