Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Thurston Powell III - The FANGs Report After the Bell

"But, outside the realm of business, these men are stupid.  They know only business.  They do not know mankind nor society, and yet they set themselves up as arbiters of the fates of the hungry millions and all the other millions thrown in...

You are anarchists in the realm of thought.  And you are mad cosmos-makers.  Each of you dwells in a cosmos of his own making, created out of his own fancies and desires.  You do not know the real world in which you live, and your thinking has no place in the real world except in so far as it is phenomena of mental aberration.

We know, and well we know by bitter experience, that no appeal for the right, for justice, for humanity, can ever touch you.”

Jack London, The Iron Heel


"I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end;  that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.   I do not mean that they may not wish to come out of hell, but they certainly do not will even the first preliminary stages of that self-abandonment through which alone the soul can reach any good. 

They enjoy forever the horrible freedom they have demanded, and are therefore self-enslaved: just as the blessed, forever submitting to obedience, become through all eternity more and more free."

C. S. Lewis

Alphabet, Amazon, Apple and Facebook are reporting earnings after the bell.

All of them are beating estimates of course.

AAPL has announced a 4 for 1 stock split.

Gold and silver were off a bit today, and the Dollar slumped lower, falling into the 92 bucket.

Stocks were weak on the overnight.

I took profits on an overnight short position in the first hour of trading. And that proved to be a good move, as stocks tended to drift higher during most of the day.

Google Blogger has changed the interface with which I create these blog postings.  And it no surprise that it offers no advantages or advanced features, and makes it much more difficult to do what one normally does.   It is like they went out of their way to throw away useful capabilities and dumb down the platform.   And of course there is no way of offering feedback.  And none has been solicited.

Very disappointing and annoying to say the least.  Not what we have come to expect.

Well, at least the price is right, so I suppose it would be very ungrateful to complain about it.

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

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - FOMC Does Uber-Dovish as Desired

The Fed came through with their 'uber-dovish' FOMC statement, for which Wall Street wiseguys were yearning.

And it wasn't because the economy is just that good.

The tech weenies gave their testimony about monopoly and competition to the House today.

The SP 500 and the Russell 2000 were pulling the weight today, although a few of the big name techs were leading the way higher as well.

Gold and silver managed to move a little higher again today.

The dollar moved lower, towards the 93 level. How low can it go?  I should update my longer term DX dollar chart.

One of the talking heads on Bloomberg referred to gold today as an 'unreliable boyfriend' among risk aversion assets.

And further, that it is vulnerable to a return to normalcy in interest rate yields from a robust economic recovery.

So don't bother with gold if you want a safe and stable haven from economic craziness.

As if.  And my garden is vulnerable to a meteor strike

I think is almost the very definition of a alternative safe haven.

I seem to recall that financial legend Bernard Baruch once said, "Gold has 'worked' down from Alexander's time.  When something holds good for two thousand years I do not believe it can be so because of prejudice or mistaken theory."

With the current crew of financiers and politicians in charge, I think we can find some comfort in taking a lesson from history, as most of the central banks in the rest of the world have done.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Precious Metals Soar Overnight - FOMC Tomorrow

"Demagogues are willing to do or say anything to gain office or to consolidate their power. Unconstrained by ideology, they have no concern for the consequences of their actions. Anything that serves to make them more powerful is good enough for them — even if the political system that facilitated their rise should be destroyed in the process."

Daniel Ziblatt


"The inability to identify with others was unquestionably the most important psychological condition for the fact that something like Auschwitz could have occurred in the midst of more or less civilized and innocent people."

Theodor Adorno


"I urge you, brothers and sisters, to be wary of those who cause divisions and undermine the faithful, in opposition to the teaching that you have learned. Avoid them. For such people do not serve our Lord, but their own appetites. And by clever words and flattery they deceive the hearts of the innocent and naive."

Romans 16:17-18


"I will not bow, and God grant that we will never bow, before the gods of evil."

Martin Luther King, But If Not

Gold and silver rocketed higher overnight.

Gold briefly tagged the 2000 mark in its big December contract which prompted some headlines, but only 1975 in the continuous futures contract. Silver pushed above 26.

In the later trading both metals pulled back, and somewhat sharply. The lows are marked on the charts.

But for the day trading both metals finished well, with gold around 1950 and silver around 24.50.

As for stocks, they faded into the afternoon in quiet trade, going out near the lows.

Tomorrow there will be an FOMC meeting. We will hear what they have to say in the afternoon.

Let's see how the markets react to this.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Gold Closes at a Record High

"The acceptance of near-indigency of the mass of the citizens as the price to be paid for the highest stage of prosperity was accompanied by very different human attitudes.

Townsend righted his emotional balance by indulging in prejudice and sentimentalism. The improvidence of the poor was a law of nature, for servile, sordid, and ignoble work would otherwise not be done. (abuse of the other by the powerful is a 'necessary evil.')

Also, what would become of the fatherland unless we could rely on the poor?   For what is it but distress and poverty which can prevail upon the lower classes of the people to encounter all the horrors which await them on the tempestuous ocean or on the field of battle?'"

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 1944


“The real conflict is the inner conflict.  Beyond armies of occupation and the catacombs of extermination camps, there are two irreconcilable enemies in the depth of every soul: good and evil, sin and love.  And what use are the victories on the battlefield if we are ourselves are defeated in our innermost selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe


"Behind the concrete, the visible events, behind all objective, logical considerations, we find the irrational element: The struggle against the demon, against the servants of the Antichrist.

Everywhere and always demonic powers lurk in the dark, waiting for the moment when man is weak; when of his own volition he leaves his place in Creation, as founded for him by God in freedom; when he yields to the force of evil, he separates himself from the powers of a higher order; and after voluntarily taking the first step, he is driven on to the next and the next at a furiously accelerating rate."

The White Rose, Fourth Leaflet, Munich 1942

Gold and silver soared today, as the Dollar continued to slide.

The breakouts on the precious metals charts were hard to miss.

I hope that you did not.

This has been a long time coming. 

'For what does it profit a man...'

Stocks moved higher, driven by the non-organic (printing) creation of money, distributed carefully to the 'right people' without regard to the broader public benefit.

Naturally the thoughts of traders will begin to believe that there must be a stop to this, that it is an excess, and will not continue.

And it will not continue. But the extent of it, and the time for it to end, is not known to us.

But we may know what signs to watch, and what precautions to take based on our own capacity for risk..

What matters at the end of the day is not what other people say or do. What matters is the struggle between good and evil in each of our hearts, for which we will be held to account.

In the greater scheme of things the rest of it is a diversion and distraction.
 
The rationalization of injustice and the oppression of the weak by the powerful and the well-to-do is as old as Babylon, and evil as sin.   It is the power of the darkness of this world, and of spiritual wickedness in high places.   Despite the pretty wrapping clever people may put on it, the rot of decay and corruption is within.

The only difference is that it is not happening in the past, or in a book, or in some vaguely frightening prophecy— it is happening here and now.

The real tragedy is to become what you hate— and to spend an eternity with it for company.

So let's make some more money in these markets, but not lose sight of why we do this, and especially recall the only things that really matter.

Have a pleasant evening.