Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Men Who Sold the World

"For what does it profit a man, to gain the whole world, but lose his soul?"

Mark 8:36


"Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed.  It would have been better for him if he had never been born.”

Matt 26:24

Today was an off day in stocks from the overnight, with gold and silver catching a bid in response to a heating of the geopolitical tensions over Syria.

President Trump warned Russia of incoming missiles this morning with a tweet, and Russia pretty much told him to go blow.

From trade war to shooting war, the markets are mildly perturbed by the uncertainties, in the half-hearted sort of a way of the short attention span, hot money addicts.

The Fed gave the markets a thrill with their 'hawkish' minutes which were released at 2 PM. But the hollowness of their words were not able to maintain the strength in King Dollar and stocks, and both went out the day in the red after a brief flight upwards.

What's next? Keep an eye of the news, because it seems like history is getting ready to turn a page, slowly.

have a pleasant evening.

NAV Premiums of Certain Precious Metal Trusts and Funds

There is a  'risk off' flight to safety in the markets today.

The unusually high gold to silver ratio seems to reflect this undercurrent.

Gold is somewhat preferred to silver in a 'flight to safety scenario.'

I ascribe this to silver's 'industrial component' which represents about one half its valuation.

But with its much higher than normal volatility, the beta of silver will often prompt silver to 'catch up' and pull forward rather quickly.

Today, for example, both metals are up by the same percentage, for example.   Silver may start rising more quickly if the 'inflation' component of the market risk starts advancing more quickly than the geopolitical risks.

Note that Sprott has acquired the Central Fund CEF and changed the manner of reporting its NAV to conform to the Sprott asset funds model.

Wall Street may be propping the stock indices a bit into the European close, as is sometimes their custom.  Let's see how things go into the close today.

Trumpolini has the markets on edge with his taunting of Russia over missiles and Syria.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Said the Joker to the Thief

"There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth.

No reason to get excited
The thief, he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke

But you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now
The hour is getting late."

Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

Today was the long awaited testimony of the Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg before the Congress.

I have to say it was tedious for the most part, and rather embarrassing here and there.   I had to turn it off to watch old movies and documentaries.

I have some fellows who came rather late to clean the chimneys and fireplaces. And they are making such a racket with their vacuums that I can hardly hear anyway.

So I shall just post the charts and bid you a adieu until tomorrow.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Bullish Interruptus - Those Daring Young Men

"Fragility is the quality of things that are vulnerable to volatility."

Nassim Taleb


"Life is a school of probabilities."

Walter Bagehot


"We looked into the abyss if the gold price rose further.  A further rise would have taken down one or several trading houses, which might have taken down all the rest in their wake.  Therefore at any price, at any cost, the central banks had to quell the gold price, manage it."

Sir Eddie George, Bank of England, September 1999

Lately we have been seeing one day of a mad rally higher, followed the next day by a stunning reversal lower.

Today, they decided to break the mold and do both up and down moves of surprising breadth in the same day, in response to little or no new information.

Stocks were climbing higher from the start today, for no particular reason it appears, other than the desire to buy the dip. It was a fairly well-ordered but impressive move higher

But then about one o'clock today, the bulls seemed to lose their nerve, and the selloff began with the same quiet but relentless selling, taking stocks back down to nearly where the whole thing started.

Gold and silver caught a little bit of a bid, and managed to hang on to it despite the reversal in paper assets. The US Dollar did not fare as well, giving up its early and overnight gains to finish back below the 90 handle.

“We see that gold broke above its downtrend line. But now we see a massive base building in gold. Massive. It’s a five-year base in gold. If we break above this resistance line, one can expect gold to go up by, like a thousand dollars."

Jeff Gundlach

Late in the afternoon the news came out that the FBI had raided the offices of Michael Cohen, who is President Trump's personal lawyer. Yowza! That did not help the mood in the snake pits of Wall Street. 

Brace for twitterstorm?   Or for the firing of Rod Rosenstein who likely approved Mueller's FBI raid.  And perhaps Jeff Sessions who ran for the hills at the first sign of trouble?

There are reports that Cohen is under a cloud for campaign fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance and election law violations.  Trumpolini does not like to play defense, so let's watch for a reaction here that *could* move the markets further.

Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky, Stormy Daniels.

It's never the crime, no matter how seemingly incidental—  it's always the cover up.

Facebook's Zuckerberg will be answering questions before the US Congress tomorrow, in an extravaganza of self-righteous recriminations from the very people who have been letting him do as he pleased while taking his money in campaign contributions for many a year.

It may even be as harsh as the tongue-lashing that the esteemed Congress gave to the financial people after the crisis, before doing nothing much about it except bailing them out and guaranteeing their fortunes with public monies.

These markets are like a vehicle being driven by hard drinking, pipe-hitting, out of control chuckleheads who are not going to stop pushing things to the limit and tempting fate until they wrap themselves around a telephone pole.

If we were virtuously governed they would have been stopped long before now, as they have a certain number of unfortunate innocents in the backseat with them, and other pedestrians and passers-by who are likely to become collateral damage to their callow pursuit of selfishness and greed.

Try not to get in their way.

Have a pleasant evening.