- Currencies & metals are rallying as dollar gets sold…
- What’s China thinking?
Good Day, and a Marvelous Monday to you! Well, it was a long night, Wednesday night… We had water coming in from the unit above us. the wind was howling, there was a driving rain, our storm shutters were making all kinds of noises, and both Kathy and Chuck were up all-night placing buckets, wringing out towels, moving furniture, and making sure the water didn’t get to the unit below us… Now, wouldn’t it have been nice for the people above us cared about our unit like we cared about the one below us? Anyway… I stayed behind to deal with this, while Kathy went home as planned, to deal with the construction people… UGH! So, I didn’t write Thursday morning, because I had finally gotten back to sleep! And I’m here all by myself again! R.E.M. greets me this morning with their big 80’s song: The One I Love…
Well, Thursday saw the dollar drift throughout the day, going up 2 index points and then back down to finally settle up 1 index point for the day… The BBDXY had lost 15 index points the day before (Wednesday, after the stupid CPI report was digested, and caused me indigestion!) So, the selling was swift, and strong , so there was bound to be some trade adjusting done on Thursday…
Gold kick some tail on Thursday, and took names later! Gold gained $21.60 to end the day at $1,281.80, and Silver gained 30-cents to end the day at $22.82…
On Friday, last week, Gold continued to drive upward, until… the short paper traders showed up… Gold had moved to $1,996, but had to settle for just a 30-cent gain on the day, to end the week at $1,981.10… Silver had the same trading arc… Silver was up $24.22, when the lights went out in Georgia, and it had to settle for a flat day, and end the week at $23.71… For those of you keeping score at home, that’s $15 taken from Gold, and 50-cents taken from Silver!
And the dollar continued to get sold… The BBDXY lost another 4 index points on Friday, to end the week at 1,245…
The old Dollar Index fell below 104… and the euro DID trade through 1.09! Haven’t I always told you, well that is after the euro went through its initial baby steps, falling down quite a bit, that the euro had become the offset currency to the dollar, and therefore, whenever there was dollar selling, all you had to do was check the euro’s price, to garner just how much the dollar had fallen…
The price of Oil fell out of bed on Thursday, and then regained what it lost on Friday, to end the week trading with a $75 handle… Strange two days for sure, as there were reports that supplies had gained on Thursday, which had Oil running for cover, but by Friday, that was all in the past… I’m still of the opinion that these are low levels that we’ll look back on in the coming months… I’m just saying…
And bonds continued to get bought… I have something to say about all that in a minute… so stay with me here… not that you have anywhere else to go! HA! The 10-year ended the week with a 4.43% yield… That’s a far cry from the 5% yield we saw in Rocktober now, isn’t it?
In the overnight markets last night… Another 4.5 index points have been shaved from the dollar’s BBDXY index, indicating that the dollar was sold last night… I wonder what the PPT is doing? Have they left their positions, and gone out to find a fresh Turkey? Oh, good riddance to them if they have decided to throw in the towel… Gold & Silver aren’t faring well this morning either though… Gold is down $9 to start the day/ week, and Silver had given back 24-cents… Profit taking? While there may be some of that going on, this walks like, talks like, a duck, I mean short paper trading… I’ll find out today if that was the case…
I highlighted the euro above, but there are a couple of other currencies that are looking much better these days, and they include the pound sterling, Swiss francs, Russian rubles, and all three of the Euro Wannabes, zloty, forint, and koruna, and longtime readers will recall me talking about how when all three of those get to rallying, that a route on the dollar is on… So, we have that going for us this morning!
And don’t look now, Hey! I told you not to look now! Ok… what I want to highlight here is that the Chinese renminbi was allowed to really take a chunk out of the price, and it trades this morning at 7.16!!!!! WOW! Just last week it was 7.29… So, the Chinese are allowing the renminbi to rally VS the dollar, I have to think that there is some games men ship going on here, with the Chinese not buying Treasuries, and getting the Saudis to trade Oil in renminbi, and now this.. Is this all to show the world that the dollar is not the end all any longer? I wouldn’t doubt it at all… I’m just saying…
The price of Oil is up a buck this morning and trades with a $77 handle… While bonds…. well… the continue to get bought, I just can’t get my arms around this new bond rally… All the things that point to bonds not rallying are still in place, it’s just getting bought because of the new “the Fed Heads will cut rates by March 2024” mantra that’s getting all the air play on the radio, that has bonds getting bought… Be careful here… That’s all I have to say about that…
I was writing out some answers to questions that were presented to me from good friend, Dennis Miller on Thursday, and in them I explained that I looked at the markets call that the Fed would be cutting rates starting next March, and that had the stocks all lathered up, that the stock rally was nothing more than a bear market rally… after I had sent them to him, I saw this headline on MaketWatch.com “Seventh time a charm? Here are the other six times the market wrongly thought there’d be a dovish pivot.” How about that timing! They say you shouldn’t fight the Markets… Well, in this case, I’m going to pick a fight with them, because they’ve been like the boy who cried wolf, with their pivot calls, and what makes anyone think they got it right this time? I sure don’t! So, be careful out there in stock jockey land…
One of the Fed Heads talked last week about additional rate hikes… Hmmm… no sign of a pivot here, eh?
I saw last week a report that talked about how the Fed had delivered us a soft landing… Hmmm, isn’t that putting the cart before the horse? We haven’t gone through the whole cycle yet! And we’ve still got industrial production down, (and just printed negative!), Manufacturing still below 50, leading indicators showing negative for over 9 months, the yield curve still inverted, and a whole host of other data prints that do NOT show that we’ve experienced a soft landing… I’m just saying!
And here are some chilling numbers and words from longtime friend, Bill Bonner from his letter last week: “The US still borrows huge amounts of money. The average interest rate on consumer credit card purchases is now over 21%. Bloomberg reports that some auto buyers are paying 29% on their car loans. Mortgage rates have come down but are still twice what they were three years ago.
Meanwhile, the largest borrower in the world – the US federal government – runs a deficit of $7 billion every day, Monday through Friday. And it has some $7.6 trillion in old loans that it must roll over in the next 12 months. Its two major lenders – China and the Fed – have both stopped buying. Shouldn’t the feds cut back…and stop borrowing so much money?”
Chuck again… yes that’s what I’ve been harping about for a couple of decades now!
I’ve got an interview with Dennis Miller that will be hitting the inboxes of his subscribers in a couple of weeks, and I didn’t pull any punches, folks… So, if you don’t already subscribe to his newsletter, then go to: www.milleronthemoney.com and sign up… And don’t worry… It’s free!
Ok… I read this past weekend that Andrew Maguire, who watches Gold like a hawk, believes that Central Banks will require a Gold revaluation in 2024… Whoa there partner! What kind of revaluation? Well, Maguire believes that that gold increasingly is viewed as a better risk-free asset and market hedge than U.S. Treasury bonds, that “the exchange-traded gold fund GLD is under an attack seeking to convert its shares into real metal for delivery to Russia and China, and that the “trade at settlement” mechanism for trading gold futures contracts on the New York Commodities Exchange is the only device still available to the U.S. government and its agent banks for price suppression.”
I thank the good folks at Gata for sending me that note, along with a link to a video of Maguire talking about this revaluation… Ok, we’ve heard rumors of a pending revaluation of Gold for years now… But if he’s right, and Central Bank will require it, then that’s a different story, with a different ending… I’m just saying… Oh, and.. Got Gold?
The U.S. Data Cupboard had some damaging economic reports last week… Let’s go through them quickly here: Retail Sales for Rocktober were negative… Industrial Production was negative… Durable Goods Orders lacked any Oomph! And Initial Jobless Claims were 10,000 more than expected, and trending the wrong way… And all the Gov’t had to hand its hat on was the STUPID CPI! You know the report that even with all the hedonic adjustments, still shows consumer inflation way over the 2% target the Fed Heads have for inflation…
With this being a work shortened week with the Holiday, there’s not a lot of data to look at this week… We do start the week with the Leading Indicators, which have been negative for months now, and will continue to be, as long as the Gov’t doesn’t get a hold of the data! Tomorrow we’ll see the latest Durable Goods Orders, and judging from what I’ve seen so far, the data should go negative in Rocktober… So… the dollar is on its own this week ahead of Thanksgiving… And so far, it appears that the dollar will not get any stuffing… HA!
To recap… The dollar got whacked late last week… Gold & Silver rebounded… Bonds continued to rally on some very shaky trade thoughts… Chuck throws cold water on the folks saying that the Fed Heads had delivered us a soft landing… And Andrew Maguire is calling for a Central Bank originated Gold revaluation… Hmmm…
For What It’s Worth… I’ve talked about a Silver shortage for a long time now, and it’s never materialized, but Ted Butler, no relation that I know of, asked a simple question to the SEC and the CFTC (regulators) last week, and I’ve got his question detailed for you here… This was sent to me by the good folks at GATA, and it can be found here: An Answer Long-Overdue | SilverSeek
Or, here’s your snippet: “Butler writes: “The issue revolves around the 103 million ounces listed as being held for the I-Shares silver trust (SLV) by the trust’s custodian, JPMorgan, in New York and the 134 million ounces held in the JPMorgan Comex warehouse.
“This creates the unanswered question of whether the 103 million ounces held on behalf of SLV are also a big part of the 134 million ounces held in the JPM Comex warehouse or if the 103 million ounces are separate and distinct from the 134 million ounces in JPM’s Comex warehouse.
“This is a rather simple question that could be of significance.”
For if the inventories overlap, it would be more evidence of a silver shortage, as well as evidence of the official deception that long has surrounded the monetary metals.
So Butler has put the question to the chairmen of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. His report is headlined “An Answer Long Overdue”
I also know that the answer can be uncovered within a few minutes and a few phone calls, so this is not some heavy-duty investigation, involving a drain on S.E.C. or CFTC resources. I’ve also enlisted the aid of my local congressman, so an answer is just about guaranteed. Again, I’m not suggesting any type of deliberate under-handed activity here, just an issue that fell through regulatory jurisdictional cracks that needs to be clarified.”
Chuck again… Could this email that Ted Butler sent have anything to do with Silver’s big advance late last week? I guess we’ll have to wait-n-see… But there’s smoke here folks… and when there’s smoke, there’s fire… At least that’s what I’ve been taught!
Market Prices 11/20/2023: American Style: A$ .6551, kiwi .6025, C$ .7291, euro 1.0923, sterling 1.2466, Swiss $ 1.1314, European Style: rand 18.3961, krone 10.7393, SEK 10.4700, forint 347.40, zloty 3.9976, koruna 22.4610, RUB 88.46, yen 148.23, sing 1.3400, HKD 7.7942, INR 83.34, China 7.1675, peso 17.17, BRL 4.9094, BBDXY 1,241.25, Dollar Index 103.59, Oil $77.01, 10-year 4.47%, Silver $23.46, Platinum $901.00, Palladium $1,058.00, Copper $3.70, and Gold… $1,972.75
That’s it for today… This will be a very short week for Pfennigs! Tomorrow, I travel back home, so no Pfennig, and then Thursday is Thanksgiving, so definitely no Pfennig that day! So just today and Wednesday… So, what’s the deal with all the water problems we’ve had this year, first at our house, and now down here? Are we on the bad list? It sure feels that way, like if we didn’t have bad luck we wouldn’t have any luck at all! (Junior Sample) I kid, but it sure feels that way… How about my beloved Mizzou Tigers!!! They pulled a game out of the fire on Saturday, which was Senior Day at Mizzou… I was on the edge of my seat, and could hardly look to see if the winning field goal went through the uprights… My Tigers are now 9-2… And play their final regulars season game this weekend VS Arkansas, their border rival… Hopefully the team still has some hunger in them to win their 10th game! And our Blues got taken to the woodshed Saturday night… UGH! The Ozark Mountain Daredevils take us to the finish line today with their song: If You Wanna Get To Heaven… I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please oh please, Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler