Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Buddha's Palm Descending - Toro de Fuego

 

"Our share of these great good times was zero, folks.  The upper ten percent of the population, by which we mean our country's financiers and managers and professionals, consumed the entire thing.  To be a young person in America these days is to understand instinctively the downward slope that so many of us are on."

Thomas Frank, 6 April 2017


"When the modern corporation acquires power over markets, power in the community, power over the state and power over belief, it is a political instrument, different in degree but not in kind from the state itself.  To hold otherwise — to deny the political character of the modern corporation — is not merely to avoid the reality.  It is to disguise the reality.  The victims of that disguise are those we instruct in error."

John Kenneth Galbraith


"Hot money seeks out the conscious mispricing of risk.  Capital, in the form of both money and personal talent, increasingly flows into malinvestment and the gaming of markets.   The productive economy languishes, left wanting for the lack of creative resources and attention.  The bubble rises to unsustainable valuations— and fails, and a nation's capital is consumed. 

The next five years are not about winning, but surviving."

Jesse, The Men Who Sold the World, 5 August 2019


“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”

Philip K. Dick, Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said

 

Today was not constructive for the bullish case.

But tomorrow is another day.

And another stock index option expiration.

The Dollar fell off its perch.

Gold and silver soared.

We are heading into a three day weekend.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Survey Says - Option Expiration on Friday

 

"Let me end my talk by abusing slightly my status as an official representative of the Federal Reserve.  I would like to say to Milton [Friedman] and Anna [Schwarz]:  Regarding the Great Depression.  You're right, we did it.  We're very sorry.  But thanks to you, we won't do it again."

Ben S. Bernanke, On Milton Friedman's Ninetieth Birthday, November 8, 2002


"I write to you from a disgraced profession. Economic theory, as widely taught since the 1980s, failed miserably to understand the forces behind the financial crisis. Concepts including rational expectations, market discipline, and the efficient markets hypothesis led economists to argue that speculation would stabilize prices, that sellers would act to protect their reputations, that caveat emptor could be relied on, and that widespread fraud therefore could not occur.  Not all economists believed this, but most did."

James K. Galbraith


“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding [or even seeing] it.”

Upton Sinclair


"Nothing is so unworthy of a civilized nation as allowing itself to be governed without opposition by an irresponsible clique that has yielded to base instinct."

Sophie Scholl

The Fed decided to take the easy 75 that the bond market smoothed the way for them today.

Stocks took it positively after a few starts and stops, and managed to come off their oversold condition.

Tomorrow's market action will be much more telling as we roll into another option expiration.

After a day of more shenanigans, gold and silver found their footing and bolted higher.

So we had a sell the rumor and buy the news event.

Let's see how the rest of the week goes.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Endless Wash and Rinse - FOMC Tomorrow, Options Expiry Friday

 

"When you have allowed sociopaths to erect a system which rewards expediency, cleverness, and winning without respect for human values, fairness, or even common 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?

Jesse, A Banquet of Consequences Part II, 20 November 2018


"A certain type of person strives to become a master over all, and to extend his force, his will to power, and to subdue all that resists it.  But he encounters the power of others, and comes to an arrangement, a union, with those that are like him: thus they work together to serve the will to power.  And the process goes on."

Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power


Stocks continued to drift lower today ahead of the Fed rate announcement tomorrow.

Rumors are that the Fed will move 75 to 100 bps.

I think they will do 50, but I am not ruling out an easy 75 given the pricing in yields already seen.

The markets are oversold and primed for a relief rally into the option expiration.

The Dollar is at multiyear highs at 105.45.

Have a pleasant evening.