- the dollar goes on a rampage on Friday
- Gold & Silver get taken to the woodshed….
Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! It was a marvelous weekend, weather-wise here and hopefully wherever you live. Friday was the ugliest day for the metals, and I’m not sure where they go from here… My beloved Cardinals swept the hated Reds, here in St.Louis, and I loved it! The team now goes to NYC to play the pond scum, I mean Mets! (anyone who followed baseball in the 80’s will remember that term for the Mets). Elvis Presley greets me this morning with his song: Are You Lonesome Tonight?
Well, I would like to beat around the bush before getting to the ugliest day for the metals, but there was no joy in Mudville on Friday with the non-dollar investments either, so we might as well get right into this…
The dollar kicked tail and took names later on Friday gaining more than 7 index points and closed the week at 1,210….There are supposedly two ceasefires in force in the Middle East. One is between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon; the other, between the United States and Iran. Both are fragile. Neither is bringing peace much closer.
But, when you combine the markets going ga-ga over Peace, and the trumped up jobs report, you’d have the recipe for a dollar rally, and selling in metals… I’ll get to the funny numbers in jobs, later…
There was a bear raid on metals on Friday to beat the band… Gold was sold $146 and Silver was sold $6.04… The SPTs saw that the dollar was rallying and that the jobs numbers were higher than expected and they piled on… No penalty was called on them either! Gold closed at $4,328 and Silver at $67.72…
In the overnight markets last night… The dollar buying stopped but didn’t turnaround with it only losing 1 index point in the BBDXY… The damage to the currencies is water under the bridge. Now, they have to start over again and begin to build trust and their values…
The price of Gold saw some selling overnight and starts today, down $5…. Silver is up 53-cents to start the day/ week… The price of Oil remained in the $92 handle overnight, and the 10-year remained at 4.52% yield…
The overnight markets saw the damage to the non-dollar investments last night and said, Whoa there partner! But they don’t have the OOOMPH that’s needed to reverse what had been done, and so they just chipped away at the damage…
Why on earth are these SPTs allowed to breathe our air? Platinum, Palladium and Copper all took a big hit on Friday, and I just don’t know where they all go from here… It’s as if they’ve all given up, and ceded to the SPTs… I hope I’m wrong about that, but nevertheless it is what it is right now…
Silver closed below $70 for the first time since December of last year! And then It was on the way up!
Speaking of Silver… I found this ditty from the Silver Institute’s yearly report on Silver ,that is 99% hogwash for those of you who like to read stuff like that.. This is a retort, if you will, to their findings:
So all this gibberish about silver being used in EV’s, EV charging stations, wind farms, data centers, 5G stations, radars, storage batteries, drones and missiles, in electronic thermal management, in EMI, reflectivity and conductivity, and all this talk of an electronic revolution, going from analog to digital, all the headlines of silver being used in cellphones and computers, touch tone screens and sensors, silver being included in the USGS critical mineral list, China’s ban on silver exports, silver used in water purification, silver in medical implants and pacemakers, and antimicrobial creams, all this talk of innovation and technology, is apparently nothing but a smokescreen of hogwash and hot air, because over a period of 16 years the Silver Institute’s high priests have ordained from the pulpit that industrial demand for silver, excluding solar, has gone inexorably backwards, shedding 14%, while the world economy grew by 78%. I rest my case that the report is hogwash!
Well, the ECB (European Central Bank) is facing a dilemma but I think they will do what is right… You see, the ECB will meet this week, and become the first Central Bank since the Iranian War began to hike rates… here’s Reuters viewpoint: “The European Central Bank is set to raise its deposit rate to 2.25% on June 11, with another increase likely in September, as it balances energy-driven inflation against a weakening economy, a Reuters poll of economists showed.
Inflation stood at 3.2% in May, well above the ECB’s 2.0% target. More worryingly, core inflation – which excludes energy and food – rose faster than expected to 2.5%, suggesting the impact of the Iran war is feeding into prices in the Eurozone… Well, for that matter it is feeding into prices here in the U.S. too!
Circling the wagons back to the dollar… What on earth are the dollar bugs thinking, driving the dollar so high? All the things that we’ve talked about regarding chinks in the dollar’s armor still remain, they haven’t gone away… But the dollar bugs lifted the dollar out of the muck, and dried it off, shined it all pretty, and put it on display for everyone to see…And they did that so that investors will pile into the dollar fearing that if they didn’t they would miss out… This FOMO is going to underpin the dollar right now…
But in the end, all those things that I’ve talked about, hanging over the dollar like the Sword of Damocles, will come back around and then all those folks that got in for FOMO will rue the day they did so… I’m just saying…
In the meantime, the currencies look as though they were taken to the woodshed and beaten with a whip… They are all worse off than they were last week, so go ahead and check out where your currency is trading in the currency roundup… There is ONE currency that seems to be resilient to all this trumped-up dollar buying and that is the Chinese renminbi… But now, I’ve placed the kiss of death on the currency, so nevermind…
The U.S. Data Cupboard on Friday had the Jobs Jamboree and in it the BLS claimed that 172,000 jobs were created in May… 96,000 of them hospitality and leisure… But looking under the hood we find that 158,000 jobs were created out of thin air by the BLS… So, in actuality, the surveys showed that only 14,000 jobs were truly created in May… But, the markets went ga-ga over the BLS trumped up report, and with it the rate hike proponents were jumping with joy and buying dollars…
Also in the Friday Data Cupboard was Consumer Credit (Read debt) and it was $20 Billion for the month… That’s a lot of large screen TV’s and smashed burgers at Shake Shack, eh?
This week’s Data Cupboard doesn’t get going until Wednesday when the STUPID CPI for May will print… Until then we get a few housing reports and 3rd tier reports…
To recap… Friday was the ugliest day for metals and the non-dollar bugs… Apparently, it was a double whammy for the metals and the non-dollar bugs, as the markets bit on a report of Peace, and then added the trumped-up Jobs report, and it got real ugly folks…
For What It’s Worth… Back to normal today, as this article is from one of my fave analysts, Ray Dalio, and it can be found here: Ray Dalio says US is ‘past the point of no return’ on debt, sees 1930s-style ‘financial repression’ coming
Or, here’s the snippet: “Ray Dalio said the United States has crossed a debt threshold from which it cannot return, and the Federal Reserve may soon be forced into a 1930s-style policy of holding interest rates artificially low.
Speaking at the Forbes Iconoclast Summit, the Bridgewater Associates founder told Bloomberg’s Dani Burger that $7 trillion in federal spending against $5 trillion in revenue is squeezing the economy “like plaque in the arteries.”
The Bond Market Test
Dalio said long rates are already rising relative to short rates, a classic signal that bondholders are losing patience with low real returns. He pointed to a weakening dollar and rising gold prices as confirmation of the dynamic.
The investor flagged Kevin Warsh, the new Federal Reserve chair, as likely to face a bond market test of his stated independence.
Dalio compared the likely outcome to financial repression, where the Treasury and Fed coordinate to suppress yields, often alongside higher taxation and inflation.
Dalio connected the debt situation directly to geopolitics, saying the United States is “overextended” and can no longer credibly contain China. He said that realization is already shifting how Asian leaders behave.
The Bridgewater founder said it is “entirely within the power” of the Chinese government to announce a week-long blockade on chip exports, and that such a signal alone would crash the AI trade.
Dalio’s playbook for his forecasted turbulence ahead includes gold, hard assets and reduced exposure to long-dated US debt.”
Chuck Again… Well, he sounds a lot like me, eh? After all his warnings, he might as well said: Got Gold? But it’s stuff like this that should be sending the dollar to the woodshed, but NOOOOOOOO!
Market Prices 6/8/2026: American Style: A$ .7071, kiwi .5830, C$ .7176, euro 1.1536, sterling 1.3361, Swiss $1.2550, European Style: rand 16.4650, krone 9.4624, SEK 9.4624, forint 308.24, zloty 3.6762, koruna 20.9987, RUB 73.25, yen 159.97, sing 1.2875, HKD 7.8364, INR 95.72, China 6.7837, peso 17.47, BRL 5.1657, BBDXY 1,209, Dollar Index 99.90, Oil $92.19, 10-year 4.52%, Silver $68.25, Platinum $1,787.00, Palladium $1,242, Copper $6.38, and Gold… $4,323.
That’s it for today… no Pfennig on Wednesday this week as I’ll be seeing my heart doctor… And then next Monday I see the heart doctor that monitors my pacemaker… (it’s been 10 years on this one, and I’m due for a new one) Friday this week is a special day for Chuck & Kathy, as it will be our 50th wedding anniversary… 1976 June 12th was a very hot day, I drove a Cadillac El Dorado, and had recently cut my long hair that came from my days in the band… Enough of that! And Chicago takes us to the finish line today with my fave song by them: Hard Habit To Break… I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler