Why the heck not? The world, as we all knew it a little more than a year ago, is vastly different. Comparisons of 2021 to even just 30 years ago, are like night and day. Not that we didn't all have iPhones (though that's certainly a big part of the problem) or streaming video on the internet, it's that we didn't have maniacs and sociopaths at all the highest levels of media, medicine, and government running - and ruining - our lives.
Lockdowns, mandates, constantly changing medical recommendations, stolen elections, people dressed up in masks, social distancing rules, government checks doled out like candy, massive budget deficits, rioting and looting characterized by the press as "mostly peaceful" protests, talk of systemic racism, 56 genders, anti-white bias and hatred of "white privilege", media censorship, stock markets that always go up, and now, a mass shooting nearly every day are not normal. Not even close.
30 years ago, normal was a house in the suburbs, two kids, two cars and a dog or cat. People were generally happy, well-adjusted. The government was kind of over the top, but not criminally insane as it is today. Most people had decent jobs, stable lives, prospects for a future for their kids.
Now, what do we have? CRAP. Utter garbage out of the mouths of politicians and the media. A virus that isn't harmful to 99.97% of the population has been unleashed to bring about total control, a return to medievalism, neo-feudalism and slavery. The aim of the fake crisis was to create an environment ruled by fear, uncertainty, and doubt - the fabulous FUD - and, by most measures, the elitists operating behind the faces of the politicians and media mouthpieces have been highly successful.
These people in government and media are not the real enemies. They are just the faces of the new world order. They're all controlled, ordered from another authority to continually frighten, harass, shame, and above all, demean the human spirit. They all have handlers and take orders from people we do not see and do not know. The world is now effectively a massive plantation run by twisted sociopathic monsters.
Do you think Anthony Fauci says the - mostly moronic - things he says because he believes them? Do you think Joe Biden makes policies and decisions for the United States? Get a grip. They have handlers, controllers who design their every word, every action.
People have been scolded, hounded, rounded up, told what to do and when to do it, and most have responded like good little sheep. Don't go out. Don't hug your husband or wife or kids. Wear a mask. Take the jab. Twice. No, make that every six months. Bleat, bleat, bleat.
You go to bed thinking everything is OK, then wake up the next day to realize that the narrative has changed again overnight. People are maskless in Texas and Florida while the province of Ontario wants to lock people down for months on end, still.
This won't end. As soon as you think the crisis is over, the psychopaths will trot out their media minions to scare you with new variants and hold TV specials urging you to get vaccinated with an experimental drug. How sick is that? NBC will air Roll Up You Sleeves Sunday night, featuring politicians, including Joe Biden, former president Barack Obama and his wife, and Hollywood stars urging you to become a guinea pig.
They have to do this because there's a lot of what's called "vaccination hesitancy", otherwise known as "heck no, don't stick me with your Frankenstein potion!" Millions of people aren't getting vaccinated because they neither trust the government, the media, nor the medical community.
Some people get it. Other people get shots. The world is not going back to normal, however that's defined. There is going to be massive dislocation, disruption, and more insanity. If you thought this episode of oligarch madness or the ruling elite versus the serfs was over, forget it. It's just getting new legs. End of rant.
Like just about every other week, stocks had ample reason to be on the rise. The Dow was up for the fourth straight week and the 11th in the last 15, which covers all of 2021. By contrast, the NASDAQ has had eight winning weeks in 2021 and seven losers, though it has managed to climb to within 43 points of it's all-time closing high (14,095.47, February 12).
The S&P 500 and NYSE Composite, like the Dow, are now both on four-week winning streaks. For the year, both have been up 10 weeks, down five. The Dow, S&P 500, and NYSE Composite each closed out the week at record highs.
Not only have all the major averages done bang-up so far this year, the gains from the start of November, when the office of the president was decided, have been dramatic, to say the least. Since October 30, which pretty much marked the bottom of a slight downward blip in markets, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 7,699.07 points, from 26,501.60 to 34,200.67, a 29% rise in just more than five months. Joe Biden? Yes, thank you.
The S&P hasn't skipped a beat either. On October 30, it closed at 3,269.96. Through Friday, it's up 915.51 points, or 28 percent. The NYSE bottomed a few days before the other indices, closing at 12,415.42 on October 28. Through Friday's close at 16,186.29, it's up 3770.87 points, a gain of 30.37%, outdoing the others by a smidge. The NASDAQ, though it's been seen as a laggard, actually isn't. It's October 30 close was 10,911.59. With Friday's close at 14,052.34, it's up only 3140.75 points, 28.78%, a bit better than the Dow, but behind the NYSE and S&P. How will the tech billionaires cope? Anyone with basic match skills might question the probability of all four major indices all up by nearly the same percentage, only 2.37% separating their gains.
Is it rigged? Please, although we've been told "there are no dumb questions," this one actually is. The rich have to get richer, no matter which stocks they own.
The coming week is going to be heavy with fist quarter earnings reports as the bulk of stocks listed on the major exchanges report this week and next. There are simply too many good ones to list. Consult your favorite website or source for all the headlines which are certain to be positive.
With that in mind, there's plenty of evidence that the stimulus checks boosted the stock market and the stimulus is far from over. Most of the $1400 checks to individuals have been sent out (and probably spent), but the ongoing unemployment enhancement and child tax credit adjustment are rolling right along. Unemployed people are getting an addition $300 a week on top of their state benefit. People with kids are doing OK as well. A couple earning less than $150,000 or an individual making under $75,000 is slated to get a $250 monthly payment for each child aged 6 to 17, from July through December. For children under 6, the payment is $300, according to the schedule laid out by the IRS as part of the expanded child tax credit.
It's not like people with kids need any extra money - some do for sure, others largely don't - but it's more of the government's way of letting you know that they control you and, especially, your kids. The expansion of the child tax credit is nothing more than a test run for Universal Basic Income (UBI). Eventually, your kids won't have to work. They'll just get a monthly stipend from the government to pay for their rent, food, video games, cell phone and whatever else people will do in a few years time. That is, until the government figures out how to eliminate them, quietly, little by little, there will be no useless eaters left.
So, buy more stocks. They're good for everything, including little dogs, insects, and even the New York Yankees, losers of four straight through Saturday.
Bonds did their part to keep the stock market flying high with a fairly significant rally at the long end of the treasury curve. Yield on the 10-year note dropped eight basis points, from 1.67% to 1.59% over the course of the week. The 30-year bond yielded 2.26% by Friday, down from 2.34% the prior week, losing eight basis points as well.
Lower yields keep things like stocks on the bid. Fixed income earning less than the dividends on popular stocks is a recipe for huge risk asset purchases. How the Fed manages to keep treasuries in the doghouse is a very nifty trick. Some people actually know how they do it, but they might be sworn to secrecy. For the rest of us, we just marvel at the brilliance of the bond markets and rates that remain lower than inflation, continually debasing the currency until there is no purchasing power left.
On the subject of purchasing power, some Bitcoin hodlers awakened Sunday morning to the horror of a massive price collapse in their pet cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, on the heels of the Coinbase (COIN) IPO, recently topped out at $64,899.00 (Wednesday, April 14), but overnight Saturday into Sunday plummeted as low as $51.300, on reports of a mass power outage in China's Xinjiang province where much of bitcoin mining is done. This sent the hash rate cycling down, negatively affecting the price.
Around the same time, FXHedge tweeted that US regulators were about to charge some financial institutions with money laundering using cryptocurrencies. The tweet wasn't backed up by any credible news and it claimed anonymous sources, which makes is even less believable. Regardless, some people get agitated by FUD, and it wouldn't be a surprise if the story was planted by one of the three-letter agencies or if there's a false-flag event staged to spread fear of crypto. Some banks may get charged with crimes. Nobody will go to jail. There won't even be a trial. just a fine, but the media will be all over it, citing how nothing should be used as currency other than the usual fiat toilet paper.
That's just how they roll (sorry for the unintentional pun).
In any case, the price of Bitcoin has resurfaced, trading back around $56,000, where it was about three weeks ago. A 10-12% overnight price blink isn't anything Bitcoiners haven't seen before. As podcast host Steven Livera tweeted, "Just Bitcoin doing its thing on the way to $10M+." And that's how crypto podcasters roll.
In the commodities space, the price of crude oil (and everything else) was higher over the course of the week. WTI crude hit a four-week high on Thursday when futures closed in New York at $63.46 a barrel. That was up from the previous week's close at $59.32. Friday's trading backed it off a few cents, ending the week at $63.13.
WTI made a double top at just over $66 a barrel in March and has traded in a generally tame manner since coming back down, but with summer driving season on the horizon and many states in the USA reopening businesses and people simply wishing to get out more, there's reason to believe that gas prices will continue to hold at high levels, if not go to ridiculous extremes. According to AAA, the national average for a gallon of unleaded gasoline was stable, at 2.87. States along the West coast, plus Utah, Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada are all averaging over $3.00 a gallon.
Gold bugs and silver stackers got some welcome relief from recent declines in the prices of precious metals. While rumors of shortages have persisted for months, the LBMA and their daily fixes and naked short selling in the futures markets have forced down precious metals from last August's highs.
Silver gained from $25.22 to close out the week at $26.14 as the LBMA released a report on the status of silver in a report titled Silver Investment 2021 [PDF]. Among other juicy tidbits, the report mentioned that silver bullion in London vaults was at low levels and virtually depleted during the so-called #SilverSqueeze engineered on social media, spearheaded by an unruly gang on reddit.com. Bullionstar.com' Ronan Manly dissected the report, penning an excellent "must read" piece on the website's blog, titled "LBMA acknowledges “Buying Frenzy” in Silver Market and silver shortage Fears."
Gold had a stellar week, rising from $1741.20 to $1774.45 as of Friday's close. With interest rates coming back down on the long end, gold may begin to look like a sensible alternative. Of course, to anybody skeptical of the purchasing power of Federal Reserve Notes or any other fiat currency, gold has always been an extremely attractive alternative and store of wealth.
Here are the most recent prices for sales of common gold and silver items on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):
Item: Low / High / Average / Median
1 oz silver coin: 39.00 / 49.59 / 43.00 / 42.93
1 oz silver bar: 37.50 / 49.99 / 43.29 / 42.75
1 oz gold coin: 1,889.00 / 2,048.30 / 1,948.82 / 1,937.28
1 oz gold bar: 1,855.50 / 2,021.22 / 1,886.53 / 1,873.82
The results from this week's survey see gold stable, despite rising prices in spot and futures markets. The silver prices have been rather significant, however, reflecting not just the potential shortages in London vaults but the real possibility that shortages may persist for some time. Massive retail buying shows no sign of letting up, as the new Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark (SOSMPB) improved to $42.99, jumping by more than a dollar from last week's benchmark ($41.71).
On that positive development, that's a WEEKEND WRAP.
AT THE CLOSE, FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2021:
Dow: 34,200.67, +164.68 (+0.48%)
NASDAQ: 14,052.34, +13.58 (+0.10%)
S&P 500: 4,185.47, +15.05 (+0.36%)
NYSE: 16,186.29, +69.45 (+0.43%)
FOR THE WEEK:
Dow: +400.07 (+1.18%)
NASDAQ: +152.16 (+1.09%)
S&P 500: +56.67 (+1.37%)
NYSE: +229.12 (+1.44%)
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