Stocks Bounce Back, Set To Continue Gains

After posting losses the first two trading days of March, stocks opened the new week with fresh gains, nearly erasing the red ink for the month. The Dow is still down more than 150 points for the month and much more than that from all-time highs (January 26 is looking smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror), but stocks are poised to push higher on Tuesday on good news from the Korean Peninsula.

Talks between the North and South are apparently proceeding well, with the North - according to published reports - willing to denuclearize if the US and its allies can ensure its safety. The thought of nuking North Korea, being more of a paranoid construct in the mind of leader, Kim Jong-un, than any substantive reality, should not be a major obstacle should talks continue apace.

If the North and South states do eventually settle their differences, it would amount to nothing less than a complete coup for President Trump and his negotiating team, which has talked alternatively tough and sensible to the North Koreans. Resolution of the 65-year-old standoff would seem to be positive for all parties, depending on the terms of any definitive pact.

A re-emergence of North Korea into the union of so-called civilized nations might also pave the way for other countries, such as Ukraine and Iran, to proceed with normalization of policies, taking a step back from the brink of war or annihilation, nuclear or otherwise.

Dow Jones Industrial Average March Scorecard:

Date	Close	Gain/Loss	Cum. G/L
3/1/18	24,608.98	-420.22	-420.22
3/2/18	24,538.06	-70.92	-491.14
3/5/18	24,874.76	+336.70	-154.44

At the Close, Monday, March 5, 2018:
Dow Jones Industrial Average: 24,874.76, +336.70 (+1.37%)
NASDAQ: 7,330.70, +72.84 (+1.00%)
S&P 500: 2,720.94, +29.69 (+1.10%)
NYSE Composite: 12,680.73, +122.74 (+0.98%)

War Talk Fading, Markets Rallying

As the sun breaks above the horizon in the Eastern US, it's becoming readily apparent that the recent war of words and threats between North Korea's Kim Jong-un and US President Trump were nothing more than well-orchestrated (either intended by the principals or promoted by the deep state) banter designed to allow release of a pressure point in the markets.

In other words, stocks were completely overpriced and the rally exhausted, so a selling excuse was necessary.

Nothing like the threat of a thermo-nuclear holocaust to clear the books.

With the main protagonists backing off their bellicose behavior, stocks rallied sharply on Monday and are prepared for another moon shot Tuesday.

Just in case one is unconvinced of the machinations of the deep state and international financiers, be reminded that markets worldwide - and not just equities - have been under the various thumbs of central bankers since the GFC of 2008-09.

As has been pointed out here more than a few times, nothing is as it seems. While the appearance of a roaring stock market is a great image to project, in all likelihood, that's all it is, an image. Thus, just about everything related to the mirage of a booming economy must be held in contempt as false.

Piling falsehood upon falsehood is not a great practice in the long run. It produces a massive complex of overlapping lies, or, as Sir Walter Scott wrote in the 19th century poem, Marmion :

Oh, what a tangled web we weave...when first we practice to deceive.

There is truth in life and in nature.

Nowhere in finance nor politics is more than a shred of honesty to be observed or heard.

The choices are simple: play along, play outside, or be played, but beware that there are no moral underpinnings in money or politics. That's been true for longer than anyone can remember.

Sadly, it remains the same today.

At the Close, 8/14/17:
Dow: 21,993.71, +135.39 (0.62%)
NASDAQ: 6,340.23, +83.68 (1.34%)
S&P 500: 2,465.84 +24.52 (1.00%)
NYSE Composite: 11,856.06, +92.85 (0.79%)

Much Ado About Nothing As War Rhetoric Fades

Could anything less have been expected?

Since we have fake news, fake boobs, fake money, fake legislators making fake laws, and fake outrage, why not have a fake war?

North Korea's Kim Jong-un recent bombast directed at the United States was remarkable only in the way world markets reacted to it. The tin-horn, third world dictator has been test-firing missiles and boasting about bringing Western civilization to its knees for months, but only this week did his war-mongering behavior result in stock market losses, which, in the grand scheme of things, were minor.

While vacationing President Donald Trump made headlines with his responses, the markets did an abrupt about-face midweek, ending a streak of ten straight positive closes on the Dow Tuesday with a small skid to the red, followed Wednesday by a more broad decline and Thursday with a cascading sell-off, which sent the major indices down the most in three months or longer.

The Dow didn't suffer much damage, though it was the worst week in the past 12, but the narrow, 30-stock Dow Industrials are still up almost 10% on the year. Where the impact was greatest was on the broader measures, specifically, the NYSE Composite, which fell nearly two percent. By comparison, the Dow was off just more than one percent for the week.

With the finger-pointing and threatening behavior by various world leaders dropping off to background noise as the weekend approached, stocks in the US rebounded slightly, as expected, since few astute geo-political minds actually believe we're anywhere closer to war with North Korea than we have been for the past sixty years.

Thus, it is likely to be back to business as usual for the markets on Monday, though one side effect during the recent tantrum has been the rise of gold and silver as safety bets and the fall of the price of oil, as the global glut continues. Gold reached its highest point since June, closing out the week about ten dollars below $1300. Silver managed to stay above $17 for the first time in two months, but crude oil ended below $49 per barrel, a price seen by many as still too high considering the global oversupply.

At the Close, 8/11/17:
Dow: 21,858.32, +14.31 (0.07%)
NASDAQ: 6,256.56, +39.68 (0.64%)
S&P 500: 2,441.32, +3.11 (0.13%)
NYSE Composite: 11,763.21, -8.39 (-0.07%)

For the Week:
Dow: -234.49 (-1.06%)
NASDAQ: -95.01 (-1.50%)
S&P 500: -35.51 (-1.43%)
NYSE Composite: -221.68 (-1.85%)

The Awakening Continues...

I would like to get back to the kind of world that existed when I knew nothing, when I was a kid, in the early 60s, before the MICC (Wilkerson's inclusion of "Congressional" to the standard MIC is essential and poignant) killed JFK.

Yeah, maybe America wasn't innocent and perfect, but it was miles ahead of what we have today. Anecdotally, my neighborhood, suburban Rochester (Irondequoit) was still largely a farming center. There were huge greenhouses just four doors down the street from me. And fruitstands, and kids riding bikes with no helmets, and cars without seatbelts and cops would would "give you a break" instead of "breaking your face."

Gradually, the farms were replaced with apartments, more apartments, stores, new homes, and the local government got bigger, and bigger and bigger. The town today is mostly still middle class, but the folks from the 60s and 70s have moved on. There are many more rentals, the shopping plaza that used to be all white shoppers is now 60-70% minorities, many of them on public assistance. The government is enormous. The school superintendant makes $285,000 a year, with golden pension, super health benefits, etc. The teachers make more money and have better benefits than 80% of the people they "serve."

It's all gone backwards. Our current system must come to an end, either by financial degradation (our best case) or armed conflict of private sector citizens against the "public servants." The government must be reigned in, and we must take our country back, because if we don't, there will be nothing left to salvage. We can start by opposing every school budget proposal and knocking school systems back to 1960s levels.

There will be great pain, so be on the right side. Private industry. Smaller government. Live and act without fear. It is the only way.

Published December 11, 2015, Abby Martin interviews retired U.S. Army Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, former national security advisor to the Reagan administration, who spent years as an assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell during both Bush administrations. Today, he is honest about the unfixable corruption inside the establishment and the corporate interests driving foreign policy.

Hear a rare insider's view of what interests are behind U.S. wars, the manipulation of intelligence, the intertwining of the military and corporate world, and why the U.S. Empire is doomed.

Drums of War Bring Out the Traders

It didn't take long for Wall Street professionals to get over their fear of war in the Middle East, particularly Syria.

In fact, it took less than one day for the drumbeats of potential warfare to bring out the animal spirits and send stocks soaring.

Unfortunately, volume is still in the "new normal" range of moderate to dismal, and the Dow stopped ominously short of the magic 15,000 mark, a sign that there's still a healthy level of skepticism over the future of American empire.

Today's activity was really nothing of great consequence. Most traders are waiting until Friday's non-farm payroll report before the bell to establish positions or head for the hills. It's a very undecided market presently and that doesn't seem to want to change, especially considering the headwinds of the debt ceiling and Fed tapering on the agenda later in the month.

This little two-day rally did reverse the overall trend, for now, and the major indices are sitting close to key levels of resistance, though the Dow and S&P are still stuck below their 50-day moving averages.

Commodities acted very strangely, with significant losses in oil, gold and silver.

Dow 14,930.87, +96.91 (0.65%)
NASDAQ 3,649.04, +36.43 (1.01%)
S&P 500 1,653.08, +13.31 (0.81%)
NYSE Composite 9,400.20, +66.71 (0.71%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,812,184,125
NYSE Volume 3,516,943,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4510-2082
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 149-57
WTI crude oil: 107.23, -1.31
Gold: 1,390.00, -22.00
Silver: 23.42, -1.014