27 March 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What Time Does the Rooster Crow?

 

"Now we remember that it was Bill Clinton's administration that deregulated derivatives, deregulated telecom, and put our country's only strong banking laws in the grave.  He's the one who rammed the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) through congress.  Mass incarceration and the repeal of welfare, two of Clinton's other major achievements, are the pillars of the disciplinary state that has made life so miserable for Americans in the lower reaches of society.

Mounting a campaign against plutocracy makes as much sense to the typical Washington liberal as would circulating a petition against gravity.  What our modernized liberal leaders offer is not confrontation but a kind of therapy for those flattened by the free-market hurricane: they counsel us to accept the inevitability of the situation."

Thomas Frank, Rendezvous With Oblivion, 1 September 2006

"Who can suffer injury by just taxation, impartial laws and the application of the Jeffersonian doctrine of equal rights to all and special privileges to none?  Only those whose accumulations are stained with dishonesty and whose immoral methods have given them a distorted view of business, society and government. 

Accumulating by conscious frauds more money than they can use upon themselves, wisely distribute or safely leave to their children, these denounce as public enemies all who question their methods or throw a light upon their crimes.  Plutocracy is abhorrent to a republic; it is more despotic than monarchy, more heartless than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy.  It preys upon the nation in time of peace and conspires against it in the hour of its calamity."

William Jennings Bryan,  Campaign Speech, Madison Square Garden, 30 August 1906

"We are not left to conjecture how the moneyed power, thus organized and with such a weapon in its hands, would be likely to use it. The distress and alarm which pervaded and agitated the whole country when the Bank of the United States (first US central Bank) waged war upon the people in order to compel them to submit to its demands can not yet be forgotten.

The ruthless and unsparing temper with which whole cities and communities were oppressed, individuals impoverished and ruined, and a scene of cheerful prosperity suddenly changed into one of gloom and despondency ought to be indelibly impressed on the memory of the people of the United States.  If such was its power in a time of peace, what would it not have been in a season of war, with an enemy at your doors? The forms of your Government might for a time have remained, but its living spirit would have departed from it."

Andrew Jackson, Farewell Address, 4 March 1837

"About an hour later, still another one of them insisted, 'Surely, this man too was with him, for he also is a Galilean.' But Peter said, 'My friend, I do not know what you are talking about.' Just as he was saying this, a cock crowed, and the Lord turned and looked at Peter. And Peter remembered the words of the Lord, how he had said to him, 'Before the cock crows today, you will deny me three times.' And Peter went out and wept bitterly."

Luke 22:59-62
 

Daisy is going to the vet for her annual vaccinations, so I am going to post the charts as they are now, and catch up with any changes tomorrow.

Stocks are mixed.  

I suspect we are seeing some end of quarter 'window dressing' going on.

Have a pleasant evening.


26 March 2024

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Called for The End of Time

 

"No one in the world can change Truth. What we can do and and should do is to seek truth and to serve it when we have found it. The most deadly poison of our time is indifference.”

Maximilian Kolbe, Executed by the Nazi government, 14 August 1941

"Every century is like every other, and to those who live in it seems worse than all times before it.  The Church is ever ailing, and lingers on in weakness.  Religion seems ever expiring, schisms dominant, the light of Truth dim, its adherents scattered.  The cause of Christ is ever in its last agony, as though it were but a question of time whether it fails finally this day or another.  The Saints are ever all but failing from the earth, and Christ all but coming; and thus the Day of Judgment is literally ever at hand."

John Henry Newman, The Via Media, 1834

"Many people think of our times as being the last before the end of the world.  The evidence of horror all around us makes this seem possible.   But isn't that an idea of only minor importance?  Doesn't every human being, no matter which era he lives in, always have to reckon with being accountable to God at any moment?  Can I know whether I'll be alive tomorrow morning?   A bomb could destroy all of us tonight.  And then my guilt would not be one bit less than if I perished together with the earth and the stars.

And I could weep at how mean people are and how they betray their fellow creatures, perhaps for the sake of personal advantage.  It is enough to make a person lose heart sometimes.  I know that life is a doorway to eternity, and yet my heart so often gets lost in petty anxieties.  It forgets the great way home that lies before it.  I will cling to the rope God has thrown me in Christ, even when my numb hands can no longer feel it.”

Sophie Scholl, Executed by the Nazi government, 22 February 1943

Margaret Roper:   Haven't you done as much as God can reasonably want?
Thomas More:      Well, finally— it isn't a matter of reason.  Finally, it's a matter of love.

Robert Bolt, A Man For All Seasons, 1954
 

God says to love our neighbors, as he loves us.

But we look down on our neighbors, and oppress and exploit them.

God loves us, and calls us by name.

But we turn away, and don't listen.

We want power, and land, and baubles to fill the emptiness of a selfish and lawless generation.

Stocks rallied for most of the day, but then turned down and went into the red for the close.

Gold gave up much of its early rally but managed to hold on to some of its gains.

Silver followed stocks lower.

The Dollar chopped sideways.

The VIX remains subdued. 

Big volumes of physical gold continue to move in and out of Hong Kong. 

Gold is moving from West to East. 

Have a pleasant evening.


25 March 2024

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.