"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem. You who murder the prophets, and abuse those whom God has sent as messengers to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings— but you would not let me. As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command— but is made desolate. For I tell you truly, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.'” Matthew 23:37-39
"No matter how sophisticated our choices, how good we are at dominating the odds, randomness will have the last word.”
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
“Outrage is like a lot of other things that feel good but, over time, devour us from the inside out. Except it’s even more insidious than most vices because we don’t even consciously acknowledge that it’s a pleasure. We prefer to think of it as a disagreeable but fundamentally healthy reaction to negative stimuli, like pain or nausea, rather than admit that it’s a shameful kick we eagerly indulge again and again."
Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
Stocks were in rally mode today, the typical kind of narrow rally focused on the big name 'story stocks.'
Gold and silver were sailing along, with silver in particular taking hold of the 20 handle and hanging on to it with a firm grip.
Both gold and silver have broken out. I have highlighted the objective on the charts.
This is a highly unstable, self-referential equity market.
It is not a question of 'if' but 'when' it melts down, and what sets it off.
On a scale of 1 to 10, this is nuts and getting nuttier by the day.
“What do I fear? Myself? There’s none else by.
Richard loves Richard; that is, I and I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am.
Then fly! What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack, I love myself. Wherefore? For any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! Alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself.
I am a villain. Yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well. Fool, do not flatter:
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the highest degree;
Murder, stern murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, “Guilty! guilty!”
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me,
And if I die no soul will pity me.
And wherefore should they, since that I myself
Find in myself no pity to myself?”
William Shakespeare, Richard III
“People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God.
It was never between you and them anyway.”
Mother Teresa
"The dawn will come. Disappointment, sorrow, and despair are born at midnight, but morning follows...
Let no man pull you so low as to hate him.”
Martin Luther King, A Knock at Midnight
In the end, the only real tragedy is not to have been a saint.
Stocks managed to drift a bit higher on a very light volume, typical of a lazy mid-Summer day.
Gold and silver took their dip lower, for the sake of the option expiration boogie woogie, but then recovered all of it and put in a solid close on the day.
Uncle Buck dropped the 96 handle and closed lower on the day.
When we see the nuttiness around us, and the awful behaviour of others, we might well ask what can be done?
The answer is to start by changing ourselves. There is much there to be done.
And we bear the consequences for that. And not for distraction of judging the sins of others.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
“Who can doubt that there is an American empire?—an 'informal' empire, not colonial in polity, but still richly equipped with imperial paraphernalia: troops, ships, planes, bases, proconsuls, local collaborators, all spread around the luckless planet."
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., The Cycles of American History
“We live in a collective adrenaline rush, a world of endless promotional/commercial bullshit, that masks a deep systemic emptiness. The result is that children now live in an ethos of fantasy consumerism.”
Morris Berman, Dark Ages America: The Final Phase of Empire
“What you need to remember, with these guys, is that they don't know they're con men. They're wildly overconfident. Omnipotence, omniscience--that's part of the mythology... Your guy can walk in the door and promise something he personally doesn't know how to do, and not even realize he's bullshitting about his own capabilities. It's a special kind of gullibility."
William Gibson
"As everything in what used to be called creation becomes a commodity, human beings begin to look at one another, and at themselves, in a funny way, and they see price tags. There was a time when people spoke, at least occasionally, of 'inherent worth'— if not of things, then at least of persons."
Harvey Cox, The Market as God
"Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people."
Garrison Kellor
What do you get when you cross a mafioso and a central banker?
They make you an offer that you can't understand.
And they probably don't either. But the bosses want it.
Stocks stumbled again today, although there was a determined effort to 'hold the line' on any declines.
More significantly perhaps, after hours the stay-at-home tech darling Netflix missed its numbers and provided less than sparkling outlook for Q3.
And so it promptly puked up 10+% of its market cap.
Gold and silver were hit today. The Dollar edged a bit higher.
I think this is stock option expiration shenanigans.
All those holders of leveraged positions and mining options probably took a good gut check on the strength of their convictions.
Chart-wise neither gold or silver broke anything important to the downside for now. Let's see how that works out.
I did my part for the economy today, and had a new hot water heater installed. The old one had reached the end of its effective product life. And I don't like to wait until it springs a leak or fails in the night to take some action on it.
Interestingly they tossed in a higher featured model, because that is what they had in stock in the right brand and size.
So now I can communicate with it on my smartphone, although it does not seem to have anything particularly interesting to say. But it will let me know if it is faltering, and shut off itself and the water automatically, so as not to make a mess.
I wish we could equip some people in politics and business with a similar capability.
Need little, want less, love more. For those who abide in love abide in God, and God in them.
"Things are going to be getting very real this year, even as some continue to deny reality, to an almost astonishing degree of self-absorption and denial. What is it going to take?"
Jesse, 27 February 2020
“One reason we rush so quickly to the vulgar satisfactions of judgement, and love to revel in our righteous outrage, is that it spares us from the impotent pain of empathy, and the harder, messier work of understanding."
Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing
"As in all periods of speculation, men sought not to be persuaded by the reality of things but to find excuses for escaping into the new world of fantasy."
"John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929
“Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.
Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves. In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were human: they did not believe in plagues.
Albert Camus, The Plague
What is it going to take?
How many impoverished, how many dead?
There was a 'sector rotation' in stocks today. That means that the hot money shifted out of the big cap techs and into the broader and small caps such as the out-performing Russell 2000.
Gold and silver held their own with the dollar declining slightly.
There will be a stock market options expiration on Friday.
Let us pray for those whose hearts are hardened against His grace and loving kindness by greed, fear, and pride, and the seductive illusion and crushing isolation of evil.
We pray that we all may experience the three great gifts of our Lord's suffering and triumph: repentance, forgiveness, and thankfulness. And in so doing, may we obtain abundant life, and with it the peace that surpasses all understanding.
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