WEEKEND WRAP: Trump Defeats Coronavirus; Stocks Rip; Polls Wrong-Footed; Gold, Silver Rising

President Trump, slightly overweight and in his 70s, catches COVID-19, goes to hospital for a few days, is virus-free in just over a week.

That's a close summary for the news for the week. Everybody can go back to sleep now. Nothing to see here. Move along.

There are some observations from outside the mainstream that indicate the coronavirus "pandemic" crisis is fading into the background of the presidential election. Notably, various college football games were quite well-attended. For instance, the nationally-televised #7 Miami at #1 Clemson game had 18,885 fans in attendance. #2 Alabama at Ole Miss was attended by 14,419. #4 Florida lost at #21 Texas A&M, 41-38, as seen by 24,709 in the stands. The list goes on and on, despite restrictions on attendance. Most games were only allowed 20-30% capacity. Apparently, football fans aren't very fearful of COVID-19. It's highly probable that had the authorities allowed the colleges to sell as many tickets as they liked, the stands would have been packed full, but then we'd have to endure the endless fear-mongering from the control media about a “super-spreader” event.

Being that it's October, third quarter corporate earnings results will begin to pour in beginning next week. Up first are banks and airlines with JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Citi (C), BlackRock (BLK) and Delta Airlines (DAL) reporting Tuesday.

Bank of America (BAC), Goldman Sachs (GS), US Bancorp (USB), Wells Fargo (WFC), PNC (PNC), and United Airlines (UAL) are on deck for Wednesday.

Thursday, Morgan Stanley (MS) reports, and on Friday, Ally Financial (ALLY), BNY Mellon (BK), and Citizens (CFG) open their books.

Banking stocks are likely to report large trading profits and expanded loan loss or bad credit reserves, while the airline stocks should post incredible losses as they were not allowed to perform any major cost-cutting through layoffs until October 1, via agreement for bailouts issued thought the CARES Act. Airline traffic has been a trickle of what is normally was, thanks to the coronavirus and government restrictions on travel.

An aside to the airlines and bank stocks, the US congress and the president have failed to reach agreement on a second round of stimulus, including more money for the airlines and $1200 checks to most adult Americans. Despite the deadlock on a stimulus deal being constant since July, stocks apparently pinned hopes on one emerging from the DC morass. Thus far, they have been disappointed, though one could hardly suspect that considering the outsized gains put up over the past two weeks.

All the majors were up more than three percent on the week, with the NASDAQ surging ahead by 4.5%. Some media outlets touted that stock gains were due to investors eyeing a Joe Biden "blue wave" victory for the Democrats come November 3, as if the prospect of increased free money to the masses along with higher corporate taxes and tax hikes on people earning over $400,000 a year - as Biden has promised - is somehow a good thing.

The mainstream polls keep putting Biden well ahead of President Trump, though most Americans are aware that the polls are fatally flawed, as evidenced the last time anybody was nearly a "lock" in 2016, when Hillary Clinton was supposed to win in a landslide. We all know what happened then. Thus far, the pollsters haven't mended their methodologies to fall in line with reality. Polling and predictions have become a massive con game and propaganda ploy by the deep state, but, unless the pollsters show Trump making headway over the next three weeks, they're likely to be exposed as frauds again.

The pollsters also aren't cognizant of the idea that by showing Biden with a comfortable lead, many Democrat voters may eschew the process altogether, figuring it's in the bag for their man. That may be a part of the plan, however, as the Democrat National Committee (DNC) can then claim low voter turnout as a proximate cause for the demise of their candidates. As backup, they have millions of mail-in votes by which to contest election night results, which also appears to be part of the plan to rid Washington of Mr. Trump and his deep-state-draining entourage. A Trump-Pence victory seems more and more likely with each passing day and each fake news story fed to the largely "not buying it" public.

Treasury yields rose substantially over the course of the week, reaching what may turn out to be something of a new norm for long-dated securities. The 10-year note yielded 0.79% at the close of business Friday, up from 0.70% a week ago. Yield on the 30-year was also ahead, by 10 basis points, to 1.58%. Short-dated maturities remained more or less anchored to the zero-bound.

Oil rebounded sharply off an October 2nd bottom at $37.05 for a barrel of WTI crude, bouncing as high as $41.19 on Thursday before settling out at $40.60 Friday. The gains can be tied neatly to Hurricane Delta, the massive category 3 storm that came ashore at Southwestern Louisiana, the same area devastated by Hurricane Laura just a week weeks ago.

The storm caused extensive damage, left 700,000 homes and businesses without power and caused the shutdown of oil production in the Gulf of Mexico. Most ports and refineries were closed in advance of the storm and will be slowly reopening in the coming week. Getting back to anything resembling "normal" in the area is likely to take months.

Precious metals had a roller coaster of a week, but ended positive thanks to intense buying on Friday. Gold was $1899.84 an ounce at the previous Friday (October 2) close, dipped as low as $1878.18 on Tuesday, but closed out the week at $1930.40. Silver engaged in a similar pattern, closing out the prior week at $23.74, dipping down to $23.07 on Tuesday, but rallying the rest of the week to close at $25.15.

Here are the latest real sales numbers on common gold and silver items sold on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):

Item: Low / High / Average / Median
1 oz silver coin: 30.00 / 49.99 / 37.41 / 35.99
1 oz silver bar: 30.00 / 53.20 / 36.46 / 35.50
1 oz gold coin: 1,978.90 / 2,260.96 / 2,068.36 / 2,059.51
1 oz gold bar: 1,955.00 / 2,050.77 / 2,025.75 / 2,029.84

Premiums for physical precious metals remain at extremes, though Friday's gains in the spot and futures markets began to bring the paper and physical worlds closer together. Chartists are looking to call the past 2 1/2 weeks a near-term bottom, setting up another major move to the upside for both gold and silver.

At the Close, Friday, October 9, 2020:
Dow: 28,586.90, +161.39 (+0.57%)
NASDAQ: 11,579.94, +158.96 (+1.39%)
S&P 500: 3,477.13, +30.30 (+0.88%)
NYSE: 13,252.62, +62.04 (+0.47%)

For the Week:
Dow: +904.09 (+3.27%)
NASDAQ: +504.93 (+4.56%)
S&P 500: +128.72 (+3.84%)
NYSE: +502.83 (+3.94%)