January 24, 2022
* currencies rally on Friday, but get sold overnight…
* What’s up with Bitcoin?
Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Boy, did the ocean get mad suddenly yesterday! Suddenly, the waves were tall and crashing loudly into the beach… The ocean was very mad about something! The cooler weather maybe? I heard that there was snow and ice in N and S Carolina this past weekend! That’s crazy! Well, my pick to play in the Super Bowl, the Packers, blew a tire on Saturday, and lost… Not that it would have made a difference for sure, but you never know… the Packers only had 10 men on the field for the winning field goal against them! One of my fave songs from the 60’s, is Del Shannon’s song: Runaway… And that’s the song that greets me this morning…
Well, the end of last week brought us some dollar weakness on Friday… Not a lot of dollar weakness, but, if you happened to see that kind of dollar weakness every day for say a month, you would be talking about a real drop in the dollar… So, the BBDXY, which began the day at 1,173.32, ended the day, and week at 1,171.72, and at one point in the day it was down to 1,170… Gold was not allowed to rally on Friday, as the price manipulators were seeing to that, and the shiny metal saw a drop of $3.80 on the day to close the week at $1,836.60. Silver was up most of the day on Friday, and then saw a rash of short Silver paper trades take it down 18-cents on the day to close the day and week at $24.37
The price of Oil slipped about a buck to end the week with an $84 handle, while Bonds rallied once again on Friday! What’s up with that? The Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel announces that they are out of the bond buying business, and bonds rally? Years ago, and I mean many years ago, I sat on the Bond trading desk at Mark Twain Bank, and traded short term instruments like T-Bills, Commercial Paper and BA’s… I told you that to tell you this… I could always hear the main Treasury Trader, Ed, and his thoughts on why bonds would move one way or the other, and I’m sitting here wondering what Ed would say about the bond rally on Friday?
In the overnight markets last night… well that dollar weakness on Friday was not carried over to the overnight trading last night, as the dollar has rallied strong overnight. The BBDXY which ended the week on Friday, at 1,171.72, has rallied to 1,175.54 this morning… All the talk this weekend was about Ukraine, and Russia, and that has the safe havens getting bought… Dollars, yen, francs, Gold, and sometimes euros. And a quick look at the currency screens and I see that besides the rally in dollars, the yen is stronger, as are francs, and Gold…
Gold is up $4.10 this morning in the early trading, and Silver is down 18-cents… The price of Oil has rebounded a bit and trades this morning with an $85 handle, while the yield on the 10-year Treasury continues to drop, and trades this morning with a 1.73% yield… From what I read this morning, bonds are getting some strange association with a safe haven…
In addition, one would have to think that the rotation from stocks to bonds could be in place here… We also have Bitcoin dropping by 50% from its high, so the rotation there could be in place too… Although I can’t see the Bitcoin owners / sellers buying U.S. Gov’t Bonds, do you? There’s something there that just doesn’t hunt…
Well, as far as stocks go… I think they are getting their come- uppence… But I could be wrong, because I’m not a stock jockey, and don’t play one on TV either! I found the headlines on Friday interesting… 1 said, “Buy the stocks on the dips, because they are oversold” and
- said, “Sell stocks on any rallies, the bull market is over”…
Jim Cramer said, “Bitcoin sellers are coming to stocks”, and Chuck said, “Bitcoin sellers will be coming to Gold”…
And Bitcoin took one on the chin on Friday… 2 things may have brought about the selling… 1. The Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel announced they were out of the QE/ bond buying business, and 2. Russia announced that it will be unlawful to trade and own Bitcoin… And you don’t mess with the Russian police folks…
And Gold on Friday? Well… it couldn’t find a steady bid, and when it did find a bid, the price manipulators were there to persuade the buyer to look elsewhere…
As far as inflation goes… I was thinking about this the other day, and went to FRED for the answer… The answer to what, I hear you asking? OK, before I get to that, I want to go back in time…. And talk about something that I explained to you many times in the past, and that is that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel and the Gov’t. needed inflation to run hot, as they said they would allow it to run, to inflate away their debt… Well, Fred, (the Fed St. Louis data people), tells me that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel did see some reduction of their debt to GDP ratio in recent months, while inflation was proving to be more than Transitory…
But here’s the problem folks… The Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel stopped all bond buying last week, that means that they are no longer printing currency to buy the bonds, And I’ve proven to you over and over again that this is a money supply/ printing inflation… So, in essence, the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel failed miserably in their test to see if they could get the lawmakers’ runaway debt under control… They gave up on allowing inflation to run hot too soon…
Between a rock and a… well another rock, that’s our Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel! They’re damned if they don’t do anything about inflation and damned if they do something about inflation… Remember when I told you that the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel was painting themselves into a corner?
This is all going to end up in tears, folks… If you think you saw plenty of riots a couple of years ago, you’ve seen nothing yet! And that’s just the start of the goings on that will occur this year… I hear people say all the time, “That 2020 was the worst year”… Well, I tell them, and believe me when I say this, they didn’t want to hear about it, that they haven’t seen anything yet!
I wanted to talk a bit about what’s going on in the BITCOIN price, because basically that’s all there is to this cryptocurrency, a price… Well, it has fallen out of bed, and is proving to most people, something that I’ve thought about it since its inception, and that is it’s nothing more than gambling… Oh, well… that’s that, on this thing, that I won’t even qualify as an investment…
The U.S. Data Cupboard on Friday last week, has the Leading Indicators, which is one of the two forward looking data prints we get… The Leading Indicators were non-committal and printed the same as the previous month’s .08… Not exactly a ringing endorsement for the U.S. economy, eh?
That print, put an end to a very weak week of data in the U.S.
We do start out slow with the data prints this week, but really get into gear by Wednesday, when the FOMC meets… I’ll have more on what I think about that FOMC meeting, and press conference following the meeting tomorrow… And then on Friday this week it will be another datapalooza day, with so many real economic data prints jammed into one day, the last day of the week, when most traders are already making plans for the weekend…
Why do that do that? Why does the Gov’t schedule all those data prints on one day? It’s all stranger than fiction to me folks…
To recap… The dollar lost a little ground on Friday, at one point in the day it was a little bit more ground lost, but the green/peachback rallied at the close to end the week on a down note… Gold couldn’t find a steady bid, and Silver got sold in the afternoon on Friday, so both ended the week on sour notes… The price of Oil slipped, but remains strong, and Bonds rallied? I question that because it makes no sense to me how that happened… In the overnight markets the dollar rallied, along with yen, francs, Gold and Treasuries… Gold is up this morning, while Silver is down to start the day and week.
For what It’s Worth… Well, it was a “dry” weekend for articles, as most of them weren’t FWIW worthy… But this one from Zero hedge qualified, as it gave a great overview of what’s going on with the dollar, and it can be found here: “This Sucker’s Going Down…” | ZeroHedge
Or, here’s your snippet:”By now, anyone with half an inkling of curiosity about why prices and values don’t add up has traced the divide back to the money itself. It’s not hard to see.
Asset prices, like houses and the major stock market indexes, have lost all visible connection with the underlying economy. However, wage growth has stagnated; over the last 40 years low level wages have only increased by $0.32 per hour in real inflation adjusted terms. Stocks and residential real estate, at the same time, have gone to the moon.
What’s really going on…
Spineless Money
To begin, the nation, in nearly every aspect, is failing. Such is the fate of nations who adopt spineless money. More specifically, as 20th century currency analyst Franz Pick observed:
“The fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same.”
We’ve seen that spineless money is synonymous with spineless nations. Nero’s Rome. Revolutionary France. Weimar Germany. 1980s Argentina. Zimbabwe. You name it…
Once a country’s economy and finances have been corrupted by fiat the fate of the nation is doom and disaster.
Yet it didn’t have to be this way. A balanced budget. Stable currency. Limited government. Industrious populace. Personal responsibility. Rule of law. Commonsense. These, and similar sensibilities, would have prevented all the wild moonshots.
Instead, we got lies, corruption, teachers unions, arbitrary rules, monster debt, Anthony Fauci, fake money, woke, and a dependent populace.
Abhorrence like these, again, go back to the money…
Management of a spineless currency by central planners always falls to frequent debauchery…followed by short episodic periods of crushing austerity. The central planners never seem to get it right. Their extreme intervention lurches the economy from boom to bust.
Indeed, the fate of the nation and the fate of the currency are one and the same. We’re headed for complete financial, moral, and political collapse. But it’s not all bad…
You can count your blessings. You have front row seats for the greatest crackup the world’s ever known. The dollar’s doomed. The nation is too.”
Chuck again… well obviously, I cut up the article because it is very long, and so it you want the full effect of what he’s saying, click on the link above and read to your little heart’s content!
Market Prices 1/24/2022: American Style: A$ .7130, kiwi .6693, C$ .7927, euro 1.1305, sterling 1.3488, Swiss $1.0964, European Style: rand 15.2491, krone 8.9757, SEK 9.2686, forint 318.40, zloty 4.0312, koruna 21.6842, RUB 79.08, yen 113.79, sing 1.3460, HKD 7.7849, INR 74.54, China 6.3253, peso 20.56, BRL 5.4865, BBDXY 1,175.54, Dollar Index 95.92, Oil $85.11, 10-year 1.73%, Silver $24.14, Platinum $1,029.00, Palladium $2,232.00, Copper $4.45, and Gold… $1,840.70
That’s it for today… Now that the sun is up, I can see that the ocean is still angry today… UGH! Well, was that Chiefs/ Bills game last night one of the most exciting games you’ve ever seen? I still can’t believe the Chiefs won that game! Well, I as 0 for 2 with my picks on Saturday, but 2-0 with my picks on Sunday… We’re experiencing “winter” down south here… I love it when the TV guys warn parents that they need to bundle their kids up for the trip to school the next day, because… drum roll please, the temp is going to be in the 40’s… I laugh at them… But then I’ve become used to the warmer weather all the time down here, but I hope I don’t become like these thin blooded folks! HA! The Climax Blues Band take us to the finish line today with their song: Couldn’t Get It Right… I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself! And remember… Be Positive, Test Negative!
Chuck Butler