Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Ship of Fools

 

"Ship of fools on a cruel sea, ship of fools sail away from me.
It was later than I thought when I first believed you,
Now I cannot share your laughter, ship of fools."

Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, Ship of Fools

"The gates of Hell are terrible to behold, are they not?  The lofty mind of man can be imprisoned by the artifices of its own making.  If there are damned souls in Hell, it is because men blind themselves."

E.A. Bucchianeri, Faust: My Soul Be Damned for the World

"He is under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in his very being.  Having thus become a mindless tool, the foolish person will also be capable of any evil and at the same time incapable of seeing that it is evil.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers From Prison

"This elite-generated social control maintains the status quo because the status quo benefits and validates those who created and sit atop it.  People rise to prominence when they parrot the orthodoxy rather than critically analyze it."

Kristine Mattis, The Cult of the Professional Class, April 2016

"Banality is a symptom. Men hide behind their cliches."

Eugene Ionesco

"And Abraham said, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not change and repent, even if someone were to rise from the dead.’”

Luke 16:31

"The devil will come, and Faustus must be damned.
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall on me,
And hide me from the heavy wrath of God!”

Christopher Marlowe, The Tragical History of Dr. Faustus

“I guess it’s easy to make a deal with the devil when you’re not the one paying the price.”

Joan, The Walking Dead, Season 5, Slabtown

Stocks were trading weakly, but managed to take only minor losses in another ranging, wobbly day.

The VIX came in higher, but then fell as the day went on.

The Dollar lost some ground.

Gold came in off an overnight rally, but gave up a chunk of its gains in the NY trading hours.

Silver not so much.

We will often get a 'gut check' in the Comex gold futures on the day after an expiration, depending on how many call options finished 'in the money' and became active futures contract longs.

There might be an extradition decision in the trial of Julian Assange in London tomorrow.  This is a shameful miscarriage of justice and assault on press freedoms.

Russia is investigating and considering its options after a vicious and cowardly terrorist attack at a rock concert on Friday night. 

A nasty surprise indeed, as the US had said was coming.

Kind of like the demolition of the Nordstream gas pipeline that shocked European energy markets.

Say it ain't so, Joe.

The ongoing ethnic cleansing and probable war crimes in Gaza continue.  

How did we get this far?

The geopolitical situation makes my skin crawl.

Reckless immaturity and fumbling incompetence is never a good look for a global superpower. 

Have a pleasant evening.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Silencing the Truth - Making a Desolation

 

"In February 1933 after the Reichstag fire journalist Carl von Ossietzsky was arrested and held without trial for revealing the Nazi secret rearmament. Despite an international outcry and the Nobel Peace Prize (1935) he died in custody of abuse and medical neglect on 4 May 1938.

In the same year that the journalist Carl von Ossietzsky died in prison for revealing the Nazi government rearmament, Time Magazine named Adolf Hitler its 'Man of the Year.' Top US industrialists and financiers were supporting the Nazis and continued to do so well into the war."

Jesse, Carl von Ossietzsky, X, March 22, 2024

"Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery?  Or the Jim Crow South?   Or apartheid?  What would I do if my country was committing genocide?'  The answer is, you're doing it.  Right now."

Aaron Bushnell, died in protest by self-immolation, February 24, 2024

"You who murder your prophets, and abuse those whom God has sent as messengers to you. How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her young under her wings. But you would not let me. As you have willed it, so your house is now yours to command— but it is made desolate.’”

Matthew 23:37-38
 

Stocks were digesting their recent highs today.

Gold and silver fell.

As a reminder there is an important precious metals futures option expiration on the Comex on this coming Monday the 25th.

Hence the 'Dr. Evil' type price action we have seen, ie. a big push up followed by an even bigger smack down.

VIX is near its recent lows.

Have a pleasant weekend.

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Götterdämmerung - The Gods Would First Make Mad

 

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.  It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.  Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about.  It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.  Out of war a few people make huge fortunes."

US Major General Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket, 1935

“The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact.  The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.”

George Orwell, 1984

"The problem of the last three decades is not the 'vicissitudes of the marketplace,' but rather deliberate actions by the government to redistribute income from the rest of us to the one percent."

Dean Baker, The Vicissitudes of the Market Would Be a Big Improvement, 29 September 2014

"One of the common failings among honorable people is a failure to appreciate how thoroughly dishonorable some other people can be, and how dangerous it is to trust them."

Thomas Sowell

"As the boom developed, the big men became more and more omnipotent in the popular or at least the speculative view. The Exchange is a market place where prices reflect the basic law of supply and demand, yet even the most devout Wall Streeter allows himself on occasion to believe that more personal influences have a hand in his destiny.   Somewhere around there are big men who put stocks up and put them down.   The big men decided to put the market up, and even some serious scholars have been inclined to think that a concerted move catalyzed this upsurge."

J. K. Galbraith, The Great Crash of 1929, 1955

"As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport."

William Shakespeare, King Lear

"History will view the last 20 years as a period of collective madness in the United States.   It is a madness brought on by the gods to the proud and those who would be as gods, but stumble and fall through a tragic flaw, an error in judgement.   Often that flaw is related to the strength that had made them great.  The US can fall from greatness through pride and imbalanced judgement, and therein lies the recipe for tragedy."

Jesse, 15 April 2008

Stocks did a grand rally up to new highs, and then flopped over into the close.

The VIX fell.

The Dollar surged.

Gold and silver rallied hard from the overnight, and then were sold in New York.

As a reminder there will be a Comex precious metal April futures option expiration on Monday, the 25th.

Our magnificent elite, our exceptionals, our masters of the universe, would be as gods, serving none, with power over all.

And this is their twilight approaching.  

Have a pleasant evening.