Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - On the Road to Damascus - Metals Option Expiration Tomorrow

 

"Those to whom one of these blows has happened— after which they struggle on the ground like a half-crushed worm—have no words to express what has happened to them.  Among the people they meet, even those who have suffered much, those who have never had contact with affliction have no idea what it is.  

Then one day God comes to manifest Himself to them and reveals the beauty of the world, like God did in the case of Job.  But if the soul ceases to love, it falls into something here below that is nearly equivalent to hell."

Simone Weil, The Love of God and Affliction

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

C. S. Lewis

"It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness."

Thomas Merton

"And therefore mine own good daughter, never trouble thy mind for anything that ever shall happen me in this world.  Nothing can come but what God wills.  And I make me very sure that whatsoever that be, it shall indeed be the best."

Thomas More, letter to his daughter Margaret from prison

“Man has places in his heart which do not yet exist— and into them enters suffering, in order that they may have life.”

Léon Bloy


Stocks turned in another dipsy-doodle day, with stocks plunging lower from the open, but returning to positive on the SP 500 and only slighly lower on the NDX.

Same day wash and rinse.  How modern.

Gold and silver moved higher, while the Dollar slid a little lower again.

Tomorrow will be an option expiration on the Comex for gold and silver.

Often we get a secondary gut check after the expiry, perhaps on Friday, for those lucky few whose in the money calls are exchanged for active futures contracts.

VIX continued to drift lower.  

We are so exceptional!

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Rough Seas Ahead Mateys - Metals Options, FOMC, Non-Farm Payrolls

 

"I am the gate.  Those who enter through me will be saved, will come and go and find good pastures.   The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy.  I have come that they may have life, and have it in abundance."

John 10:9-10

"Nothing is so strong as gentleness, nothing so gentle as real strength.  Be patient with everyone, but above all be patient with yourself: do not get angry because you are angry, upset at being upset, depressed at being depressed, disappointed because you are disappointed. During the night we must wait for the light. 

So don't fool yourself. Simply surrender to the power of God's love, which is always greater than our weakness.  Do not be disheartened by your imperfections, but always rise up, with fresh courage, and continue on. You must persevere. By means of sorrow the enemy tries to make us weary of good works, but if he sees that we don't give up and in spite of his opposition they have become worthy, he will stop troubling us.

The whole world is not worth one soul.

Do not look for what may happen tomorrow; the same everlasting Father who cares for you today will take care of you tomorrow, and every other day.  Either He will shield you from suffering, or will give you unfailing strength to bear it.  Be at peace, then, and put aside all anxious thoughts and imaginations, and say continually: The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart has trusted in Him and I am helped.  He is not only with me, but in me and I in Him."

Francis de Sales

"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 personal selves?”

Maximilian Kolbe

 

I neglected to mention it yesterday, but the hedge fund Citadel turned in a record-breaking $16 billion in profit last year.  

Citadel is the top player in the 'pay for order flow' innovation adopted by most of the retail brokerage firms.

Even though Citadel pays to take the orders from the brokerages, we are assured that its all a win-win for the small retail investors, and certainly the brokers who received roughly $3.8 billion in compensation.

When you don't know who the loser at the table is...

Stocks were wobbly all day, but voila, the futures shot into the green at the close on the release of Microsoft's financial results.

Cloud, artificial intelligence, yada yada.

Let's see what kind of guidance they give tomorrow morning on the conference call.

I'll be impressed when Robo-brain figures out how to stop spam phone calls and emails. 

And how the heck no one seems to have vetted George Santos before letting him slip into the halls of highest power in the world's most exceptional country.

The Dollar slipped a bit.

Gold and silver turned in gains.  No breakouts yet confirmed.

Precious metals are facing a short term gauntlet, with the option expiration on Friday and the FOMC midweek and Non-Farm Payrolls next Friday. 

VIX fell a bit.

What us worry?

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Audacious Oligarchy - The Power Elite

 

"The economy - once a great scatter of small productive units in autonomous balance, has become dominated by two or three hundred giant corporations, administratively and politically interrelated.   The political order, once a decentralized set of several dozen states with a weak spinal cord, has become a centralized executive establishment which has taken up into itself many powers previously scattered.   The military order, once a slim establishment in a context of distrust fed by state militia, has become the largest and most expensive feature of government.

People with advantages are loath 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.

The idea of the elite as composed of men and women having a finer moral character is an ideology of the elite.

The American elite does not have any real image of peace — other than as an uneasy interlude existing precariously by virtue of the balance of mutual fright.  The only seriously accepted plan for peace is the fully loaded pistol.  In short, war or a high state of war-preparedness is felt to be the normal and seemingly permanent condition of the United States.

For the first time in American history, men in authority are talking about an 'emergency' without a foreseeable end.  Such men as these are crackpot realists: in the name of realism they have constructed a paranoid reality all their own.  America - a conservative country without any conservative ideology - appears now before the world a naked and arbitrary power, as, in the name of realism, its men of decision enforce their often crackpot definitions upon world reality.  

The second-rate mind is in command of the ponderously spoken platitude.  In the liberal rhetoric, vagueness, and in the conservative mood, irrationality, are raised to principle.  Public relations and the official secret, the trivializing campaign and the terrible fact clumsily accomplished, are replacing the reasoned debate of political ideas in the privately incorporated economy, the military ascendancy, and the political vacuum of modern America.

These men have replaced mind with platitude, and the dogmas by which they are legitimated are so widely accepted that no counterbalance of mind prevails against them. They have replaced the responsible interpretation of events with the disguise of events by a maze of public relations.

What the main drift of the twentieth century has revealed is that the economy has become concentrated and incorporated in the great hierarchies, the military has become enlarged and decisive to the shape of the entire economic structure; and moreover the economic and the military have become structurally and deeply interrelated, as the economy has become a seemingly permanent war economy; and military men and policies have increasingly penetrated the corporate economy.

C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite, 1956

Stocks rallied today, for no particular reason.

The chip sector led stocks higher, based on upgrades from Barclay.

Wash - rinse - repeat.   

Leave your shame at the curb.

Gold and silver were hit hard from the early trading, but managed to take much of it back with gold even finishing in the green.

Looks like a gut check ahead of the Comex precious metals option expiry on the 26^th.

 Different month, same crooked scams.

The US Dollar did nothing.

The VIX did nothing.

We may see some market moving data this week.

FOMC and Non-Farm Payrolls for January coming next week.

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening.