Stocks Slump Late as Gold and Silver Rebound with Gusto

Stocks erased early gains in a somewhat odd selloff late in the session, but their thunder was surely stolen by action in the precious metals markets.

Gold, since the paper price smash-down of April 12 and 15, has regained half of its losses incurred during that spectacular waterfall event. Silver, also negatively affected during the same time period, had its best day in fifteen months, with outsize gains of nearly six percent.

Whatever the intent of the paper gold manipulators, it seems to have backfired. Instead of declaring the gold rally "over," coin and bullion shops from Hong Kong to Mumbai to Shanghai to New York have experienced the briskest business in many years, as individuals rushed to secure physical supplies of the precious metals during a time of increasingly short supply.

While the physical price of gold was roughly $40-60 higher - though some reports say bulk buyers were paying close to $2000 per ounce - silver never really skipped a beat from the $29-30 range, as that was the market price on exchanges such as eBay and also via high premiums from online and brick-and-mortar dealers who reported being out of stock for many popular items such as silver eagles and bars.

The frenzied buying of the past ten days finally has drifted back to the paper gold markets on the Comex and Globex, to a point at which supply shortages are easing a little and the price has risen to more respectable levels. What remains to be seen is how customers who thought they had claims on physical gold through the LMBE and Comex but are instead getting warehouse receipts and being forced to settle in cash will retaliate.

If the paper and physical prices continue to diverge, it spells trouble for the paper exchanges, who do not have sufficient quantity of metal to meet those who wish to stand for delivery.

What is significant is how buyers seemed to pop out of the proverbial woodwork to buy quantities of gold and silver in physical form, as opposed to the speculators who trade nothing but what seems to be worthless paper and empty promises. If just five percent of the people on the planet engage in spirited gold and silver purchasing as a hedge against the currency devaluation that continues to roil world markets, the precious metals will be in extreme short supply in just a few months, sending the price through the roof and forcing the paper exchanges into default for failure to deliver.

For stocks, the incessant ramping due to non-stop easing in the form of outright money printing and de facto devaluation of currencies - especially the US Dollar, Yen and Euro - is nothing more than a function of excess capital looking for a place to go. With hedge funds and the mega-banks leveraged to the hilt, a hiccup from the gold bugs or the bond markets could trigger a selloff, complete with margin calls and scrambles for cash.

The global economy is being tested for all its Keynesian worth, though it seems the Austrian economists may be gaining an upper hand. The failed policies of the Fed, the EU and the Bank of Japan demonstrate just how desperate the central bankers are to keep economies functioning despite sure signs of a slowdown.

While it is usually unwise to fight the Fed, they themselves should be reminded that markets matter and manipulated markets and fiat currencies have an inglorious history of abject failure.

Today's fall-off in stocks could have been due to a wide range of causes, though it may just have been a front-running of tomorrow's first look at first quarter US GDP. Estimates are as high as three percent, and missing that mark may be the one peice of economic data that the stock jockeys just cannot stomach. If GDP comes in quoted at under two percent, look for a rush out of stocks and into treasuries, which have been in a state of suspended animation between 1.68 and 1.72 percent for more than three weeks.

Then again, its hard to beat a size player who keeps flooding the market with $85 billion per month and the outsize easing from the BOJ.

Dow 14,700.80, +24.50 (0.17%)
NASDAQ 3,289.99, +20.34 (0.62%)
S&P 500 1,585.16, +6.37 (0.40%)
NYSE Composite 9,188.86, +42.40 (0.46%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,971,246,250
NYSE Volume 4,198,031,000
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4182-2226
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 472-29 (extreme)
WTI crude oil: 93.64, 2.21
Gold: 1,462.00, +38.30
Silver: 24.14, +1.307

Flash Crash Proves Individuals are OUT of the Market and Computers Run the Show

As mentioned briefly yesterday, US and European markets are a joke. They are manipulated beyond one's wildest imagination and almost exclusively, the trading is done by computer algorithms, as was made entirely too clear by the action in yesterday's hacked AP Twitter account-flash crash.

In case you missed it - after all, it was only a four minute event - stocks lost all of their gains when somebody hacked into the Twitter account of the Associated Press (AP) and posted that there were two explosions at the white House and that President Barack Obama had been injured.

The tweet was a hoax, but the computers - which cannot deduce and make value judgements - responded by selling off all stocks. Volume, as displayed in animations from nanex.net completely dried up, leaving a few computers trading with a few other computers.

In other words, there were very few, if any, human responses to the fake tweet. Welcome to the bidless US stock markets, where only the computers can get the best prices and humans are relegated to a back seat. Any wonder why individual investors are wary of the stock markets? The same conditions likely exist - though not in such a pronounced manner - in forex and commodity markets.

It's time the American people disengage from this lunacy where only the bankers, exchanges and traders profit.

Take, for instance, today's trading, in which, when all was said and done at the close, the S&P gained a penny, the NASDAQ, 32 cents, while the Dow was down 43 points and the NYSE Composite gained almost 34 points. Surely that makes sense to some master algo inside a supercomputer somewhere beneath the trading floors, but to us dumb humans, it's somewhat confounding and confusing.

CNBC's Rick Santelli astutely pointed out that the other trade impacted by the phony tweet was none other than the Japanese Yen - US Dollar cross and the Yen/Euro cross, making the point that the Yen is now also tied into US stocks by HFT algos. Lovely.

Sooner or later, there's going to be a mistake somewhere, or some purposeful key-logging or hacking that completely disrupts trading in markets nearly around the world, and by then it will be too late. Obviously, having algos that trade on the basis of tweeted information is rife with flaws and ripe for harvest by nefarious forces.

As far as today's trading is concerned, nothing really mattered, even though the US was hit with another poor economic report, this one on durable goods orders for March, which came in at -5.1% on expectations of -3.1, so it was a bad miss on an equally bad forecast.

The spate of bad economic data has been partially offset of late by fairly good earnings reports from a smorgasbord of companies, close to half the S&P 500 having already reported. Of course, the algos are all over those, programmed to buy heavily on any earnings beats and disregard most misses.

Reality seems to have evaded Wall Street on a semi-permanent basis, but, Wall Street has never purported to have been a place for well-grounded types of people in the first place.

With sociopaths running the computers which trade the world, humans are bound to get bruised, and badly.

Gold and silver got a little bit of a bid, but a good chuck of it after the COMEX trading session ended. Oil was the top-performer with a gain of more than two percent. Oil never seems to be able to stay down for long. Funny how that always seems to be the case.

Dow 14,676.30, -43.16 (0.29%)
NASDAQ 3,269.65, +0.32 (0.01%)
S&P 500 1,578.79, +0.01 (0.00%)
NYSE Composite 9,147.77, +32.65 (0.37%)
NASDAQ Volume... 1,643,812,625.00
NYSE Volume 3,647,139,250
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4021-2343
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 381-36
WTI crude oil: 91.43, +2.25
Gold: 1,423.70, +14.90
Silver: 22.83, +0.016

Tuesday Tune-up: Stocks Rally on Bad Economic News

Really? US and European markets are complete frauds.

Here's the latest Keiser Report with Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert on the gold smash-down psyop, Ireland as an open-air prison, institutionalized corruption and much more:



Dow 14,719.46, +152.29 (1.05%)
NASDAQ 3,269.33, +35.78 (1.11%)
S&P 500 1,578.78, +16.28 (1.04%)
NYSE Composite 9,113.80, +93.88 (1.04%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,642,050,375
NYSE Volume 3,962,323,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4963-1510
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 396-41
WTI crude oil: 89.18, -0.01
Gold: 1,408.80, -12.40
Silver: 22.82, -0.507

Relative Price Inflation; Getting Off the Investment Grid; Permanent Backwardation in Gold

Since today's trading was nothing but another typical "buy the dip" on low volume type of affair, after Caterpillar (CAT) posted truly ugly first quarter results and existing home sales were likewise horrible, today's post contains some random thought and ideas about the state of the economy and a link to an article by Professor Antal Fekete, one of the few honest economists in the world.

I'll take IBM for 200, Alex... er, make that 175.

I've always been skeptical of yields on dividend stocks, because, in a market-clearing event like 2001 or 2008, these stocks all lose on a per share basis. Yes, your yield rises, but at the expense of share price. At best, you break even; at worst, you lose and the dividend gets cut, a la 2008.

I don't believe the RE market is actually improving. Where I live (upstate NY), RE prices were not greatly affected by the bubble bursting, but now they're headed south, with lots of Fannie Mae foreclosures showing up after the courts were clogged with them for years (still are).

Cash, silver, land still appear as safe havens, though the recent decline in paper silver has had the opposite effect on physical. Current premiums are now ranging from 25-35%, making the actual price for physical silver closer to $30 per ounce then the post $22 and change.

Land is still a little pricey, especially if it's good farm land, but I'll still take wooded acres because you can cut and use the wood for all kinds of useful things, like buildings, fences, and heat (burns good), and once cleared, viola, farm land. I'm thinking more in terms of small organic garden plots rather than macro-farming, enough to feed a few families. Doesn't take much. The average back yard will feed three-to four families of four.

Cash is your best defense despite the scourge of inflation. If deflation occurs, cash is king, and with a huge crown. That's when you can buy assets on the cheap, which is investing 101 - buy low, sell high - ya know.

I'm still a deflationista, because I look around a lot. You can buy tomatoes at $2.49 a pound at the popular Wegmans' grocery stores, or hit the same thing for $1.59 at Price Rite or even Wally World. Don't get me started on limes, a must for my favorite Bloody Mary, at 3 for $2 at Wegmans, but 4 for a buck at Price Rite.

The Price Rite's and Aldi's are in poor 'hoods, so the sucker middle class gets raped at the "safe" stores. The dimwits in the inner cities, though, are buying mostly Cheetos and crap rather than good food with the SNAP cards, so, they'd just die off, albeit at lower prices.

My point is, get off the investment grid. Buy local (farmers markets are awesome), horde cash, and, when and if the silver mania subsides, more shiney.

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A True Small Business Success Story

Start a business. Anything. Get paid in cash, if possible. Don't become another debt slave with a shitty job.

Here's my 100% true story: I think it was about 1992. I was broke, living with my brother and he wanted rent. I had $12 in pennies, my car, a little gas and a computer and printer. I took those pennies, rolled them up, took them to the bank, got $12, bought $12 worth of stuff at the dollar store - mostly cleaning supplies - printed up some cards that said "Happy House" and took my goods door-to-door in my neighborhood (in the city, a little distance from the dollar store). I sold what I had in about an hour, went back to the dollar store twice that day to re-supply and again hit the streets.

In one day - ONE DAY! - I had $45, more merchandise and people calling me with orders and questions. My biggest seller were sponges. I was able to get a big bag of them for $1, broke them up and sold them for $50 each. People would buy six or eight at a time. Also, Old Dutch Cleanser (like Comet), which I got 2 for a buck and turned around at $1 each.

In a week, I netted over $400, and then got a huge order from a guy who ran a cleaning business for about $250. I did all this in three residential blocks, barely tapping the market.

I did this for about a month, paid all my bills and took a job with a friend as a painter, which paid extremely well, and still kept getting orders over the phone. I didn't pursue the business further, but, looking back, figure I could have made serious money had I kept at it.

So, my advice, find a service which you can handle, print up some cards or use the internet. There are opportunities everywhere for self-starters. Avoid self-pity and self-defeating attitudes and people who are negative. You have worth and if you allow yourself to overcome your fear of failure, you will succeed.

(Just a side note: When I started my "Happy House" business, I was worried that people would see that I was just buying stuff at the dollar store and turning it over. Never happened. Years later, I realized that I was providing a service: bringing those cheap goods to their doors, and that was the "value added" aspect. Add value to an existing product or service and you can't miss. I know a guy who goes to the farmer's market every morning, brings home vegetables and sells them from his front yard. His day is done by 1:00 in the afternoon, and he plays a lot of golf in good weather. There are success stories everywhere - many on ebay - of people pulling themselves out of bad situations. You are no different.)

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Professor Fekete on permanent gold backwardation:

http://www.professorfekete.com/articles/AEFWhoSaidDragon.pdf

Dow 14,567.17, +19.66 (0.14%)
NASDAQ 3,233.55, +27.49 (0.86%)
S&P 500 1,562.50, +7.25 (0.47%)
NYSE Composite 9,019.90, +25.78 (0.29%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,626,128,625
NYSE Volume 3,288,661,500
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 3644-2759
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 225-85
WTI crude oil: 88.76, +0.75
Gold: 1,421.20, +25.60
Silver: 23.32, +0.364

Avoiding the Obvious Global Slowdown, Stocks Ramp Higher to End Week

With the nation focused on the manhunt in the Boston bombings, Wall Street types took the opportunity to bid up prices on risk assets, which is really all they know how to do.

Despite the best efforts of the insiders trading against each other and hoping with all their hearts to lure retail suckers into the market, the major indices still ended the week with losses.

For the week, the Dow lost 318 points, and was held in check today by IBM, as Big Blue missed earning and revenue estimates and was down 8% in heavy trading.

The NASDAQ lost 88 points through the week; the S&P 500 dropped 33.

The G20 meeting in Washington was nothing more than the usual gap-fest, with nothing of importance coming out of the fete.

Boston continues to be locked down as infantile efforts by our nation's security forces try to catch a lone 19-year-old kid accused of committing - with his now-dead-brother - the Boston bomb attacks.

The wall-to-wall coverage of this non-event has allowed CNBC and Bloomberg talking heads to sidestep the issue of the rapid deterioration of the US economy.

Stay tuned for further non-developments.

Dow 14,547.51, +10.37 (0.07%)
NASDAQ 3,206.06, +39.70 (1.25%)
S&P 500 1,555.25, +13.64 (0.88%)
NYSE Composite 8,994.12, +72.94 (0.82%)
NASDAQ Volume 1,710,872,500
NYSE Volume 3,876,484,750
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ Advance - Decline: 4538-1852
Combined NYSE & NASDAQ New highs - New lows: 213-68
WTI crude oil: 88.01, +0.28
Gold: 1,395.60, +3.10
Silver: 22.96, -0.285