Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Rumbling of the Volcano

 

"Greed has poisoned men's souls, has barricaded the world with hate, has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.  We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want.  Our knowledge has made us cynical.  Our cleverness hard and unkind.  We think too much, and feel too little.  More than machinery, we need humanity.  More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.  Without these qualities life will be violent, and all will be lost."

Charlie Chaplin, The Great Dictator, October 15, 1940

"The first victims of the Konzentrationslager, concentration camps, were largely the political opposition to Hitler: the Social Democrats, the intellectuals, the communists.

"The first concentration camps in Germany were established soon after Hitler's appointment as chancellor in January 1933. In the weeks after the Nazis came to power, The SA, the SS, the police, and local civilian authorities organized numerous detention camps to incarcerate real and perceived political opponents of Nazi policy."

These first concentration camps were meant to remove and intimidate opposition to the regime. We must never forget how the people of conscience among the German people were cowed into submission, to remove and silence their voices and serve as an example to the rest.

People who knew what was happening either approved or pretended not to see it. Like most terrible and horrible acts, it did not begin with a single event, a single decision. It began with a profound intolerance for other people, ideas and dissent; and then, when it found its political footing and felt more confident, it found the will to murder the weakest, the most vulnerable, and those who had no one to speak for them.  And its unquenchable thirst for power, money and blood was unleashed."

Jesse, First the Opposition, then the Weakest and the Most Vulnerable, 10 August 2015

"It would be no sin if statesmen learned enough of history to realize that no system which implies control of society by privilege seekers has ever ended in any other way than collapse."

William Dodd, US Ambassador to Germany, 1933

"You!  You made us in the house of pain!  You made us... things!  Not men.  Not beasts.  Things!"

H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau

“When Fascism came into power, most people were unprepared, both theoretically and practically.  They were unable to believe that man could exhibit such propensities for evil, such lust for power, such disregard for the rights of the weak, or such yearning for submission.  Only a few had been aware of the rumbling of the volcano preceding the outbreak.”

Erich Fromm, Escape from Freedom, 1941


If you were wondering why gold and silver were hit so hard today, there is a precious metal futures option expiration on Monday. 

There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report on Friday.

PCE inflation and GDP and an FOMC rate decision are coming out mid week.

Stocks continued to drift higher.

They are very overbought. 

VIX is settling down into near term lows. 

Risk is looming behind the scenery.

No one can see it coming when you're sitting on top of the world.

Have a pleasant weekend. 

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - But I Want to Do What Is Right

 

"Sin is lawlessness."

1 John 3:4

"Where does the truth lie?  Should one go off and build a little house with flowers outside the windows and a garden outside the door and extol and thank God and turn one’s back on the world and its filth?  Isn’t seclusion a form of treachery, of desertion?

I am weak and small, but I want to do what is right."

Hans Scholl, Letters and Diaries, 1941

"The American economy increasingly serves only a narrow part of society, and America's national politics has failed to put the country back on track through honest, open, and transparent problem solving.  Too many of America's elites-among the super-rich, the CEOs, and many of my colleagues in academia-have abandoned a commitment to social responsibility.  They chase wealth and power, the rest of society be damned."

Jeffrey Sachs, The Price of Civilization, January 2012

"The coming of the lawless one will be in accordance with how Satan works. He will use all sorts of displays of power through signs and wonders that serve the lie, and all the ways that wickedness deceives those who are perishing. They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness.:

2 Thessalonians 2:9-12


Stocks managed to hold their ground at what is by most rational measures an unsustainable top.

But rationality has set sail some time ago.

Gold and silver were under pressure again, although the Dollar did not advance to any degree.

I don't think our current crew of 'reformers' want to reform anything.

They just want to private label it for their own venal purposes.

VIX is on the mat.

People who have their eyes open are troubled.

That is why so many do not wish to open their eyes, just double down on their worship of madness.

You know who is serving evil these days.

Hate is hate, lawlessness is lawlessness, and murder is murder.

But what troubles the individual conscience now is what has troubled honest and virtuous minds from time immemorial.    

Lord, what then am I to do?

And the answers have all been given.

Be in the world, but not of it.   Serve the Lord and not the darkness.

Work first on changing yourselves, in serving the Lord faithfully, of being that little light in the darkness for any who come near.

Do not be discouraged because you are not able to perform any grand feats, heroic acts for all to see.  

This is what I call the 'snare of despair.'

This is not your calling, although you may be called to something in the time that comes.

Do not demand courageous acts of others, so that they may fight and suffer to distract your restless emptiness. 

Some do perform extraordinary acts.  And these should be admired and respected and recommended to others.  

Stand, even as those around you seem to be falling away.  There are others that you may not know or see that have lashed themselves in hope to you, a pillar in the stream.

"The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?"    Dorothy Day

For it is in serving the Lord, and others for His sake, that we serve Him.  Not in the way the world may judge and perceive us.

The time of the worldly is passing, and the nothingness of their hearts falls to dust. 

And how do we know that we are following the Lord?

Love and the cross are two things that evil cannot bear. 

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Have No Fear: We Are Winning!

 

"Stock prices have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau. I do not feel there will be soon if ever a 50 or 60 point break from present levels, such as (bears) have predicted. I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."

Irving Fisher, Ph.D. Economics, Yale University, Oct. 17, 1929

"The Federal Reserve system should be reviewed for potentially holding back the US economy.  The economy is on the cusp of growth that could equal the dot-com boom seen in the 1990s, driven by the AI revolution."

Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, CNBC Squawk Box, July 21, 2025

"This is the time to buy stocks.  This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan that any man who is bearish on America will go broke.  Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic.  Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years."

R. W. McNeal, NY Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

“I know better than anybody what’s good for the Market, and what’s good for the U.S.A.  If it weren’t for me, the Market wouldn’t be at Record Highs right now, it probably would have CRASHED!  So, get your information CORRECT.  People don’t explain to me, I explain to them!”

Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, July 20, 2025

"Trump is our most economically sophisticated president, certainly in 100 years, perhaps in history."

Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, CNBC, July 5, 2025

Stocks pulled themselves together and managed to extend their rally, going out at the highs.

Gold and silver were under some pressure, despite a failed rally in the Dollar.

VIX is settling down to the bottom of the risk radar.

Smells like teen spirit.

Have no fear. 

If there is something you don't understand about this, just trust Trump.

That's what Baghdad Bessent advises to his fellow economic sophisticates.

"The economy is on the cusp of growth that could equal the dot-com boom seen in the 1990s, driven by the AI revolution."

Should someone remind Mr. Bessent that the late 1990's tech boom was a notorious bubble that crashed?  

Cue the gerbils. 

And the band played on.

Have a pleasant evening. 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Deceptions and Delusions: Dying of Our Hypocrisy

 

"The right to exert all governmental powers in aid of maintaining our institutions and resisting their physical overthrow does not include intolerance of opinions and speech that cannot do harm although opposed and perhaps alien to dominant, traditional opinion.  The treatment of its minorities, especially their legal position, is among the most searching tests of the level of civilization attained by a society.

It is better for those who have almost unlimited power of government in their hands to err on the side of freedom.  We have enjoyed so much freedom for so long that we are perhaps in danger of forgetting how much blood it cost to establish the Bill of Rights."

Judges Frankfurter, Vinson, Black & Douglas, Dennis v. United States, June 4, 1951

"Indeed, one can be deceived in many ways; one can be deceived in believing what is untrue, but on the other hand, one is also deceived in not believing what is true."

Søren Kierkegaard, Kjerlighedens Gjerninger, SKS vol.9, 1847

"All the nations which appear in history are necessarily a mixture, for us inextricable, of City of Good and City of Evil.  But what theology, history and common sense have also taught me is that the civilizations which allow the gap to widen between the ideal to which they claim and the realizations which they propose of it, these civilizations are dying of their hypocrisy.“

Henri-Irénée Marrou, France ma patrie,Le Monde, 5 avril 1956

“The love of liberty is the love of others; the love of power is the love of ourselves.”

William Hazlitt, Political Essays, 1819


The Dollar continued its decline from yesterday. 

Gold and silver were ripping higher.

Gold has further to go to set a new near term high.

VIX fell.

Stocks were trading weakly amongst their bubble core equities.

The broader market fared a little better.

In particular was weakness in the NDX.

Maybe not tomorrow, or the next day, but a reckoning with the web of lies that underpins the system is coming.

Have a pleasant evening.