Update on the CrashTrak Equity Profile - A Banquet of Consequences Part II

"One of the most disturbing facts that came out in the [Adolf] Eichmann trial was that a psychiatrist examined him and pronounced him perfectly sane. I do not doubt it at all, and that is precisely why I find it disturbing.

If all the Nazis had been psychotics, as some of their leaders probably were, their appalling cruelty would have been in some sense easier to understand. It is much worse to consider this calm, 'well-balanced,' unperturbed official conscientiously going about his desk work, his administrative job which happened to be the supervision of mass murder.  He was thoughtful, orderly, unimaginative.  He had a profound respect for system...

The sanity of Eichmann is disturbing. We equate sanity with a sense of justice, with humaneness, with prudence, with the capacity to love and understand other people. We rely on the sane people of the world to preserve it from barbarism, madness, destruction. And now it begins to dawn on us that it is precisely the sane ones who are the most dangerous...

The whole concept of sanity in a society where spiritual values have lost their meaning is itself meaningless."

Thomas Merton, Raids on the Unspeakable

When you have allowed sociopaths to erect a system which rewards expediency, cleverness, and winning without regard and respect for human values, fairness, or even common mercy and the dignity of others; a society which views compassion and a sense of justice as a weakness to the point of a dangerous deviancy; a culture in which harshness and crudeness and the abuse of power in pursuit of even more wealth, or of the weak as an enjoyable diversion for the superior, are enshrined with a sign of growing strength the only virtue— with such role models and rewards, what else would you expect the highly educated but spiritually weak-willed and morally ambivalent professionals among you to do?

They will implement and execute to plan, under the cover of playing within the rules of a rigged game, with an efficient and myopically determined focus as they do with all that they undertake. They will march themselves into hell with a deluded sense of pride and high accomplishment.

And where do you think this madness will end?

If the bulls cannot stop the selling, put in a bottom, and turn this around we might be in for something notable.

Hopefully the bulls will be able to get their act together to at least stop the selling as they square up their positions into the holiday.

I have to say that I am not 'feeling the fear' yet and the safehavens are notably quiet.

And it would not take a lot to turn the market higher. A word or two from Trump, or one of his proxies, or the Fed's Jay Powell would likely do the trick.

The risk in that is, of course, that if they give it a go and it does not stick, then after an initial bounce the market may take another leg down with a vengeance.   And once the panic sets in, and the real fear selling is underway, it may be too late for jaw-boning to work, even if one if wielding the jawbone of a truly formidable donkey.

I have started to populate the spreadsheets I made in 2000, and last used in 2007, which track the movement of this market and compare it with significant declines from the past.

I have been underestimating the volatility in the NDX using eyeball measures on the chart. One really needs to plug the numbers in.

This is a light trading week. If the bulls cannot turn it on Wednesday or Friday then their hearts may not be in it.

The market is not dominated by 'value investing' but by momentum traders and algos. In that sense it is vulnerable to an outsized move, both up and down.

If there is a 'crash' as I noted some time ago there is little doubt it will be blamed on Trump's trade policies, and to some extent Brexit. This would be a coup for the globalists and freetraders.

They will never acknowledge that the Banks and their Fed willfully allowed an asset bubble to grow, for the third time, in order to continue the transfer of wealth to the top under the guise of investment and asset allocation.

When I dropped my son off at the airport I told him the stock market may crash while he is there, but not to be concerned because I have made provisions.

You may wish to do so as well, even though I still think a crash is a low probability event.

See you tonight.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Lions, and Tigers, and Bears, Oh My! - US The Land of Cruel Delusions

"Money is not humanity’s best subject.  And although our body of scientific knowledge grows with each passing year, when it comes to financial matters, we somehow keep stepping on the same rake — that inescapable pattern of financial boom and bust."

James Grant


"There’s a verbal tic particular to a certain kind of response to a certain kind of story about the thinness and desperation of American society; about the person who died of preventable illness or the Kickstarter campaign to help another who can’t afford cancer treatment even with 'good' insurance; about the plight of the homeless or the lack of resources for the rural poor; about underpaid teachers spending thousands of dollars of their own money for the most basic classroom supplies; about train derailments, the ruination of the New York subway system and the decrepit states of our airports and ports of entry...

'I can’t believe this in the richest country in the world. …'

The social wealth of a society is better measured by the quality of its common lived environment than by a consolidated statistical approximation like GDP, or even an attempt at weighted comparisons like so-called purchasing power parity. There is a reason why our great American cities, for all of our supposed wealth, often feel and look so shabby. The money goes elsewhere...

Poverty—both individual and social—is a policy, not an accident, and not some kind of natural law.  These are deliberate choices about the allocation of resources.  They are eminently undoable by modest exercises of political power, although if the state- and city-level Democratic leaders of New York and northern Virginia are the national mold, then our nominally left-wing party is utterly, hopelessly beholden to the upward transfer of social wealth to an extremely narrow cadre of already extremely rich men and women."

Jacob Bacharach, The Egregious Lie Americans Tell Themselves


"Today, the first and perhaps the only duty of the philosopher is to defend man against himself: to defend man against that extraordinary temptation toward inhumanity to which - almost without being aware of it - so many human beings today have yielded."

Gabriel Marcel

Stocks were swooning today, perturbed by Brexit and Trexit: Britain's proposed exit from the EU and the Sino-American Trade Dispute and disengagement from 'free trade.'

Gold and silver were higher on a slightly weaker dollar.

There will be a precious metals option expiration next Tuesday.

This will be a holiday-shortened trading week due to the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday.

The highly volatile NDX futures are in a cautionary state due to their renewed decline. The SP 500 has not yet followed and confirmed.

If life seems particularly confusing, perhaps you might consider the sources of information with which you are feeding your mind.   Some sites have become cornucopias of thinly disguised propaganda written by hawkers of hyperbolic hoo-haw.   They trade in false outrage, pander to prejudice, and will say almost anything for clicks.   They have chosen to serve mammon.

Alas, their commercial 'success' provides a bad example and rationale for many others to do the same, to succumb to the temptation to give themselves over to the glamours of death and deceit.

There should be little surprise that feeding your mind all day on such junk gives you a headache.

The young man is in London for the next two weeks, visiting his girlfriend who is finishing her studies there. He is still doing his degree work at NYU.   The out-of-town in-laws start arriving tonight.

Dolly and I abide.

Have a pleasant evening.

Precious Metals Flows In Trusts and Funds

The ebb and flow of the precious metals Grift-on-the-Hudson.

Stocks and Precious Metals charts - Brexit's Rolling Boil - Thanksgiving Holiday Week

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.

Francis d'Assisi


"Gratitude can transform common days into thanksgivings, turn routine jobs into joy, and change ordinary opportunities into blessings."

William Arthur Ward


"The blessed John the Evangelist lived in Ephesus until extreme old age.  His disciples could barely carry him to church and he could not muster the voice to speak many words. During individual gatherings he usually said nothing but, 'Little children, love one another.'   The disciples and brothers in attendance, annoyed because they always heard the same words, finally said, 'Teacher, why do you always say this?'  He replied with a line worthy of John: 'Because it is the Lord's commandment, and if it alone is kept, it is sufficient.'"

Jerome, Commentary on Galatians, 4th century


"For whosoever will cling to his life shall lose it: and whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."

Mark 16:25

Stocks were ranging widely again today, and managed to gather themselves together after the European close and get taken up back into the green.

Gold and silver finished back up again, regaining much of the pricing they had lost over the past week.  I do believe that much of this was 'technical' trading associated with stock option expiration and the punters who like to pile into miners with leverage.

Next week Thursday is Thanksgiving holiday in the US.   Markets will be closed. 

Trading will likely be light with an upward bias, barring exogenous events.

Brexit seems to be troubled a bit.  PM May has made some dramatic changes to Brexit planning that seems to indicate further troubles with a lack of confidence in her plans and progress.

We had quite a bit of snow, which accumulated and lingered beyond the expectations of the forecasters.

Tomorrow I will be taking my son to the airport, so that he can spend the Thanksgiving holiday with his girlfriend who is a student at Imperial College.   It reminded me of the custom that the queen and I often had, of spending the Thanksgiving holiday in London.

When we first moved here from northern Ohio we didn't know anyone well.  And we would be driving home there for Christmas, so a trip back there was bit too much.  But the queen was a little homesick.

So as a special treat we would redeem my frequent flyer miles and go to London for the holiday week, frequently with side trips to Scotland or the midlands.  It was not a holiday there, but the Christmas decoration were already up, and places like Harrod's were magical.  She thrived in her explorations, and early Christmas shopping.  And of course it is the low season, so many cultural things we wished to see and do were highly available.  We had many fond memories and times there in the 80's and 90's.

But as for now, my three goddaughters, the queen's delegates on earth, a little army of an extended family here that the queen, in her abundant caring and goodness, had raised for us, had been speaking amongst themselves, and organized a holiday meal which I must abide for the 'sake of tradition.' 

I will also have in-laws visiting from Ohio that week.  But for whatever mad reason they will be spending Thanksgiving in NYC to 'watch the parade' and eat at a hotel.   I could not imagine anything I would like to do less.  Unless it was with grandchildren and the queen.

So despite my best efforts at being an old poop it will be a merry family holiday here once again.  I sense the hand of she-who-must-be-obeyed in all this, even from the beyond.  As she often noted, 'you do one stupid thing after another.'   And she had a point.  And I would retort, 'God made me that way so I would love you.'

Need little, want less, love more.  For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.

Have a pleasant weekend.