20 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - What's Cooking, Doc? - Lawyers, Guns, and Money


This will be a holiday shortened week in the US markets for the national holiday of Thanksgiving on November 23.

Trading will be light this week, especially after noon tomorrow. Plenty of room for the usual trading hijinks and shenanigans.

Gold and silver were smacked down this morning in light trade, the dollar rallied, and the VIX dropped.

In days gone by they used to expect a 'Thanksgiving rally' in stocks. We may or may not see that again, although in this thin trade I would not be going short the market in anticipation of anything, except perhaps into the close on Wednesday or into the early close on Friday at 1 PM. Or perhaps not at all.

I am having some fun this week with the 'InstantPot' which I purchased a little while ago. It is a versatile cooker, but I primarily use it as a pressure cooker, at which it is far superior to the old stove-top types with the wobbling metal weight.

On today's menu was a simple split pea soup, with some very nice hamhocks I had purchased on my trip to the Amish market last week, mixed in with a large onion, celery, and some carrots, with a little seasoning and herbs.

If you let the InstantPot release its pressure quickly, rather than slowly and naturally, it tends to expand the peas quite effectively making for a fairly creamy soup, but with the carrots and celery intact. 35 minutes cooking time and you're good to go.

I cook sixteen bean soup similarly but cut the cooking time way down because I like them to retain their shape.  I often add a diced 'waxed turnip' as they call them here.

I do not use it as a rice cooker, although you can.  We have a very nice Zojirushi which the queen and I purchased many years ago. Their price has declined quite a bit since we had purchased it when it was the latest thing with its 'fuzzy logic.'   They do an excellent job.

We're having the souop with the bread I have been baking. I have not done that for some years, but it is coming back quickly. I am making crusty bread to use for the Thanksgiving day stuffing. Adding a cup of hot water to a hot rimmed cooking sheet at about 450 degrees makes for a very nice crust.

I would not take this week too seriously 'unless something happens.' The trading will be heavy on the pros, pushing things around, until the volume simply dies off and the juniors are left to mind it into the holiday.

But if you are trading these markets this week, be sure to bring your own lawyers, guns and money.

Have a pleasant evening.







17 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - The Willful Mispricing of Risk - Who Runs Bartertown?


Today was a stock options expiry.

Gold and silver rallied smartly, back up to the levels where they roughly were before they were bushwhacked on the Comex into the FOMC meeting and Non-Farm Payrolls boogie woogie.

I guess the theory that this smackdown of gold to retest 1270 earlier this week was a gambit ahead of stock option expiry was tradeable.

We are in a new era. I am hearing this on TV and in comments and on chat forums.

We are in an era where risk has been abolished by the central banks and their free money. So there is little difference between prime and subprime, between 2 year and 10 year Treasuries, and between stocks and bonds.

According to some of the Pied Piper pundits stocks are better than riskless cash, because stocks are going to keep rallying forever after, and cash is trash.   Buy buy buy, and don't be left behind.

This is the kind of mantra that the sell-side and the wiseguys of the Street too often resort to when they are taking profits from their pool after a big price run higher, and unloading mispriced junk on mom and pop, through the funds and institutions.

Once the selling starts in earnest, and it will beyond any doubt at some point, by whatever event that may happen to trigger it, this is going to get ugly very quickly.  But this is the system that we have today.  This will be the third bubble and bust since the repeal of Glass-Steagall, one of the highest funded PR and political campaigns in modern history.

And no one could have seen it coming.

Who runs Bartertown?

Have a pleasant weekend.


16 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Rally Monkeys Away


US equities rallied today on the earnings report from WalMart, and an excess of hot money with nowhere productive to go.

Today was characterized as a great time to buy the dip, which occurred earlier this week.

Stocks are a buy because corporations are enjoying record profits, which they mostly spend on dividends, boondoggles, monopolization,  and tax buybacks.

Quick, give those folks a tax break!

Tomorrow will be a stock options expiration.

The House passed its version of 'tax reform' today. It will have to be reconciled with reform from the Senate.

The yield curve differential between the 2y and 10y treasuries continues to flatten, with some suggesting it will go to '0' next year.

This is a signal of an oncoming recession.  The other data suggests that the US consumer is 'tapped out.'

The Fed says that healthcare is contributing to the lack of inflation.  Seriously?

How do you know when Paul Ryan is lying about tax reform being done for the average American?    His lips are moving.

How does Paul Ryan know when he is lying about tax reform?   He doesn't care.

I agree with Jeffrey Gundlach's recent observations about the carried interest rule in the tax reform legislation, and that the swamp is not being drained— it is getting larger.

Sow it; reap it; eat it.

Have a pleasant evening.





15 November 2017

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts - Stock Options Expiration on Friday - As If Maybe Someone Could Hear


We will have a stock option expiration on Friday.

I believe that this is driving some of the action in the precious metals.

Not in the metal itself, but by extension to the miners which follow the price of the metals, and tend to be a favorite of options players, and a rather volatile crew.

Have a pleasant evening.