Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Light on the Road to Damascus

 

“To know and to serve God, of course, is why we’re here, a clear truth, that, like the nose on your face, is near at hand and easily discernible but can make you dizzy if you try to focus on it hard. But a little faith will see you through. What else will do except faith in such a cynical, corrupt time? When the country goes temporarily to the dogs, cats must learn to be circumspect, walk on fences, sleep in trees, and have faith that all this woofing is not the last word.

What is the last word, then? Gentleness is everywhere in daily life, a sign that faith rules through ordinary things: through cooking and small talk, through storytelling, making love, fishing, tending animals and sweet corn and flowers, through sports, music and books, raising kids — all the places where the gravy soaks in, and grace shines through. Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people. What keeps my faith cheerful is the extreme persistence of gentleness and humour. Lacking any other purpose in life, it would be good enough to live for their sake."

Garrison Keillor

"True freedom is to know what is good, what is the right thing to do, and to have the will to do it, even when it goes against our selfish inclinations. It is to free ourselves from fear and all those things that hold us down, which prevent us from finding and fulfilling our part in the great renewal of creation and the triumph of life over death, of being over nothingness.

The most powerful in the eyes are the world are often the most enslaved, victims of basest passions, servants to the most undeserving and meanest of ambitions, lashing out in their insatiable misery.  With obeisance they serve and nurture the willfulness that delivers them first up to slavery to themselves, and then to darker powers, and finally into the jaws of self destruction.

The paradox of life is that we hate what we fear, but we eventually become what we hate, because it occupies so much of our energy and mind. It makes a place for itself in our hearts. When the adversary of all goodness intertwines his fingers with ours, whispering sweet words of power and fame, of hatreds and passions, he slowly tightens his grip and holds fast, and then we are his."

Jesse, A Light on the Road to Damascus, 26 December 2010

Stocks wobbled back and forth again today.

Gold and silver were under a bit of pressure and slipped back some.

VIX declined slightly in a diffident gesture at risk taking.

Slowly we approach the stormy season of markets.

But for now, complacency reigns, as we approach the option expiration on Friday.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Don't Get Out of the Boat - Option Expiration on Friday

 

"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


"He who sells what isn't his'n,
Must buy it back or go to prison."

Daniel Drew


"When we look back on this period in time with the perspective of history, we will see markets dominated by control frauds and mispricing of risk that will seem painfully obvious.  Why do we not see this now?   Why did so few see it coming 2007, and in 2000?  Perhaps because the money is too good, and our societal judgement is too corrupted, often willfully so.  Bubbles have a surprising resiliency, as does evil in a hardened heart.   And for the same reasons."

Jesse, April 2021


"This place is like somebody's memory of a town, and the memory is fading. It's like there was never anything here but jungle."

Rust Cohle, True Detective

Stocks managed to rally today despite, or perhaps because of, the stunningly bad Empire State Manufacturing Index.

We don't need no stinking real economy.  We just need more easy Fed money.

Gold and silver were hit hard, and the Dollar rallied.

And it turned out to be a risk on day.

Run bully, run.

Option Expiration for August on Friday. 

For the rest of the year remember, never get out of the boat.

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metal Charts - Without Shame or Limits - The Gathering Storm

 

"A confident, aggressive delivery style - often larded with jargon, clichés, and flowery phrases - makes up for the lack of substance and sincerity in their interactions with others.  They are masters of impression management; their insight into the psyche of others combined with a superficial - but convincing - verbal fluency allows them to change their personas skillfully as it suits the situation and their game plan.  They are known for their ability to don many masks, change 'who they are' depending upon the person with whom they are interacting, and make themselves appear likable to their intended victim."

Paul Babiak and Robert Hare, Snakes in Suits


"An invasion of armies can be resisted, but not an idea whose time has come."

Victor Hugo, Histoire d'un Crime


"The barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.  He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being.  We sit by and watch the barbarian.  We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid.  We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes; we laugh.  But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.

The real interest of watching the Barbarian is not the amusement derivable from his antics, but the prime doubt whether he will succeed or no, whether he will flourish.  He is, I repeat, not an agent, but merely a symptom, yet he should be watched as a symptom.  It is not he in his impotence that can discover the power to disintegrate the great and ancient body of Christendom, but if we come to see him triumphant we may be certain that that body, from causes much vaster than such as he could control, is furnishing him with sustenance and forming for him a congenial soil—and that is as much as to say that we are dying."

Hilaire Belloc, This and That and the Other


"It is very odd that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought about by small men."

Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

Stocks were reaching for a high note today, and managed to go out near the highs.

Gold and silver were sharply higher.

The Dollar gained.

The VIX declined.

Mixed signals indeed. 

Storm warnings.

Have a pleasant weekend.