Stocks Drop, Then Pop; Global Financial News

Now we're supposed to believe that there's a new, deadlier strain of the coronavirus out there that may or may not be effectively nullified by the new vaccines that are being foisted upon the public.

OK. If you want to believe all of this, you can take the short bus to the bridge I have for sale.

Notice that the new coronavirus strain was found in England, the same country that's been trying to extricate itself form the European Union since the public voted to do so nearly four years ago. How convenient, that as the deadline for a formal exit from the EU approaches, England is cut off from the rest of the continent, stoking fears that the country will run out of food, medical supplies, and other necessities.

It's a crock. By most accounts, there are somewhere between six and 30 strains of coronaviruses extant in the world today and all of them are simple mutations from a main virus. The reason a virus mutates is simple: to spread more readily so that it can survive. It's likely that the new strain is less deadly than the fake strain already causing global panic. Yes, the one that kills about .03% of those infected.

The reality is that this "pandemic" is all due to a virus about as nasty as the common cold for most. It's been used - and continues to be used - as a control mechanism by government, the medical community, and the media. Deaths from Covid are a tiny percentage (about 6%) of the total reported deaths with Covid and all the masking-up, locking down, and fussing over this non-lethal virus has caused more damage than the virus ever will. It's all intended to violate your rights, destroy the global economy, and subjugate the vast populations of the world to the Great Reset planned and promoted by the World Economic Forum (WEF) and its James Bond-type leader, Klaus Schwaub. He's actually written a book about it and it's available on Amazon.

So, Monday, when the news broke that this new strain was running loose in Great Britain, European stocks slumped and US futures fell. But then what happened? When US cash markets opened, sure, they were down, but by the end of the day, the Dow was green and the other indices suffered minor losses. And, on Tuesday, European markets were all higher. Virus hysteria is just another means to redistribute wealth and shares of stock. Weak hands sell, strong hands buy. Nothing mysterious about that at all. It's market manipulation 101.

As far as retaining civil rights and freedom are concerned, Europe is pretty much already a lost cause. Governments long ago took away citizens' rights to bear arms, and their systems are already largely socialistic. America still has time, but it's running short. If Joe Biden is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, it's over. The outcomes are either civil war or total subjugation. The coronavirus has been used to take away rights and freedoms, and it's been employed very successfully by a globalist tyranny.

Bottom line, here are some simple truths about the coronavirus:

It's real, but it's not deadly. Most people who contract it don't even know they have it or have what amounts to a mild dose of the flu.

It's being used by government, media, and the medical community to control people and rake in money.

Masks, lockdowns, and vaccines are ineffective and possibly harmful.

Ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine and other preventive treatments are available and they work, but the medical mafia doesn't want the public availed of them.

The rights of billions of people are being violated, daily.

No links were provided in this article because people need to verify facts for themselves.

BTW: all markets, from stocks, to bonds, to precious metals, oil, commodities, and forex are controlled by big money financial institutions, hedge funds, and central banks. The only "markets" that may be beyond the control of nefarious actors are cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Etherium, and others, though governments are working hard to try to regulate and tax them. So far, they've only been mildly successful.

At the Close, Monday, December 21, 2020:
Dow: 30,216.45, +37.40 (+0.12%)
NASDAQ: 12,742.52, -13.12 (-0.10%)
S&P 500: 3,694.92, -14.49 (-0.39%)
NYSE: 14,378.85, -88.97 (-0.61%)

WEEKEND WRAP: Fed Fail

Sick joke of the week: Congress is close to an agreement on another CV-19 relief bill.

That's it. There have been breakthroughs, "imminent agreement", setbacks, and false starts since congress and the administration began working on a second round of CV-19 in July, or June, or May, or whatever date one wishes to throw out there.

It's not happening. Congress spent the week preening and posturing, as they normally do, right up until the deadline for passing a continuing resolution to keep the farce going came, Friday night, when the House and Senate agreed to fund the government through Sunday. President Trump signed the measure on Saturday.

Well, it's Sunday morning, so, we will all soon find out whether the assemblage of 535 self-absorbed narcissists can make themselves look good by passing some kind of "relief" for American people.

Whatever comes out of congress today, or even Monday or sometime in the future (really, at this point, who knows?) will be a watered-down version of the first big stimulus, the CARES Act, the $3 trillion package approved by congress last Spring. The current proposals are for a bill that would be less than a third of that in size, about $900 billion. If and when such a bill is passed, Americans earning less than $75,000 would receive $600 to $700 each. Couples earning under $150,000 would ostensibly be eligible for one-time checks of $1200-1400, essentially half of the first go-round, so, yes, it's OK to call your congressperson Scrooge, because he/she/it is. They are collectively screwing everybody. Merry Christmas.

About the best thing that can be said about congress in this winter of discontent, is that they've failed miserably. All they've done for the past year is watched the economy and the country sink into a desperate state of affairs, promising to help and supplying false hope. There isn't one person in ten that believes the country would be better of without them at this point.

Dismissing the obvious self-hate that Americans may have for electing this current selection of cretins, the world kept turning and economics didn't take the week off.

Stocks had themselves another week of gains, following the prior week's losses, with all of the indices reporting new record highs, though, with the exception of the NASDAQ, which gained more than three percent for the week, gains were modest. Techs led. Financials were mostly flat, if anybody cares.

Oil prices continued to rise as if there was an imminent economic miracle about to happen, which might be the common thinking in the futures market, now that vaccines for the dreadful non-virus are slowing making their ways to the mainstream of both media and blood vessels. The price of a barrel of WTI crude oil rose every day since closing at $46.57 last Friday (12/11), closing out the week at a ten-month high of $49.08.

That the meteoric rise in the price of oil coincides with the coming Christmas and New Year holidays is no accident. Oil companies have been doing this "expected demand" ritual for years. Oil and gas prices are always highest when the most people are driving, so, even though Americans are being told to stay home, stay safe, don't spread the virus during the holidays, Big Oil can't help themselves from fleecing the public anyhow.

The odd thing about gas prices, is that they go up right away when oil prices rise, even though the gas in their underground tanks was purchases at a lower price, but, they don't come down right away when oil goes down, because they claim they are then selling gas that they purchased at a higher price. It's a classic heads-I-win-tails-you-lose con that's been victimizing the public for decades. Has congress ever done anything about obvious price-fixing? Please stop laughing.

Bond yield were on the rise again last week, with the 10-year and 30-year yields gaining five and seven basis points, to 0.95% and 1.70%, respectively. Shorted-dated maturities remained tethered to the zero-bound, with anything having a duration of one-year or less flat-lining at .08 to .09.

For it's part in the ongoing failure of everything "federal," the Federal Reserve held the last of its FOMC meetings for the year, wrapping up on Wednesday by reiterating its commitment to inflation above two percent and QE infinity in the form of $40 billion a month in mortgage-backed securities and $80 billion a month in treasury purchases.

While it's arguable that the assembled economists at the Fed know exactly what they're doing, there's compelling evidence to the contrary, or at least threat they know what they're doing is wrong, but that doesn't seem to be enough to stop them from doing it. The American experiment was never supposed ot end in collapse, but the Fed seems intent on engineering a giant crack up boom and bust, just as Ludwig von Mises and the rest of the non-Keynesian, Austrian economists postulated. The American experiment may be going down in flames, but the Fed's fiat experiment, closing in on 50 years from the August 1971 closing of the gold window by then-President Richard M. Nixon, is cratering into a black hole, never to return. The dollar has been losing value so fast over the last 12 months, international companies are having a difficult time squaring their books.

Though it's true that all fiat currencies are collapsing at the same time, the dollar has clearly taken the lead, losing significant ground to the euro, yen, and pound. So desperate are the managers of the currency that Treasury labeled Switzerland and Vietnam as currency manipulators, adding that India, Thailand, and Taiwan may also be attempting to devalue their currencies against the dollar. Such risible claims will do nothing to slow the descent of the world's reserve currency - and eventually all other fiat currencies - to its intrinsic value of zero, as short-term bills are already indicating.

Which brings us finally to real money. As more and more individuals and corporates hasten dollar flight, nobody dared miss the incredible rise of Bitcoin over the past week, as it careened through its old high, past $20,000, to as high as $23,711.43, the more than $4,000 gain all happening in the blink of an eye, in less than two days, from early Wednesday morning until midday Thursday. Hedge funds and other investment houses have recently begun singing the praises of crypto=currencies, many of them piling into such as investments in a post-dollar environment.

While Bitcoin was making all the headlines, gold and silver crept higher in one of the best weeks for precious metals in recent days. Gold gained $43 per ounce over the past seven days ending Friday, from $1843.60 to $1886.80 at the close in New York on 12/18. Silver rocketed from $24.09 an ounce to $26.00 over the same expanse. Gains in the metals were not without notice on public exchanges, as premiums remain elevated, as they have been for the better part of a year.

Below are the most recent prices for commonly-traded gold and silver items on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free, included):

Item: Low / High / Average / Median

1 oz silver coin: 28.00 / 39.99 / 35.19 / 35.58
1 oz silver bar: 29.85 / 37.02 / 34.00 / 34.45
1 oz gold coin: 1,900.00 / 2,075.33 / 2,010.88 / 2,025.49
1 oz gold bar: 1,899.00 / 2,289.95 / 2,001.29 / 1,982.69

Dollar flight is certainly not lost on gold and silver investors. Gains in the precious metals space prompted prices for gold coins and bars to price above $2,000 on average for the first time on a month. Silver average and median prices rose less, signaling that shortages experienced earlier in the year have been resolved. Most online dealers are currently reported most commonly-purchased items in stock, which was not the case in Spring and Summer 2020.

With spot prices for both gold and silver nestled just below their late summer highs the belief that a new surge of buying may be on the horizon has been making the rounds. Given the gains in cryptos and the length of the consolidation phase for the metals, it would make sense for gold and silver to surge to new highs in coming weeks and months, though it is well-known that January and February routinely mark lows for the year in both metals, so another pullback could occur before any meaningful advance takes place.

Finally, this being the final WEEKEND WRAP before Christmas, it's important to be reminded to stand ready for the future, which is always uncertain. In a month's time, Americans may finally see resolution to the ongoing presidential contest, but also, quarterly and 2020 annual reports will be flowing to Wall Street investors. As murky as it may be, one should have a view of the immediate future as well as the longer term. Massive changes are happening in economies and societies around the world, changes that are likely to have profound impact upon how people behave overall, but, importantly, how financial transactions - everything from buying groceries to financing roads and bridges - are conducted.

A new paradigm is emerging and it increasingly appears to be one that will not retain many of the rudimentary characteristics of the old one.

Happy Holidays!

At the Close, Friday, December 18, 2020:e
Dow: 30,179.05, -124.32 (-0.41%)
NASDAQ: 12,755.64, -9.11 (-0.07%)
S&P 500: 3,709.41, -13.07 (-0.35%)
NYSE: 14,467.82, -48.91 (-0.34%)

For the Week:
Dow: +132.68 (+0.44%)
NASDAQ: +377.77 (+3.05%)
S&P 500: +45.95 (+1.25%)
NYSE: +112.53 (+0.78%)

Lamenting Congress and Dollar Flight

As the congress cretins prepare to promise another day's worth of "progress" on the continuing negotiations over the long-awaited COVID-related stimulus or relief package, your average American and intrepid investor (not the same) are getting a little bit tired of hearing the same line touted over and over again as it has been for many months.

There's been so much accumulated progress toward meaningful legislation to dole out money to the plebes and other, more financially-needy institutions that Americans should have already received the dough and spent it by now. Instead, the disinclination by congress to pass along a bit of taxpayer riches to the downtrodden and beleaguered middle and lower castes of folks has caused not a little bit of consternation and dilution of bank balances, credit facilities, piggy banks, and coins found in couch seats.

Millions are lining up at food banks because they can't afford to eat properly, yet the idiotic Democrats and resistant Republicans insist upon hammering out their differences over months of tiresome news bites and plain old incompetence. All of it is making for very bad theater and stressing the economy closer to a breaking point.

Meanwhile, anybody with money or significant assets has been literally heading for the hills, bugging out, getting away from cities and out of harm's way, not so much from CV-19, but from the mass hysteria that has taken place over the past nine months. The number one way to stay safe from pandemics and people is to get out of Dodge, as it were, and number two is to turn off the television and its preaching of utter nonsense, lies, propaganda, and the occasional sporting event (attended by few fans, which is a shame, and unnecessary).

Stocks continue to be purchased with appropriate reckless abandon, as though the binge-buying will never end. Some larger hedge funds and investment houses have opted for crypto-currencies, now that Bitcoin has surged to record levels and looks like an asset - and a currency - that cannot be undermined, manipulated, or controlled by governments or other nefarious folks.

For those with the head for it, Alasdair Macleod's latest offering at goldmoney.com is entitled, The Next Dollar Problem Has Just Arrived, citing flight from dollar-demoninated assets heading straight into stocks, gold, silver, and, especially, cryptocurrencies, like Bitcoin, Etherium, and others.

It's all getting just a little bit too much to bear as most Americans are so weary of the CV-19-related news, dubious government mandates and scare tactics, they've almost forgotten that the presidential election is still being contested and that Joe Biden may actually not have won the November 3rd contest, which, incidentally, was extended b some states counting votes as late as a week or more later.

Congress will almost certainly pass a short-term funding measure on Friday to keep the government operational at least until Tuesday of next week, prompting the obvious question: Is this any way to run a country?

It's not, and the political class should be ashamed of themselves, though we all know they won't be. They think they're doing some kind of public service, delivering a Christmas miracle, like the vaccines that half the country won't take.

It's enough to make one sick. Oh, wait...

At the CLose, Thursday, December 17, 2020:
Dow: 30,303.37, +148.83 (+0.49%)
NASDAQ: 12,764.75, +106.56 (+0.84%)
S&P 500: 3,722.48, +21.31 (+0.58%)
NYSE: 14,516.73, +107.80 (+0.75%)

Congress Fiddles As America Burns; Fed Confirms QE Infinity; Bitcoin Rockets Higher

Legend has it that Roman Emperor Nero "fiddled while Rome burned."

While the story has largely been disproved (or debunked, in today's parlance), primarily because the viol class of instruments wasn't invented until the 11th century and the six-day fire that engulfed Rome occurred in 64 AD. Nero couldn't have been fiddling, but he almost certainly was diddling his lute.

Still, the story has survived the ravages of time, as testimony and warning of the wantonness and indifferent attitudes of kings and queens, monarchs, rulers, and tyrants. Those who hold power rarely embrace the cares of the common folk; more often than not, they labor relentlessly to thwart the will of the people and enslave their subjects.

So it is that humanity has evolved over the eons to reduce the self-centered interests of sociopathic governors and emperors, to spread it around in parliamentary fashion, to a select group of immoral heathens commonly referred to these days as politicians. Instead of one evil monster leading a nation to ruin, there are many charting the path of destruction, willingly unconcerned with the future other than their hold on power.

That's what we have in the US congress today. With few exceptions, congress consists of 100 senators and 435 members of the House of Representatives, a grand and glorious total of 535 "Neros" fiddling madly as the nation - literally and figuratively - burns. As if the looting and arson in cities across America this past summer wasn't enough destructive entertainment for the privileged class, they've continued their tortuous ways by tempting the citizenry with promises of "relief" and "stimulus."

They've played their twisted game since July at least, when Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin held breathless negotiations over a second round of CV-19 relief, promising aid to the unemployed, the aged, families, businesses, and even many of their close friends and supporters.

To date, some six months later, they've produced nothing of the sort, and now, we are learning that there is likely to be further delays past the temporary Friday deadline, because, as we all know, the political class has to approve a spending bill by that date, as funding the continuation of their precious government fiefdom has taken precedence over providing even the smallest comfort to the ordinary citizen.

The New York Times, that beacon of everything suspicious about the marriage of media and government, reports that majority leader Mitch McConnell has told colleagues to plan on remaining in Washington into the weekend, delaying the highly-anticipated departure from their duties for a two-week holiday. Poor babies.

They've had months to put together a bill to help the American people, and yet, they still can't muster the where withall to spend money that they don't have on people they obviously don't respect. A pox on all of them and their houses. Happy Holidays, indeed.

While the feckless misanthropes in the Capitol building were dithering and whining Wednesday, the FOMC of the Federal Reserve (the private central bank that issues non-constitutional currency) ended their final meeting of the year with their usually-brief statement that included the usual boilerplate about inflation targeting at two percent and full employment, along with this gem:

...the Federal Reserve will continue to increase its holdings of Treasury securities by at least $80 billion per month and of agency mortgage-backed securities by at least $40 billion per month until substantial further progress has been made toward the Committee's maximum employment and price stability goals.

In case one is unfamiliar with the Fed's twisted verbiage, Chairman Jerome Powell and his cohorts plan to continue quantitative easing (QE) - aka money printing - by buying up $80 billion a month in Treasury bills, notes, and bonds, and another $40 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) ...forever, or, at least until such time as the world awakens to their massive counterfeiting scheme and rejects the US dollar as the world's reserve currency or as currency at all.

Such awakening may be already underway, as, on the same day that the congress delayed and the Fed assuaged markets with bounties and pallet-fulls of filthy lucre, the untethered cyrpto-currency known as Bitcoin rocketed to new all-time highs, absolutely screaming past the old level of $19,950, to as high as $23,776.94 overnight, showing no sign of relenting in its ascent.

The blockchain powered alternative currency is now being embraced by the titans of Wall Street. Investment houses and hedge fund managers are buying in as never before, boosting the value of the non-debt-based currency in the face of unrelenting global currency debasement. As long as the Fed and ECB continue their profligate ways, Bitcoin promises to attract more users, more investors, at higher and higher levels.

It's not so much that Bitcoin is rising in value, as the comparative currency, the US dollar, is losing all of its own. Intent on diluting the money supply, the central banks have embarked upon the end-game voyage to the eventual destruction of all fiat currencies, and it's happening with a swiftness toward a crashing upon the shoals of insolvency unseen until these past few days.

Currency destruction, be it by hyper-inflation, imploding deflation, or just plain mismanagement, usually takes years, decades. Well, the Fed's been at it for over 100 years. Since 1913, they've been the sole issuer of the currency that has lost 97% of its purchasing power and is now on a course to eviscerate the final three percent. The Fed has a running start and assistance from the federal government, which, despite their seeming unwillingness to craft bills to waste away the currency, will eventually find a way to blow all of it into a financial black hole.

As the dreadfully Kafkaesque year of 2020 comes crashing to a close, 2021 promises more insanity in financial markets and Mad Max styling for the general society. There will be a banking crisis which will be characterized as a liquidity event but will, in reality, be one of solvency. Some, probably many, banks will fail. The Federal Reserve's balance sheet will enlarge to gargantuan proportions. They've already assured themselves of at least another $1.44 trillion ballooning via their QE measures, and that certainly will not be enough to stem the onslaught of fiat debauchery. They only know how to print and print more. They have no other plan. The end is in sight.

And, just in case anyone was unaware of how badly the economy is failing, another 885,000 people filed initial unemployment claims last week, up from a revised 862,000 during the prior week.

Merry Christmas? Happy Kwanza? C'mon, man, get with the new normal. The new fake president has promised to "Build Back Better," whatever that means. America, and, lest we forget, Europe, with their endless Brexit deliberations that will never be amicably resolved, are circling the economic drain, soon to be flushed.

Huzzah!

At the Close, Wednesday, December 16, 2020:
Dow: 30,154.54, -44.77 (-0.15%)
NASDAQ: 12,658.19, +63.13 (+0.50%)
S&P 500: 3,701.17, +6.55 (+0.18%)
NYSE: 14,408.94, +6.62 (+0.05%)

Stocks Rip Higher; Bitcoin at All-Time High; Gold, Silver On the Move

Getting the most out of scant headlines, stocks managed to take the rollout of the Pfizer vaccine (Monday) and the "progress" in congress toward a COVID-19 relief or stimulus bill (actually, little to no progress) as exceptionally good news, enough to push stocks higher Tuesday after a forgettable prior week which saw all of the major indices in decline.

The good news for investors in equities was that the one-percent-and-change advances put all the averages close to record closing high levels. What may be troubling to some of these stock market perma-bulls is that silver, gold, and Bitcoin - all alternative currencies to the falling US dollar standard and all of which have out-performed all the major averages except the NASDAQ - were also on the move, posting solid gains, poised to go even higher.

After the New York close and overnight, gold, silver and Bitcoin all added to their Tuesday wins as stock futures searched for headlines with which to goose stock futures toward a positive open.

Taking nothing away from the tried and true investing karma of holding bits and pieces of publicly-traded companies, mutual funds, ETFs or even whole index funds, it's valuation and counter-party risk that may eventually chink the armor of traditional investment schemes. P/E ratios of some individual stocks are at what some regard as nose-bleed levels. Simply put, with an economy running on CV-19 vaccine vapors, hope for a smooth transition of power in Washington (good luck with that one!), a masked, stressed, and nutrion-deprived populace, and a media narrative reliant on lies, half-truths and censorship of factual information, investors in just about any asset class have reason enough to be a little bit cautious.

It's not like stocks other than tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Google, and companies that have thrived under the lockdown scenario like UPS, Fedex, Target, and Wal-Mart have not performed well in 2020. The concern is that the number of positive stock stories is dwarfed by the cataclysmic collapse of other whole sectors, like airlines, hospitality, retail, and energy, marking the upside rally since the end of summer a thin one, in that a few stocks have benefitted handsomely while the rest of the market has stagnated or fallen apart.

That scenario had been evident in the initial stages of the rally off March lows, but has moderated of late, with most-shorted stocks and riskier issues now picking up the slack in the advance-decline ratios, indicating that the breadth of the rally may be finding a healthy sweet spot. From a broad overview perspective, this looks good, as stocks should during what is usually one of the best months for overall market gains, December, but, as 2020 comes to a close, investors may be thinking about tax implications, though the January Effect (From 1928 through 2018, the S&P 500 rose 62% of the time in January (56 times out of 91)) may provide comfort for the wall-of-worry weary.

From a contrarian - gold bug, silver surfer, or coin hodler - perspective, what the stock market does in relation to the alternatives is paramount. While the NASDAQ has performed admirably, up more than 37% year-to-date, the Dow and S&P are pikers by comparison, up roughly five and 14 percent. Gold (+17%), silver (+33%) and Bitcoin, up a whopping 270% and still rising, appear to be on course to take top honors for 2020.

What the end of the year and 2021 bring for investors is all loaded in Santa's bag, largely dependent on confidence (or lack thereof), geo-political events, and conformity to the "new normal" foisted upon the planet by CV-19 and the "Great Reset" memes.

It's a real grab-bag of assets and asset classes competing over a three or four dimensional chessboard. Not all asset classes can gain or lose at the same time, though this coincidence happens more often than one would normally expect.

And, just like that, at 8:45 am ET, Bitcoin rocketed to a new all-time high at $20,420.00.

Hold onto your hats and buckle up those seatbelts. The final trading days of the year may be the most interesting of all.

Happy Holidays!

At the Close, Tuesday, December 15, 2020:
Dow: 30,199.31, +337.76 (+1.13)
NASDAQ: 12,595.06, +155.02 (+1.25%)
S&P 500: 3,694.62, +47.13 (+1.29%)
NYSE: 14,402.32, +187.39 (+1.32%)