Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - A Gathering of Vultures

"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 

 

"The foolish ask nothing better than not to have to understand anything, and they even used to get together and try not to understand, because the last thing of which a person is capable is to be malicious and foolish all by themselves.   Without understanding, they form spontaneously into herds, not according to any particular affinities but in obedience to the petty ideology, which swallowed up the whole of their small lives, allotted them by birth or chance. They would far rather kill than have to think." 

George Bernanos, Under the Sun of Satan 

 

"Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring.  Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.  Evil when we are in its power is not felt as evil, but as a necessity, or even a duty."

Simone Weil 

 

"The most important problem in the world today is your soul, for that is what the struggle is about." 

Fulton Sheen

 

“And they asked him, 'Where will this happen, Lord?'  And He said to them, 'Where death is, so there will be a gathering of vultures.'”

Luke 17:37

 

Stocks managed to gather themselves and rally in the afternoon, although techs finished well of the highs.

All eyes are on the SP500, and its bid for a new high.

The Michael Milken Conference is ongoing this week in Beverly Hills, and pundits have been appearing from there frequently during the day on financial television to inform us.

About as insular and myopic as you might expect from such a gathering.   Kind of a  frat party for the pampered princes of finance.

Gold and silver were up with the Dollar.

The VIX hit another near term low. The lowest since the beginning of the pandemic I believe.

Gradually, then all of a sudden.

And they never see it coming.

They don't care, and we don't believe in it.

Have a pleasant evening.

 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stock Market Bubbles and Systemic Corruption

 

"The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small.  It is nearly nil.  Perhaps this is inherent.  In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. 

To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it.   So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent.  The foolish thus have the field to themselves.   None rebukes them." 

John Kenneth Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929 

 

"As many as a dozen members of Congress and their aides took part in insider trading based on foreknowledge of market moving information on Capitol Hill, disgraced Washington lobbyist Jack Abramoff told CNBC in an interview.

Legal analysts say that Wall Street insider trading laws do not apply to Congress.  As an open and public institution, the legal assumption has long been that any member of the public can have access to information about how Congress works.  In practice, though, that's simply not true, as powerful members of Congress come into contact daily with market-moving tidbits.  That gap between the law and the reality has made Capitol Hill a virtual free-fire zone for insider trading. Over the years, academic studies have found that members of the House of Representatives beat the market by as much as six percent per year and members of the Senate do even better than that."

Eamon Javers, Congress Members Took Part in Insider Trading, 11 Nov 2011

 

"The period of financial distress is a gradual decline after the peak of a speculative bubble that precedes the final and massive panic and crash, driven by the insiders having exited but the sucker outsiders hanging on hoping for a revival, but finally giving up in the final collapse." 

Charles Kindelberger, Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises 

 

"The system of corruption depends on another factor beyond secrecy, one that is perhaps even more important: impunity.  Impunity means that the rich and powerful escape from punishment even when their malfeasance is in full view. Impunity is epidemic in America.  The rich and powerful get away with their heists in broad daylight. 

When a politician like Bernie Sanders calls out the corruption, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal double down with their mockery over such a foolish 'dreamer.'  The Journal recently opposed the corruption sentence of former Virginia governor Bob McDonnell for taking large gifts and bestowing official favors — because everybody does it. 

Our major institutions, the ones that should know better, are often gross enablers of impunity."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Age of Impunity

 

The SP 500 managed to add another day of gains to its quest to make a new high.

The NDX and the big cap techs, not so much.

The VIX is back down to recent lows.    Speculation is a bit frothy.

The Dollar moved lower.

Gold and silver both rallied and managed to hold on to a big piece of their gains.

Another huge tranche of physical gold went walkabout out of the Comex warehouses in Hong Kong.

Slowly, gradually, and then all at once.

And who could have seen it coming.  Except the pampered princes of privilege.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Madness of Herds - New Highs Needed to Sustain Speculative Froth

 

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger?  By what means shall we fortify against it?--  Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow?  Never!-- All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years.

At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected?  I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us.  It cannot come from abroad.  If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher.  As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide." 

Abraham Lincoln,Lyceum Address, 27 January 1838

“Through pride we are ever deceiving ourselves. But deep down below the surface of the average conscience a still, small voice says to us, something is out of tune.”

Carl Gustav Jung 

 

 “Pride gets no pleasure out of having something, only out of having more of it than the next man. It is the comparison that makes you proud: the pleasure of being above the rest.

As long as you are proud you cannot know God.  A proud man is always looking down on things and people; and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity

Stocks went on a tear higher today in celebration of the lousing housing numbers this morning.

And because they can.

Gold and silver made a  rally attempt, and managed to hang on to some of it into the close, silver a little moreso than gold.

A huge tranche of gold showed up in Hong Kong.   

Funny how a big smackdown in the paper price and a scraping out of the ETFs manages to show up there, given a little time.

The Dollar finished lower.   All a part of the lousy economic news being good for the bankers, moneyed interests, and their bubbles.

Tough times ahead.   

In fit of emotion people are going to do very dumb and willful things that hurt more than themselves, although eventually they will be falling away in numbers that may be alarming.

"There have always been plagues and wars, yet they always take us by surprise.  Stupidity has a knack of getting in the way, which we would see if not wrapped up in ourselves.  In this our townsfolk were like everybody else— they did not believe in plagues." 

Albert Camus, The Plague

The bulls are smelling new highs in stocks, almost within their grasp.

If they fail to make those new highs, things may get interesting, quickly.

They may get a few tries at it, but don't miss.

The underpinnings of the equity markets is speculative froth.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Say It Ain't So, Jerome

 

"The control of information is something the elite always does, particularly in a despotic form of government. Information, knowledge, is power. If you can control information, you can control people."

Tom Clancy 

 

“I've always resented the smug statements of politicians, media commentators, corporate executives who talked of how, in America, if you worked hard you would become rich. The meaning of that was if you were poor it was because you hadn't worked hard enough. I knew this was a lie, about my father and millions of others, men and women who worked harder than anyone, harder than financiers and politicians, harder than anybody if you accept that when you work at an unpleasant job that makes it very hard work indeed.” 

Howard Zinn 

 

"Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell sold between $1 million and $5 million worth of stock from his personal account on October 1, 2020, according to disclosure forms reviewed by the Prospect. Powell’s sale of shares from a Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund has not been previously reported. 

This sale occurred right before the Dow Jones Industrial Average suffered a significant drop."

Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect, 18 October 2021

 

"There is no clean way to make a hundred million bucks. Somewhere along the line guys got pushed to the wall, nice little businesses got the ground cut out from under them. Decent people lost their jobs. Big money is big power, and big power gets used wrong." 

 Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

 

“People with advantages are loathe to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages. They come readily to define themselves as inherently worthy of what they possess; they come to believe themselves 'naturally' elite; and, in fact, to imagine their possessions and their privileges as natural extensions of their own elite selves.” 

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite

 

Stocks managed to stage a rally today, and went out near the highs.

Gold and silver fell a bit.

The Dollar was flat.

It seems like the VIX is bottoming. 

Jerome Powell's credibility as a 'self-policing' leader of the Federal Reserve just got shot all to hell.

It seems like most were doing it there, trading for themselves with huge information advantages, doesn't it. 

Just the tip of the dirty iceberg.

Have a pleasant evening.