Author: admin

• Currencies & metals rally on Monday and overnight!
• Chuck explains money supply and inflation..

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! After a night and next day of sorrow because our Blues lost Game with 2.2 seconds to play, my beloved Cardinals tried to the sting out of the Blues loss, by winning their game last night VS the Pirates… The had to come from behind twice but in the end, they won the game…   I’m really draggin’ the line (The Shondells) this morning, so i have no guarantees of how long this will be this morning…  The Moody Blues greet me this morning with their song: Ride My See Saw… 

Well, the selling of the dollar didn’t end with the overnight markets from Sunday night into Monday. The dollar was sold in the Monday session bringing the loss on the day to 5 index points in the BBDXY, which ended the day at 1,219…  I find this welling to be very interesting, ahead of the FOMC meeting on Wednesday. I’ll talk about the reversal in the overnight markets section coming up, but first….

Gold & Silver had banner days ahead of the FOMC meeting, which again I find very interesting, but I was taught to never look a gift horse in the mouth… So, I’ll just say that Gold recovered its losses from last week in one day’s trading… Gold gained $94 on the day and closed Monday at $3,335…  I hear that there’s a Silver short squeeze going on and that could propel Silver to $50…  Hmm….  I’m from Missouri, I’ll have to be shown that!  Not that I don’t think that without short paper traders, Silver could already be trading at $50, it’s just that the short paper traders are like the wolf that’s always at your door… 

Silver gained 50-cents yesterday, and closed at $32,44… So, if there is a short squeeze going on here we should see Silver gain a large amount again today, until the short squeeze get enough water hosed onto it!

The price of Oil remained in the $57 handle yesterday, but ended the day at $57.99… Oh-so-close-eh?  The 10-year Treasury’s yield saw more selling yesterday and the yield on the bond ended the day trading with a 4.435% yield… 

In the overnight markets last night…  Wel, before I retired last night, I checked the BBDXY to see if the dollar selling was still  en-vogue…  And it wasn’t, at that time, the BBDXY had gained to 1,224… But during the night as I slept (not very good) the dollar selling returned, and so we start today with the BBDXY at 1,220… All this dollar selling, and bond selling, with currencies, metals and Oil rallying ahead of the FOMC tomorrow, has got me scratching my bald head… And then I think about what I’ve always told you… Traders do NOT like unknowns in the markets… And with the POTUS announcing new tariffs, and the FOMC on the table, the markets are full of unknowns right now… 

Gold continued is rebound overnight and early this morning, with a gain of $43 to follow up yesterday’s gain of $94… Silver is up 55-cents to start the day today and is back above the $33 handle.  The short paper traders are on the other side of the trade now, and the Chinese are back from vacation, making for a perfect storm for the metals… 

The price of oil bumped higher to a $58 handle overnight,,, I keep reading reports about how the folks at OPEC are going to swamp the globe with their large supplies of Oil… I would have to think that this is contra to what the OPEC dudes are seeking, a higher price in Oil… But who am I to question their motives?  Oh, c’mon Chuck you do that to everyone all the time!  Yes, I guess you’re right… 

And the 10-year Treasury bond stayed Steady Eddie overnight, and begins today trading with a 4.34% yield… That’s it for the overnight markets, so onward and upward to the Op-Ed section of the letter… 

Well, long ago, I wrote in the Pfennig what I thought was the cause of our inflation at that time… I’ve repeated myself many times throughout the years… What I’m talking about is money supply…  You see, when they taught real economics in college, I was taught then that money supply equals inflation…  And this past weekend I came across some data that showed money supply has gained over 200% from 2007 to now… Or, if you prefer to see it in actual dollars added to the markets, the total is $73,75 Trillion…  And you know what follows money supply growth? Gold… That’s why I say it’s an excellent asset to use to hedge against inflation! 

I’ve had that money supply data in my back pocket for a few days now, and decided that since the FOMC is assembling to discuss interest rates, I would pull it out, with hopes that someone in the ECCKLE Building will read it and say something to the FOMC members that will vote on a rate movement or not… 

The decline of the dollar, is really beginning to show up all around the globe… This past weekend I read a piece by Mattew Piepenburg, at VongretzGold.com And since I have his whole article I thought I would cut a piece of what had to say, which as I’ve said before, “When Mattew talks I listen”…  here you go: “As Uncle Sam now reaches $37T in public debt, the rest of the world, having seen that same bully of a fiat dollar weaponized and indebted beyond rational levels, is no longer as interested as it once was.

In short, for America, it’s now “our dollar, our problem” as the world slowly turns its back on the once hegemonic USA, UST and USD– the distrust and evidence of which is literally everywhere.

 Equally evident are the desperate policy reactions from DC to make the dollar hegemonic again—from DOGE headlines and tariff destructions to even the tragic irony of a so-called BTC Strategic Reserve Fund…

In this era of a less trusted and demanded dollar and UST, the backdrop for gold couldn’t be stronger, and the argument for “peak gold” couldn’t be weaker.” – Matthew Piepenburg… 

I really like his use of the old phrase, in his own words, from then Treasury head, Connolly, who told finance ministers around the world that “the dollar is our currency, but it’s your problem”…  It also seems that the Asian currency rally is spreading across the Globe… 

I’ve got to mention that in doing yesterday’s currency roundup, I noticed that the Singapore dollar (Sing) had really rallied… And it was due! Years ago, I explained that the Sing and the Chinese renminbi pretty much move in tandem, as one currency can’t get out of hand, while the other one doesn’t, because the two countries are in competition to export pharmaceuticals and other goods… And the Chinese renminbi has been allowed to gain quite a bit VS the dollar in recent times.. Of course, not in the last 5 days, as the Chinese were on holiday… 

So, Gold is back on the rally tracks…  Funny (not funny ha-ha), but this rally in Gold is coinciding with the return of the Chinese after their 5-day holiday that ended yesterday… Welcome back you’ve been sorely missed and there wasn’t enough volume from the West to keep the short paper traders at bay! A song gets into my head here, Thin Lizzy’s: The Boys Are Back In Town…

The U.S. Data Cupboard will have the final Trade Deficit for March for our viewing pleasure this morning…  Recall that last week I wrote about how the initial Trade deficit had hit a new all-time record high, as companies are taking imports ahead of the tariffs, and that I didn’t like to see that, and wondered what the final Trade Deficit would look like…  Well, I guess we’ll see later this morning, but I’m sure that it will be astronomically high! 

To recap… The dollar is getting sold ahead of the FOMC meeting that will take place tomorrow afternoon… The metals are back on the rally tracks, after the Chinese return from their 5-day holiday… The short paper traders knew that the physical buying of Gold would be very low with China gone, and so they took that as their benefit and performed engineered takedowns in the metals… But that’s all over now, folks… The Data Cupboard will have the Trade Deficit for us to view this morning. And Chuck goes through his explanation of what money supply does to inflation, and so on… I hope you didn’t miss that!

For What It’s Worth… This article came to me from the good folks at GATA, and it’s an article that they pulled from Bloomberg.com So, I pulled up Bloomberg.com and found it! This is about how the dollar’s decline is really turning the Asian currencies into Tigers (my words, )  and it can be found here: Dollar’s Decline Is Fueling Dislocations Across Asian Currencies – Bloomberg

Or, here’s your snippet: “Asian currencies ripped higher against the US dollar Monday, extending a move that’s hurting exporters, weighing on equities and forcing central banks to intervene in the market to curb excessive gains.

Taiwan’s dollar surged the most since 1988, sending the nation’s benchmark stock index to its steepest slide in nearly a month. The offshore yuan climbed to its highest level in almost six months as exporters repatriated dollar earnings. The Hong Kong dollar held at the strong end of its allowed trading band for a second session. Meanwhile, the Indonesian rupiah recouped most of this year’s losses after slumping to a record low less than a month ago.

The volatility shows how an exodus from the world’s reserve currency can ripple through financial markets, as President Donald Trump’s shifting tariff policies fuel concern over a US recession. Last week, speculative traders became more bearish on the dollar than at any time since September, in a sign of growing reluctance among investors to hold US assets.

Taiwan’s dollar surged on Monday, the biggest intraday gain in over three decades, on speculation exporters are rushing to convert their holdings of US dollars to the island’s currency. Bloomberg MLIV Strategist Mark Cranfield shares his insights.

Asian currencies including the yen and yuan are benefiting from a mix of repatriation buying and as alternative investments amid the “sell America” wave. The strategy appeared to remain intact even as both Beijing and Washington seemed to be softening their stance on the trade war, with President Trump at the weekend signaling he’s open to reducing import duties on Chinese goods to spur trade.

“The natural way out of a lot of this trade tension is via the dollar balloon deflating,” said Brad Bechtel, global head of foreign exchange at Jefferies. Therefore, “loading up on a little downside for dollar versus Asia might make sense.”

Chuck again… Yes, unfortunately, the Asian Central Banks will be intervening to stem the advancement of their respective currencies, but one thing I learned long ago, in a galaxy far away, is that the markets always have deeper pockets than Central Banks… So having said that, it simply means that the Central Bank intervention will work in a short period of time, but in the end the markets will…

Market Prices 5/6/2025: American Style: A$ .6460, kiwi .5982, C$ .7243, euro 1.1331, sterling 1.3372, Swiss $1.2130, European Style: rand 18.2578, krone 10.3536, SEK 9.6104, forint 357.56, zloty 3.5756, koruna 22.0244, RUB 80.80, yen 142.28, sing 1.2891, HKD 7.7501, INR 84.43, China 7.2170, peso 19.71, BRL 5.6376, BBDXY 1,220, Dollar Index 99.55, Oil $58.22, 10-year 4.31%, Silver $33.10, Platinum $977.00, Palladium $958.00, Copper $4.71, and Gold… $3,378.44

That’s it for today… Well St. Louis sure is still reeling from our Blues loss Sunday night… UGH! My beloved Cardinals won last night to take some of the sting away… I woke up this morning with my stomach-turning upside down and giving me fits… It has settled down since, so I’m going to test drinking some coffee… Kathy surprised me last night by making her world-famous Tacos for Cino de Mayo! When we were younger we would go out with our neighbor friends and have a good time… I guess we’ve all just grown old… I won’t say grown up, because I haven’t, just grown old…  Sirius XM is playing an old John Denver song this morning, that I used to LOVE playing on my guitar… The song to take us to the finish line today is his song: Back Home Again… I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

• currencies & metals rally in the overnight markets…
• No rate cut coming, what’s a dollar bug to do?

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you… Well, it was a chilly, rainy weekend here in the Midwest… Lots of rain on Saturday, left the rivers and creeks swollen once again. The rivers and creeks had just gone back down to within their respective banks… April will go on record, here that is, for most precipitation received in our recorded history… And May won’t be far behind if this weather pattern keeps up!  After losing 9 consecutive games to the pond scum, I mean the Mets, my beloved Cardinals finally beat them, not without nerves being tested, yesterday…  In fact, they swept the doubleheader!   Paul Simon greets me this morning with his song: Call Me Al… 

Well, going into last weekend, Gold had just experienced one of its worst weeks in a month of Sundays… Gold did eke out a 30-cent gain on Friday, but that hardly wrapped a tourniquet around Gold’s bleeding… There were many explanations out on the newswires last week about what was going on with Gold, Shoot Rudy, even a tech guy tried to explain it using a Technical pattern…  I sill believe that it was a case of a little selling begot more selling, and that begot even more selling… The sheeple played into the hands and dirty deeds of the short paper traders… That’s my story and I’m sticking to it!  Just like when I tell people that my first wife was a young Elizabeth Taylor! Yep, that’s it! 

The dollar was on the rally tracks for most of the week, and then it wasn’t… On Friday, as I suggested last week that the data would end the dollar’s rally, the economic data just kept printing, and weighing on the dollar, which was the BBDXY lose over 5 index points, and finish the week at 1,224… The euro, which had fallen below the 1.13 figure, rallied to close above the figure again on Friday, and the rest of the currencies all followed the BIG Dog euro… 

So, like I said above, Gold ended the week up 30-cents, and held a closing price of $3,241… Silver was also taken to the woodshed last week, and ended the week barely holding the 32-cents figure, closing at $32.06, down 43-cents on the day…  

The price of Oil closed the week on Friday trading with a $58 handle… Oil has fallen along side with Gold and makes one think that risk assets are persona no gratis right now…  And the buying in the 10-year Treasury had been really doing a number on the 10-year’s yield, that is until late last week, (the bad data again)  and the 10-year closed the week at 4.31%… 

In the overnight markets last night…The dollar continued to be sold, with the BBDXY at a 4 index point loss as we start our day today…  For once in a blue moon, the dollar bugs looked at the economic data that printed last week and then looked ahead to this week and the Fed Heads leaving rates unchanged, and the decided to not buy dollars..  Now, you would think, I know I did at first, that a strong, albeit trumped up jobs report and a no rate cut outlook would help the dollar, but after a month of speculation that the next move from the Fed Heads would be a rate cut, the expectations were blown out of the water, and that has the dollar bugs very upset, that they were wrong, and so the dollar suffers… 

I read a headline article this morning that said, “Wall Street remains bearish on Gold this week”… Well, if that’s true, Gold is showing a strange way to be bearish, as the shiny metal is up $96=cents to start our day/ week this morning… Yes, that’s right… 96-cents…  Silver is up 43-cents to start the day/ week this morning. So, to me what this look like?  OK, in a previous Pfennig For Your Thoughts I explained the short paper traders M.O.  that they short the heck out of the Gold & Silver until they think they have done so enough, and then they turnaround and buy the metals at the much cheaper prices, and profit again when they decide that they’ve made enough profit for this go-around, and they sell short again… Ed Sterer calls this the “Wash, Rinse cycle”… 

The price of Oil bumped higher overnight, and trades this morning with a $57 handle… I read this morning, that our friends (NOT!) at OPEC have amassed a glut of Oil and are going to swamp the markets with it… For whatever that’s worth…  And the 10-uear Treasury picked up a BIP overnight and starts our day/ week trading with a 4.31% yield. 

The Eurozone received a nice surprise in their economic data late last week, when their 1^st QTR GDP surprised with a upbeat print of .4% (The Eurozone was pretty much thought of as nearing 0% growth)…  I recently wrote a piece for my good friend, Dennis Miller, in www.milleronthemoney.com  and in it I looked at the Eurozone as finally coming to grips with the direction of their economy, and this is what I wrote: ” I see realignment; giving more power to the people, recognizing the ethnic votes and individual country culture. By doing so, the EU should return to what they were formed for, peace, prosperity, and freedom to easily move about the countries of the EU. Economic growth helps return Germany to the powerhouse manufacturer it once was…

Rose colored glasses? Perhaps, but it’s what I see!” – Chuck Butler in www.milleronthemoney.com

OK… Back to the U.S.  Well, the POTUS did what I thought he was going to do last Friday… Here’s the skinny: ” President Trump signed an executive order on April 24, 2025, titled “Unleashing America’s Offshore Critical Minerals and Resources”. This order aims to promote the development of offshore critical minerals in the oceans adjacent to the U.S., as well as foster collaboration with allies for deep-sea mineral resource development in foreign waters.”

Remember I told you that it is expected that $150 Trillion worth of minerals, commodities, and Oil is underground (or at sea) and that getting a hold of these would make the U.S the richest country in the world, it would pay off our national debt all $37 Trillion worth of it, and have some left to start a Sovereign Wealth Fund…  Now, this won’t happen overnight, and won’t happen next month, but within a year we, as a country should begin to see some changes…   

Of course, all things usually don’t work out as planned…  They either fall short of expectations, or they don’t materialize at all… 

This is a BIG DEAL folks !  Mark my words on this… And in a couple of years, get back with me and tell me how wrong I was…  Hey! I didn’t make this stuff up, folks… In other words, Don’t Shoot The Mesenger!  Either this pans out for our country’s best, or it doesn’t…

The FOMC meets this week, on Wednesday, to discuss rates… And after last week’s data showing that new jobs created were much better than expected in April, I don’t see the FOMC cutting rates at this meeting or for any of the next couple for that matter… The FOMC’s decision to skip a rate cut, isn’t going to set well with the POTUS, and the Fed Heads Chairman, Powell, will be back in the Presidential dog house again but there’s nothing the POTUS can do about it, and he has to wait until Feb when Powell’s term ends… 

Speaking of the Jobs report, i shake my head in disgust one again at the BLS’s adding of jobs out of thin air… Even when it has been discovered and acknowledged that the jobs creation numbers for the U.S. have been grossly overstated going back years… The BLS continues to add jobs to the surveys… For this month’s jobs print, the BLS added 383,000 jobs! Now, given what we now know about revisions, you can expect that a majority of those 383,000 jobs created by the BLS will be reversed in parcels, so that it’s not so obvious what’s going on … But… The markets don’t see this like I do…  And so, that will lead the FOMC to not cut rates this week, and get everyone all lathered up about how strong the economy is…  When in actuality the economy is not strong… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard will be taking on the look of strong data reports in the coming weeks… And that’s only because U.S. companies are taking on tons of goods and deliveries now to avoid future tariffs, and robbing from the future… So, Inventories will be spewing goods that aren’t being sold…  Let’s see how that all works out for the Companies, eh?  I see this as causing tears… But then that’s just me… I’m just saying… 

The U.S. Data Cupboard this week doesn’t have anything market moving for us today, and tomorrow we get that final Trade Deficit print that I talked about last week… And then on Wednesday we’ll have the Jobs Jamboree, and then that’s about it for data this week… 

To recap… The dollar got sold going into the weekend, and Gold finally stopped getting sold, gaining just 30-cetns on Friday… The Eurozone received a surprise 1^st QTR GDP last week… And Chuck brings back something he said last month in an interview with Dennis Miller… The POTUS did open vast areas of land and sea to exploration of minerals, commodities and Oil… Chuck thinks that IF, IF, IF everything works out, the way they are planned it could be good for the U.S.  We’ll see… 

There’s no For What It’s Worth article today… I searched and searched and couldn’t find anything that was FWIW worthy…  So, come back tomorrow, I’m sure there will be something FWIW worthy today, it just kind of feels like some dolt will say something today! Same bat time, same bat channel, tomorrow, without commercials too! 

Market Prices 5/5/2025: American Style: A$ .6488, kiwi .5980, C$ .7246, euro 1.1342, sterling 1.3301, Swiss $1.2146, European Style: rand 18.3107, krone 10.3720, SEK 9.6316, forint 356.04, zloty 3.7710, koruna 21.7557, RUB 80.70, yen 143.47, sing 1.2633, HKD 7.7500, INR 84.26, China 7.2713, peso 19.58, BRL 5.6571, BBDXY 1,220, Dollar Index 96.63, Oil $57.42, 10-year 4.31%, Silver $32.55, Platinum $972.00, Palladium $988.00, Copper $4.72, and Gold… $3,318.70

That’s it for today… I’m here all week.. Try the veal!  buy next week I’ll be out on Monday & Tuesday. Monday, I see my new pulmonary doctor, and Tuesday it’s time for new scans. My breathing recovered a bit over the weekend, so that’s a good thing… But I’m still wondering what caused that relapse?  It was GAME 7 last night for the Blues and Jets, and after leading by 2 goals with 2 minutes to play, the Blues blew the lead, and in the 2^nd overtime, they lost the game and series… Tim to pack up the golf clubs now boys…  I watched in horror as the Blues forgot how to defend the goal… Oh, well, our Blues came from near last place to make the playoffs, and then take the best team (points wise this year) to a Game 7… A pretty good turnaround, I’d say!  but no Stanley Cup this year, there’s always next year, right? So, it’s all about baseball now… C’mon Cardinals get more consistent…  The band, Rooper takes us to the finish line today with their song: Round, Round We Go…  Don’t know that one? YOUTUBE it, I think you’ll like it… I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler          .  . 

• currencies and metals get sold in the overnight markets
• what will the POTUS have to tell us tomorrow?

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all! Well, my beloved Cardinals won both games of their doubleheader yesterday VS the Reds. YAHOO! But.. Our Blues couldn’t find an answer in their loss to the Jets last night, thus falling to 2-3 in their best of 7 series of the Stanley Cup Playoffs… UGH!  One team’s season is really just getting started, while the other team’s season could be coming to a early exit… The Blues come home to play Game 6… Let’s Go Blues! Sugarloaf greets me this morning with their deep cut song: Green Eyed Lady

Katy Bar The Door! This is totally ridiculous… Gold got sold yesterday to the tune of $28… But that’s just the beginning of this fiasco with Gold… When I retired last night, I checked the metals and Gold was down $91 !  

So, I checked the internet and found this on the Economic Times website: “The drop in gold price comes at a time when market risk sentiment is improving. One of the biggest drivers of this shift is the easing of trade tensions between the US and several major trading partners. On Tuesday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at easing tariffs on foreign auto parts, granting carmakers a two-year window to raise domestic sourcing. This move, coupled with US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent noting “very good” offers from trade partners, has sparked optimism about the future.”

So, as the Good Witch Glynda told the munchkins, “Come out, Come out, it’s safe now”  I don’t see it, the reason to be optimistic, but the markets do, and the markets are never wrong… That’s what an old trader told me to always remember, back in my days at WZW brokerage… That job was after my time at RG Dickenson in Des Moines Ia., which was after my time at Stifel Nicolaus in St. Louis,  which was after I hung up my guitar and gave up trying to be a rock star… I’m trying to calm myself down right now, as you can see… Anything to take my mind off the markets being optimistic… 

Silve has fared no better, giving up 91-cents yesterday and was down 55-cents late last night…  

The dollar saw some buying yesterday, for what I have no idea… Oh, the dollar bugs hung their hats on the Consumer Spending data that showed a .7% increase in March… I guess the folks that decide whether it was a good print or not, forgot to look at Consumer Income, which was .5%, and once again, we as a country spent more than we made… The BBDXY gained 1 index point yesterday to close at 1,223… So, as Glynda said… Come out, Come out, it’s safe now…  A week ago, everybody was wearing sandwich boards with “The End Is Near” printed on them, and this week it’s all seashells and balloons…  

The price of Oil dropped another buck yesterday, and ended the day trading with a $58 handle… And with the economic data REALLY pringing not so good, the 10-year Treasury’s yield dropped to 4.18%, donw from the start of the day’s yield of 4.21%… 

In the overnight markets last night… Well, Gold did fight back some and starts the day today down 

Before I checked the metals prices last night, I had found an article on MarketWatch.com that had a headline to their story of: “How the twilight of ‘king dollar’ could be the dawn of a new world currency”  Well, you know that caught my eye, and so I just had to look at the rest of the article, right? But, unfortunately I needed a subscription to MarketWatch to read the article…So, I can only imagine what it had to say, something along the lines of: The U.S. Empire is in its senior years…  And with the fall of the Empire, as all Empires end up doing throughout history, there will be the need of a new reserve currency, and the question here and now is what currency will that be?  That’s my 2-cents thrown into the pot on what I thought was in the article…

I hear that tomorrow is the day that the POTUS will make another announcement, this time being about opening up vast regions in the U.S. that contain minerals, commodities, Oil, for mineral companies to come in and excavate and find these minerals, commodities, and Oil… James Rickards puts the value of these things at $150 Trillion…  That figure dwarfs the national Debt, and the unfunded Debt, easily, with over $100 Trillion left…  Now, this all remains to be seen, but it appears to be a plan, and I love it when a plan comes together! 

Now THAT would be cause for optimism! But like I said this all remains to be seen, and you know what they say bout a plan… It all looks good on paper, until you get punched in the mouth!  I’m sure there will be snags, and bats that live in caves that throw a spanner in the works… I’m just saying… Don’t go counting your eggs before they are hatched! 

The euro got slapped in the face yesterday and last night… And the rest of the currencies all lined up for their slap in the face… This is a complete reversal of sentiment folks… And I can’t help but think that this will all come back to bite the markets and its participants in the rear… 

In the overnight markets last night… The dollar got bough with a little more pace than what existed yesterday, with the BBDXY gaining 3 index points to start our day today… And with that going on, you can assume that the currencies are backing off their recent gains, and you would be correct!  Gold tried to fight back last night, with it recovering from down $92 to down $58, but that rally ran out of steam and the selling continued to eat away at Gold’s price. Gold starts today down $77, and Silver is down cents to start our day today… There’s no two ways about it, this is the short paper traders doing, and if you know one of these dastardly people, I say we kill him, no, I say we hang ’em then we kill him, no, I say we hang him, then we shoot him and then we kill him…. (Pee Wee Herman) 

I used to work with a young lady, Ann Hopkins, who would get a belly laugh whenever I did my Pee Wee Herman imitation on the trade desk at EverBsnk…  See? I was a fun guy to work for!   After radiation on my jaw in 2011, my voice isn’t the same any longer… So, no Steve Mizeranek, Pee Wee Herman voices from me… I can still do my imitation of the lollipop kids from the Wizard of Oz1 Oh, c’mon Chuck what does any of this have to about the markets, economies and dolts? 

Besides the selling of Gold and Silver this morning… I don’t have much more for you, except a great piece in the FWIW section to stay turned for that!

The U.S. Data Cupboard had a ton of prints yesterday that I’ve already talked about, except for the PCE the Fed Heads pet inflation calc.   The PCE for March came in at 2.6% on an annual basis, that’s still above the 2% target rate the Fed Heads drew into the sand a long time ago…  Remember last month’s print that was 2.8%, well that got revised upward to 3.%… And add my name to the article below author’s thought about revisions…  

The Data Cupboard today will have the usual Tub Thumpin’ Thursday print of Weekly Initial Jobless Claims, which have stubbornly remained around 225,000 each week… We’ll also see the color of the ISM for April today, and I fully expect that this print will stay below the line in the sand 50… Remember 50 is the line that says that any number above it equals expansion in Manufacturing, and any number below it equals contraction… So, if the POTUS gets his way, the data will finally get off the canvas, and gain… But I thin we’ll have to be patient for that to happen…  Until then the economy suffers from a contracting manufacturing sector…  Tomorrow we’ll see the Jobs Jamboree for March, and right now they are expected to have created only 133,000 jobs in March… But like I said previously, I don’t think the BLS will stand for a weak jobs report print… 

To recap… What the hell is going on with Gold? (Microsoft doesn’t like the harshness of that statement, but I didn’t change it! The dollar has been getting bought overnight, and the BBDXY is up 3 index points to start our day today… Gold is down $77 and the short paper traders are having a field day… I say we hang him!  Hey, they’ve created some excellent buying opportunities in the metals… I’m just saying… Wil the POTUS unlock vast areas of land for exploration and mining of minerals? I guess we’ll see tomorrow, along with the jobs report… 

For What It’s Worth…  Ok, this much ballyhooed article by me, is very interesting in that it talks about inflation calculations, and their revisions… And it can be found here: Inflation Is in the Revisions? What Stands Out Once Again in the PCE Price Index? Sharp Up-Revisions of Prior Month’s Inflation | Wolf Street

Or, here’s your snippet: “The inflation measure released today for March – the PCE price index favored by the Fed as yardstick for its inflation target – has a salient feature that it had many times before: Sharp up-revisions of the prior month’s data, this time for February, triggered by hot up-revisions in core services inflation.

The February month-to-month data were revised sharply higher today, driven by core services which dominates the overall index.

Overall PCE: to +0.44% (5.5% annualized), from originally +0.33% (+4.0% annualized)

Core PCE: to 0.50% (+6.1% annualized), from originally +0.37% (+4.5% annualized)

Core services: to +0.52% (+6.5% annualized), from originally +0.35% (+4.3% annualized).

The February year-over-year readings were also revised higher, which caused the core PCE price index for February to hit +3.0%, highest in a year:

Overall PCE: to +2.7%, originally +2.5%.

Core PCE: to +3.0%, originally +2.8%.

Core services: to +3.8%, originally +3.6%.

In March, the price changes were from the up-revised February levels.

On a year-over-year basis in March:”

Chuck again, there’s more to the article if you’re interested in seeing more… I always talk about the revisions that are made under the cover of darkness, and how they should be looked at by the markets more closely… I mean, take for example last month’s PCE print of 2.8%, but then gets revised to 3.0%, the highest its been in a year, now isn’t that something investors should know and could be the very reason the Fed Heads haven’t budged on lowering rates further…  I shake my head in disgust here folks… 

Market Prices 5/1/2025…  American Style: A$ . 6398, kiwi .5933, C$.7248, euro 1.1334, sterling 1.3340, Swiss $1.2100, European Style: rand 18.6234, krone 10.4107, SEK 9.7013, forint 356.44, zloty 3.7749, koruna 21.9716, RUB 81.81, yen 14438, sing 1.3083, HKD 7.7588, INR 84.47, China 7.2759, peso 19.61, BRL 5.6788, BBDXY 1,226, Dollar Index 99,71, Oil $56.84, 10-yeqr 4.14%, Silver $3195, Platinum $961.00, Palladium $944.00, Copper $4.66, and Gold… $3,211.07

That’s it for today and this week… Our Blues took one on the chin last night.. UGH… It’s been like the Monsson season here in my little river town… Rain, Rain go away, Chuck wants to go outside and read! When Alex was a little boy, (he’s 28 now) he used to say: “rain, rain go away, little Alex wants to go outside and play”… He was quite the entertaining child… C’mon Cardinals make today’s finale in Cincy a series win! Cardinals come home to play the vaunted Mets 3 games, i wonder what the rain is going to do with the games, but you can’t fight Mother Nature!  Bob Dylan takes us to the finish line today with his great song: Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door…  I sometimes think that’s what I’m doing!  I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and please continue to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• Currencies rally on Tuesday, but Gold gets sold
• What do the Chinese have up their sleeves?

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! My beloved cardinals started their road trip losing… UGH They were rained out last night, and the team was probably grateful for the rain! I think I saw someone doing a rain dance outside their clubhouse! HAHA! Not really, but you get the point… I’m still trying to get why Gold is getting sold right now, but I think i’ve finally nailed it, so stay turned to the same bat channel this morning for that thought! Sam & Dave greet me this morning with their mega 60’s hit: Soul Man

Well, the dollar is back to getting sold, after the PPT’s intervention scared traders into buying dollars, but that wore off, and why wouldn’t it?  The U.S.’s first QTR GDP printed this morning at just  .3% !!!!  That sure gives the dollar bears some fodder for their buying… The BBDXY has lost 4 index points since we last talked. And starts today at 1,222… The fear of a bad Trade Deficit came to fruition yesterday, and that got the dollar selling.  The strange thing about selling the dollar is that Gold isn’t taking advantage of the weaker dollar… 

Gold was down $26 yesterday, and is down $13, rhe early trading this morning…  On Monday, you may recall me talking about Gold turning around tts early morning loss, and that’s exactly what it did..  Gold turned a $28 kiss into a Gain of $24… That’s a $62 turn around folks… And got me thinking that the selling in Gold was over… Boy was I wrong! Gold has been sold two days in a row… Yesterday, Gold lost $26, is down $13. To trade at 3,303… Silver has been the whipping boy of the short metals traders for what seems like decades, and that’s probably pretty close to what’s going on… Silver starts today, down 25-cents…  

I mentioned above that I think I’ve nailed the reason Gold is getting sold so much lately…   You see it’s all about the RSI… Remember when I had mentioned that Gold was in the overbought area of the RSI (Relative Strength Index) and was amazed that it was still gaining?  Well, the short paper traders finally saw this overbought position, and decided to rectify that…  And all their selling has just about brough Gold back to market neutral position.  So, will they stop there?  I doubt it… But all the weak data that’s about to print should get the dollar bugs riled up again, and we could see a turnaround…  The thing that I always say when the short metals traders have their way with the metals, as Silver too has been sold, is that what they do is create excellent buying opportunities…  wink, wink…. 

The price of Oil has gotten sold, and is down $2 to trade this morning with a $59 handle… The slow growth of the U.S. economy has a lot to do with that… And the 10-year Treasury bond’s yield is trading at 4.21% this morning… 

In the overnight markets, there was little to no movement in the dollar but that’s about to change, in my humble opinion, because of the weaker economic data that’s getting ready to be printed!   As I mentioned above, Gold is down $13 to start our day, and Silver is down 25-cents..  These two need to get turned around quickly!   Copper has gotten mixed up with the short selling, and has lost over 30-cents in value since Monday! Why? Because they can, that’s why! 

Well, let’s start this portion of the letter off with some talk about the younger generations work ethics… This bodes badly for the future of the U.S. economy, so let’s get into right here: 73% of Gen Z and 70% of millennials are looking to change jobs, compared to only 33% of baby boomers, highlighting a significant generational divide in workplace satisfaction. Nearly 3 in 4 workers are living paycheck to paycheck
Burnout affects 68% of Gen Z workers but only 30% of boomers, with monotonous work and stagnant pay cited as top factors contributing to workplace exhaustion.  Now isn’t that special I say in my best Church lady voice… 

The key points are that 75% are living paycheck to paycheck, and that these young workers can’t deal with monotonous work…. What, you mean, work procedures that you do every day? Did your mommy tell you too many times that you’re special and that you will be President one day?   I could go on, but I won’t… Not today, anyway… 

The advanced trade deficit printed yesterday, and this part of the data print is always much higher than the final number, but the print yesterday was blown out of proportion… The Advanced Trade deficit was a record high of $162 Billion… Just for the month of March, as importers rushed their orders ahead of the tariffs… And exporters also rushed their orders on the same basis… But, as we all know, we as a country import way more than we export… It will be interesting to look at the final number here… I’m just saying…

One currency I want to highlight this morning, is the Chinese renminbi… The Chinese have allowed the renminbi to strengthen VS the dollar…. The Chinese are very prudent about their currency moves, so they must be telling us something… I guess we’ll know when it hits us like V-8 forehead slap! 

The U.S. Data Cupboard today already printed the 1st QTR GDP, and it wasn’t pretty at just .3%, in case you read that number wrong… Its   0.3%, and in my opinion, that’s a rounding error from going negative!  The ADP Employment Report for April printed this morning already too… And it showed that only 62,000 jobs were added in the month…  That’s not very good total folks… And is trending the wrong way, as last month’s print was a paltry 147,000…  In just a bit of time, Consumer Income and Spending sill print for March… And the PCE will print for March…So, a very busy day for the economic data wonks… 

To recap… The dollar is getting sold, but Gold is too… And Chuck thinks he has figured out what’s goining on there… Copper has gotten mixed up in the short selling, UGH!  The price of Oil has gotten sold too… While the 10-year Treasury has been getting bought… Chuck goes off the rails with the younger workers… And the Chinese renminbi has surprised currency traders with its strength… 

For What It’s Worth… Well, since I made Big deal about the Advanced Trade Deficit, I thought I would let zerohedge.co elaborate on it a bit here… This article can be found here: Tariff-Frontrunning Sends US Trade Deficit To New Record High In March | ZeroHedge

Or, here’s your snippet: “The U.S. merchandise-trade deficit unexpectedly widened in March to a record as companies continued importing goods to get ahead of tariffs.

The shortfall in goods trade grew 9.6% from a month earlier to $162 billion, Commerce Department data showed Tuesday.

Imports rose 5% to $342.7 billion, led by consumer goods, while exports increased 1.2% as firms scrambled to get ahead of President Trump’s ‘Liberation Day’ tariffs…

Imports of consumer goods surged 27.5%, while inbound shipments of motor vehicles and capital goods also increased.

Because this is the ‘advance’ data release, there is no data for individual nation trade balances or how gold imports have shifted. Remember, gold imports had been soaring through February…and blowing up economists’ models of GDP growth.

What we do know is that gold inventories at COMEX have been falling in March, suggesting a slowdown in imports… which will juice GDP forecasts (further confounding all the PhDs).

Finally, we note that Tuesday’s Commerce Department report also showed stockpiles at wholesalers increased 0.5%. Retail inventories fell 0.1% last month, reflecting a decline at car dealers.”

Chuck Again…  like I said above it will be interesting to see what the final trade deficit print will look like… I believe it will print near to a record deficit for a month… I’m just saying

Market Prices 4/30/2025: American Style: A$ .6374, kiwi .5908, C$ .7227, euro 1.1369, sterling 1.3352. Swiss $1.1818, European Style; rand 18.6101, krone 10.4052, SEK 9.6587, forint 355.43, zloty 3.7685, koruna 21.9192, RUB 81.28, yen 142.74, sing 1.3069, HKD 7.7664, INR 84.49, China 7.2714, peso 19.57, BRL 5.6287, BBDXY 1,222, Dollar index 99.47, Oil $59.62, 10-year 4.21%, Silver $32.74, Platinum $978.00. Palladium $958.00, Copper $4.55, and Gold… $3,303.18

That’s it for today…  Not much to report from the Cardiologist visit yesterday, he did tell me that my recent relapse of weakness was a result of me going to fast, to slow down on my rehab…  I said, “yes sir!”  He said my heart was just fine! Ok, so I moved on from there… I don’t know how long this is going to take, and I’m a very impatient person… So, that’s that!  My beloved Cardinals play a doubleheader in Cincy today, that is if the rain stays away… We had some monstrous thunder this morning… April is holding on as long as it can with all this rain… Peter Frampton takes us to the finish line with his solo song: Show Me The Way… Did you know that Peter Frampton had the best-selling live album in 1976?  What a great album!  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and please continue to Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• currencies & metals get sold into the weekend
• Gold’s two-day losing streak, making someone happy

Good Day… And a Marvelous Monday to you! Well, I’m going to have cataract surgery on my remaining one eye soon… I went to the eye doctor on Friday, and we decided that even through this type of surgery is common, it has risks because I only have one good eye… So, that’s the latest on me..  Glad you asked? No, wait, you didn’t ask, I just came out and told you!   Our Blues kicked some Winnepeg tail and took names later in the 2-games, to even the series at 2 games apiece, now they need to win game-5 in Wnnepeg!   Steely Dan greets me this morning with their song: Deacon Blues… 

I had a reader once tell me that the song Deacon Blues was about the Walke Forest Demon Deacons, who at one had lost a great number of games in a losing streak for the ages… 

OK… We’ll all the dollar selling in recent times, has been halted by the PPT intervening, and buying dollars… That was what stopped the dollar selling, and sone then it’s been dollar buying to win back the ground it had lost… 

The BBDXY finished the week at 1,226, up 2 index points on the day. The euro has dropped the 1.15 figure, and the 1.14 figure, and is back trading with a 1.13 handle. And the rest of the currencies have followed the flight of the euro, so they are all down from their previous perky levels. 

The price of Gold has gyrated in recent trading… Up Big one day, and then lose it all the next day… So,, on Friday, Gold lost $33 to close the week at $3,3320, and Silver has seen the same type of moves and ended the week at $33.17, down 47-cents on the day.. I personally think that the metals are just hanging around waiting for the next shoe to drop in the U.S. before they take off for higher ground again… 

It seems that we could expect a development coming from the U.S. on a daily basis, but that’s not true, it just seems like it…  And if all things are equal, and the markets do pay attention to the economic data that prints, then this week is full-of-potential-problems for the dollar… We’ll go over the data prints due this week below… 

The price of Oil ended the week trading with a $63 handle, and the 10-year Treasury bond’s yield ended the week at 4.40%… 

The question now that’s going through the markets, is:  ga Gold topped out? Or is just taking a breather?  I truly believe that Gold has just taken a breather… For don’t you know that it would only take a comment or two to push Gold to new highs? 

In the overnight markets last night…  There was little to no movement in the dollar, as the BBDXY starts today and this week at 1,226, the same level it was to finish the week… Gold on the other hand begins the day/ week down $28 and Silver is down 10-cents… If Gold doesn’t turn around this loss today, then it will post a 2-day losing streak and that would certainly make the stock jockeys happy… 

The price of Oil slipped below the $63 handle overnight, and trades this morning with a $52 handle… The 10-year Treasury bond is getting bought (by someone or some entity, like the Fed Heads doing their yield curve adjusting)  So, the 10-year stars today/ this week trading with a 4.28% yield… 

Well, the newswires are full of folks writing about how they see the dollar going into a tailspin… The folks are spread out too, we have economists at Deutsche Bank, who claims that the euro will rise to 1.30 in the dollar/ euro trading… We had MarketWatch’s economist say: “The world needs the dollar, even a battered one” And a different economist at MarketWatch said, “Dominant theme in currency market remains the rotation out of the U.S. dollar”  We even had the guy that I put the blame on for most of the bad stuff that happens in the U.S, George Soros say that “the preconditions are now in place for the beginning of a major dollar downtrend” in the years to come.” 

In case you don’t recall Soros is responsible for the breaking of the pound staring back in 1002… I had just begun to write the Pfennig to the salesmen on the trading desk, and couldn’t believe it, that one man could cause the British to not join the ERM (Exchange Rate Mechanism), because the pound sterling had dropped so much… So, in retrospect, he didn’t do it all by his lonesome, but the call to short the pound came from him…..And that’s all I have to say about that!

Well, have you heard about the new Chinese version of SWIFT?  As you know, SwIFT is the U.S. based system that is used to move monies around the world… You may recall that the U.S. expelled Russia from SWIFT a couple of years ago… Since then, both China and Russia have been working feverishly to build their own SWIFT, and now it appears that China has done just that!  Here are a couple of headlines for you regarding China’s new payment system…

China’s CIPS overtook SWIFT’s $ system, moves $1.76 trillion daily cross-border. Unlike SWIFT, CIPS handles both messaging and settlement.

A $100,000 payment to a Thai supplier via SWIFT cost $4,950 in fees (4.95%) and took 72 hours. CIPS 2.0 charged $0.12 .

Sounds to me like SWIFT has a Bonafide challenger in China’s CIPS 2.0…  Now this is going to cause the dollar some problems going forward, folks… 

I’ve got something for you in the FWIW section today, that has more about what China’s thinking… I think the thing that most Americans don’t think about is how China is in whatever it is, for the long run… They think in generations and longer…  They’re not into instant gratification…  So, in your lifetime, you can expect that China will be a major player in the world, more so than the U.S and Europe…  And what will be their main asset they use to rule the world?  Physical Gold… He who has the Gold, makes the rules…  Remember that one folks… I’m just saying…

The U.S. Data Cupboard this week has a ton of economic data for the markets to mull over..  And it all starts on Wednesday… The ADP Employment Report for April starts us off and then comes the ECI (Employment Cost Index) for the 1st QTR…  next up will be the Personal Income and Spending for March…  Believe it don’t, but Income is supposed to have been better than Spending in March…  And then batting cleanup will be the PCE for March… (Personal Consumption Expenditures)  the Fed Heads preferred inflation calculator, supposedly… 

Then on Friday, we’ll have a Jobs Jamboree that will print for the March hires… Right now, the forecasters have the U.S. creating only 130,000 jobs in March… I’m sure the BLS will have something to say about that low number and add some of their jobs our of thin air to the total… 

To recap… The dollar is getting bought again, after the PPT got it all started last week when they intervened and bought dollars…The dollar has just about recovered the ground it lost before the PPT,,, Gold & Silver have seen alternating days of gyrations… And Chuck gives us his thoughts on what’s going on here…   And Chuck gives us the breakdown of the folks calling for a downward trajectory for the dollar… We get a ton of data printing this week… 

For What It’s Worth….  This is the article I talked about above, regarding China and the direction they are going, and it can be found here: The Art of *Currency* War – The Daily Reckoning

Or, here’s your snippet: “The U.S. dollar remains the king of currencies. For now, at least.

The greenback’s share of global foreign exchange reserves sits around 58%. However, back in 2000 the dollar was even more dominant with a 72% market share.

Meanwhile China’s yuan only makes up about 2.2% of global forex reserves, but that’s up from 1.1% in 2016. The currency’s share of global payments is higher at around 4.7%.

China’s leadership is now making a push to grow the yuan’s role as both a reserve currency and in payment. Specifically, the country is seeking to take advantage of recent U.S. bond market volatility.

“The recent soaring volatility in the US Treasury market marks a watershed event”, according to Yang Changjiang, a finance professor at a leading Chinese university.

Yang went on to say, via the South China Morning Post:

We used to consider trade settlement as the key driver of the yuan’s internationalisation, but now the focus has shifted to whether the yuan can serve as a safe-haven asset. This is an opportunity that we must seize.

The Chinese yuan as a “safe-haven asset”? That would be a surprising development, but a possibility worth paying attention to.

China is gobbling up gold and attempting to internationalize its currency. They’re clearly planning something big here, so as investors it’s our job to attempt to sniff out what that might be. Any change in the global monetary order will have immense effects across asset classes, so we must pay attention.”

Chuck again… Yes, we must do that… Pay attention to China… 

Market Prices 2/28/2025: American Style: A$ .6392, kiwi .5945, C$ .7208, euro 1.1337, sterling 1.3033, Swiss $1.2038, European Style: rand 18.6633, krone 10.4522, SEK 9.6406, forint 357.06, zloty 3.5706, koruna 220768, RUB 82.91, yen 143.43, sing, 1.3143, HKD 7.7544, INR 85.68, China 7.2988, peso 19.53. BRL 6.8837, BBDXY 1.226. Dollar Index 99.56, Oil $62.71, 10-year 4.28%, Silver $33.07, Platinum $960.00, Palladium $960.00, Copper $4.87, and Gold $3,291.50

That’s it for today…  OK, I warned you previously that the Pfennig would be hit and miss with my doctor appointments since came back home, and tomorrow I go to see my cardiologist… This is an important appt. Folk, so there’ll be no Pfennig tomorrow… We’ll pick it back up on Wednesday with all the data prints… My beloved Cardinals came home and played much better taking 2 of 3 from the Brewers….It was just a 3-game home stand, UGH! Now they go back out on the road where they can’t seem to do anything right…   AT lease all the games from Cincy will start early, for us here in the Central Time Zone, and that’s a good thing for yours truly!  Sniff-n-the Tears take us to the finish line today with their song: Driver’s Seat… Don’t know that one? YOUTUBE it, I think you grow to like it! I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please continue to BE Good To Yourself!

Chick Butler

• Chuck thinks it was the PPT intervening with the dollar
• Gold seems to be oblivious to the goings on around it…

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, my St Louis teams didn’t fare any better last night, as my beloved Cardinals lost to the Braves, and our Blues fell to 0-2 in the playoffs VS Winnipeg… UGH! I didn’t get out to walk yesterday. At one point in the day, I looked at my watch revealing that it was 3:20, and said, “where did the day go?” I also got in trouble with little Evie, I because i saw some good-looking cookies, and took one to dip in my coffee, only to have her get upset that I took one!  She’s bossy for her age, that’s for sure!  Seals & Crofts greet me this morning with their song and the theme song of my H.S. Graduating class: We May Never Pass This Way Again… 

Well, the dollar stopped getting sold as the U.S. currency desks came on board and took over from the Overnight Markets who had sold the dollar down the river to the tune of 10 index points in the BBDXY… The U.S. desks bought dollars and the BBDXY won back 2 index points previously lost. But still, the BBDXY ended the day down 8 index points at 1,216…   That mini recovery in the dollar didn’t faze the euro, which remained above the 1.15 handle, and the euro’s strength helped the rest of the currencies to hold onto their gains too…  

Gold ended the day up $99 to close at $3,426, and Silver ended up the day up 20-cents to close at $32.74… Silver was subjected to short paper trading yesterday, as I reported here Silver was up 44-cents in the early morning, only to see the short paper traders take their pound of flesh from Silver’s value… Gold is overbought on the RSI (Relative Strength Index) but, at this point, it is so far overbought, that no one is paying attention to the RSI at this point… And like I said last week, when I mentioned the RSI, Silver hasn’t sniffed an overbought price since early April, when it touched $34 and change… 

I had a dear reader ask me a question about whether or not the DOGE group was every going to audit Ft. Knox…  And then there was this in Ed Steer’s letter this morning: “While many are still wondering about whether or not the audit of Fort Knox is happening, it doesn’t seem like President Trump doubts the country’s gold holdings.

With gold surging through $3420/oz. for the first time ever this morning, many are pointing back to one of President Trump’s Truth Social posts from yesterday. Trump wrote on Easter: “THE GOLDEN RULE OF NEGOTIATING AND SUCCESS: HE WHO HAS THE GOLD MAKES THE RULES. THANK YOU!”.

Recall, in early 2025, Donald Trump and Elon Musk publicly questioned whether Fort Knox still holds its gold reserves. Trump announced plans to visit the site, while Musk suggested a live-streamed inspection, saying, “Maybe it’s there, maybe it’s not.”

Sounds like the audit has been put on hold for now, and that’s a sad thing, in my humble country boy opinion. Let’s get going on it! C’mon Elon… What do you need to get going on this? If this audit gets delayed, then I think it will get put on the back burner and out of the minds of ihe markets… That’s my take on what’s going on here right now… 

Back in the day, when I was a foreign Bond Trader, and Currency Trader, the markets used to pay close attention to the RSI… But then something happened on the way to the forum…  The dollar entered a long-term weak trend in 2003, and the RSI was thrown out the window, because every week the euro and other currencies were booking gains VS the dollar… 

The price of Oil remained trading with a $63 handle yesterday, and the 10-year Treasury only added 1 BP to its yield yesterday ending the day at 4.41%… 

This price action yesterday got me thinking about the last couple of times that we’ve seen the dollar get ambushed, and each of those times, it was in the overnight markets…  We also had a day in U.S. trading about 2 weeks ago, that sold dollars BIG TIME, but for the most part, the overnight markets have done the most damage to the dollar…

And for those of you who keep track of the Gold/ Silver ratio.. That ration widened to 103 yesterday, which to me shows that Silver has a lot of ground to catch up, and left to its own devices it would be there lickety split but as long as the short paper traders have their say, Silver will not be left to its own devices… , 

In the overnight markets last night…  well, before retiring last night, I checked the currencies, and the dollar was getting sold again, but something happened on the way to the forum last night, and the selling turned to buying… When that happens like that you’ve got believe that it was Central Bank intervention… That’s what years of currency trading taught me… So, yesterday, I was talking about the PPT not being seen in the markets, but i would suspect that they were there last night, buying dollars… The BBDXY has improved to a 1,217 figure this morning, and the euro has lost the 1.15 figure… The dollar buying isn’t to start a war over, but it’s of notice, with the currencies all backing off their perky levels they sat at yesterday.. 

Gold is up $33 to start our day today…  I have a feeling tht I’m going to regret saying this, but here goes… Gold seems to be oblivious o everything that’s going on around it, and just keeps plugging along, moving higher, and now has its sights set on $3,500…  Are you ready?  This is a classic “flight to safety” move in Gold, folks… Safety from the debt scenario that questions where the financing will come from, Safety from the feud between the POTUS, and Fed Chairman, and Safety from the ill-effects of the Trade Wars… 

Silver opens up this morning down 2-cents, so flat if you will… The price of Oil remains trading with a $63 handle, and the 10-year Treasury’s yield moved another BP to 4.42% overnight…  

I read a report on site that wouldn’t let me read it all unless I signed up with them, but what I read was interesting in that they questioned the Fed/ Caba/ Cartel’s ability to adhere to their dual mandate of ensuring stable prices and full employment…  Shoot Rudy, I thought to myself, they (Fed Heads) can’t even adhere to their target inflation rate! How are they going to ensure stable prices?  Wishful thinking… I’m just saying… 

Circling the wagons here, and coming back to an explanation as to why the dollar it loosing ground to the tune of 8%, it’s a combination of a couple of things… 1. The feud between the PORUS and the Fed Chairman, 2. The debt that needs to be finanaced, with bonds getting sold instead of bought by foreigners, and 2. The Sell American trade… 

Shoot Rudy, even the Wall Street Journal mentioned the Sell America theme…   I “took this from Moneymetals.com ” Wall Street Journal summed up:

The “Sell America” trade picked back up on Monday.

Stocks fell, with the Dow industrials dropping 1,100 points and on pace for their worst April since 1932, and the dollar hit fresh multiyear lows against the euro and other major currencies. Yields on longer-term Treasurys rose, and gold surged to a fresh record high.”

But let’s not lose our focus here, that the debt and the feud are every bit important in this dollar selling… 

You know what I haven’t heard being thrown about lately?  That “deficits don’t matter”… I used to cringe when I would see that in print, and it would come from people that `were considered to be “smarter than the average Bear”  Idiot dolts is what I used to call them, and then I would have to apologize to my deceased mother for saying something rotten about somebody! 

At least the blue light special selling of Treasuries has abated, for now…  I don’t know how much longer Treasuries can remain on the sidelines while stocks, Bonds, and the dollar all get sold… I’m just saying… 

This week in the U.S. Data Cupboard, we won’t be seeing much, if anything in the way of real economic reports… Durable Goods Orders will print on Thursday, but I won’t be writing that day, so there’s that… A lot of Fed Heads on the speaking circuit this week, so prepare yourselves to hear a lot of lies…  

To Recap… The dollar stopped getting sold during the U.S. trading day yesterday, but still ended the day down 8 index points in the BBDXY.. Gold gained $99 on the day, and Silver fought and fought the short paper traders to eke out a 20-cent gain on the day… Chuck gives us 3 reasons for the selling of the dollar right now, and he mentions that he hasn’t heard the idiot dolts spouting off about how “deficits don’t matter” …

Before we head to the BIG Finish this morning… I want to mention that 78 years ago, yesterday, my all-time favorite country artists, Hank Williams, stepped into a recording studio and recorded: Move It On Over… I can’t say that I like much country music, but I do enjoy the recordings of Hank Willams… When I was kid at home, my dad would go through the house singing Hank Willliams’ songs… And when I first learned how to play the guitar, I sat down and learned those songs by Hank Williams, in hopes that one day, my dad would sing along with my guitar playing…  But that never came to fruition, and I still love Hank Wiliams’ songs! 

For What it’s Worth…  weel, here’s a different take on the trade wars from a leading economist. He says that his thoughts have us entering a long period of stagflation, and it can be found here: This top U.S. economist puts the chance of a ‘stagflationary’ recession at 65% – MarketWatch

Or, here’s your snippet: “A leading economist contends a recession is now more likely than not due to the Trump administration’s trade wars, and that the U.S. could suffer the biggest “stagflationary” shock in decades.

“We may get recession, we may not, but we are going to get inflation either way,” said Adam Posen, a former official at both the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, in a speech this week.

The influential Posen, now the president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, put the odds of recession at 65%.

He said even if Trump strikes deals with various countries, tariffs are likely to remain in place. These measures would raise prices, increase inflation and slow the economy — the recipe for a period of stagflation.

Stagflation refers to an economy suffering from high inflation and weak or even negative economic growth. The last time the U.S. suffered from stagflation was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, a period of tremendous economic turmoil.

Even if Republicans further reduce taxes and cut regulations, Posen said, households and businesses probably won’t increase spending and investment because of a chronic state of uncertainty fostered by the Trump White House.”

Chuck again…  well, every day we get another idea of what’s going to come of the trade wars, take your pick, but the one that sticks out in my mind is that of stocks going back to their intrinsic values..  In other words, stocks getting sold Big Time! 

Market Prices 4/22/2025; American Style: A$ .6396, kiwi .5948, C$ .7220, euro 1.1475, sterling 1.3364, Swiss $ 1.231p, European Style: rand 18.6299, krone 10.3876, SEK 9.5214, forint 358.76, zloty 3.7807, koruna 21.8640, RUB 81.83, yen 140.40, sing 1.3083, HKD 7.7676, INR 85.19, China 7.3134, peso 19.56, BRL 5.7962, BBDXU 1,217, Dollar Index 99.56, Oil $63.92, 10-year 4.42%, Silver $32.72, Platinum $967.00, Palladium $946.00, Copper $4.84, and Gold… $3,459.66

That’s it for today… Yesterday, was my good friend, and former Big Boss, Frank Trotter’s Birthday! He’s now 1 year older than me again… I bet that Frank’s new endeavor, Battle Bank, is oh-so-close to opening its virtual doors, that he can taste it! The patience of this man is incredible… If it were me, I would get the FDIC on the horn every day, asking them when they were going to make final decision!  Good thing it’s not me! I would make a mess of everything! What’s gotten into my beloved Cardinals, who can’t beat “bye” on the road?  They’ve wasted a ton of great starting pitching with weak bats… UGH it’s going to be a long season, I’m afraid…  The late Great George Harrison takes us to the finish line today with his song: While My Guitar Gently Sleeps…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• The dollar gets sold down the river, in the overnight trading
• Potus VS Fed Chairman… Who will win?

Good Day… And a Marvelous Easter Monday to you! Well, if you celebrate Easter, how was yours? Mine was great! All my kids and grandkids were here, along with some extended family!  We’ve got more chocolate here than Carter has pills… I don’t think it will be good for me to eat a lot of it!  I guess the grandkids filled their baskets and that was it… We’ll have to have them back to gather some more, because I’m not going to consumer all that chocolate! Little Evie stayed the night with us, and is here for the day today… I need to stay away from here for the most part, because I always end up with an ailment after she comes here… I’m just eliminating one thing… Gotta find out why I keep getting sick!  Johnny Rivers greets me this morning with his song: The Poor Side of Town…   

The dollar continued to get sold going into last weekend, but not as badly as one would think given the bad economic reports on Thursday… The BBDXY ended the week at 1,224…  That’s a 6.5% loss when measuring the BBDXY YTD…  Gold ended the week on a down note, but it’s important to point out that Gold is indicating that it is in overbought territory in the RSI (Relative Strength Index) … Usually, that would have Gold getting sold until it was no longer showing overbought…   Gold hadn’t shown any resistance from being overbought, so either it was that, or profit taking, or… Short paper trading that caused Gold to end the week down $14, and to close at $3,327…   

I find it very promising that Gold has remained well bid in an overbought position in the RSI…  the selling on Thursday doesn’t turn out to be short paper trading, it would indicate that Gold is resilient to the RSI Index… Silver hasn’t sniffed an overbought position in the RSI since earlier this month, and that’s when the short paper traders used the RSI reading to take Silver down violently….  So, Silver ended last week at $32.68…  up on Thursday 15-cents…   Friday was a markets holiday (Good Friday) and only the Gold market in China was open, and Gold didn’t do anything there…  

On Thursday last week, the European Central Bank (ECB ) did what they said they would do, and that is cut rates… They Cut their internal rate 25 Basis point (1/4%) to 2.25%. This was the ECB’s 7^th rate cut in the last year! They (the ECB ) truly believe that the coming tariff war is going to cause inflation to return to the Eurozone…  I’ve got a bridge I would like to sell them, if they’re that naive…  where have all the rate hawks gone from the Bundesbank (Germany’s Central Bank) and the De Nederlandsche Ban (The Netherlands Central bank) gone?   The euro didn’t lose any ground on the rate cut news…  Which proves my statement to you years ago, that the euro is the offset currency to the dollar, and with that moniker the euro gets to rally even if the economic news in the Eurozone is bad…  

Years ago, in a glazy far away, I was the foreign bond trader at Mark Twain Bank, and I used to write in the Pfennig then that I didn’t understand why the Bundesbank wasn’t cutting rates… See how I’ve changed?  Once I also took on the currency trading to go with my bond trading, I saw the error of my ways… And that rate cuts weren’t not good for the currency, for they equaled a debasing of the currency…     

I mentioned the bad economic reports above, and if you can’t wait, go ahead and take a peek at the U.S. Data Cupboard piece below…   

The price of Oil bumped higher again late last week to end the week trading with a $63 handle… And the 10-year’s yield bumped higher to end the week with a 4.33% yield…    President Trump is blowing the horn for rate cuts, and it’s for good reason as far as the Gov’t’s books are concerned…  He feels that if rates were cut, the yield on Treasuries would drop, thus brining the cost of servicing the bonds down…  Shoot Rudy, the cost to pay the interest on the bonds now is more than we pay out to the Defense Budget..   And it will be even costlier in 2026, and so on…     

You know, there’s no guarantee that Treasury yield will come down if there are rate cuts…  Remember last fall when the Fed Heads cut rates 3 times, but Treasury yields rose?   I kept pointing that situation out to you dear readers, saying that the Bond Boys were saying that they didn’t believe that inflation had been defeated (at that time it was 2.8%, and nowhere near the Fed’s 2% target rate)…   So, you can’t hang your hat on yields coming down if there are rate cuts… I’m just saying…  And if I were Jerome Powell, I would be pointing the scenario that took place last fall, out to the POTUS…   

In the overnight markets last night…  OMG! It’s an ambush of all ambushes! The dollar is getting sold like it’s the Zimbabwe currency! The BBDXY is down 10 index points this morning, after a night of selling. The euro has climbed to a 1.15 handle, and the rest of the currencies are all looking perky this morning.  What’s got the traders and investors selling dollars now?  Well, it seems the markets didn’t like the back and forth between the President and the Fed/ Cabal / Cartel chairman over his status as chairman…   They think it hurts the dollar as a safe haven, and so the dollar gets sold down the river…  Go ahead and take a peak at the currency roundup below and see for yourself the damage to the dollar.. 

And Gold? The real safe haven, and not some fly by night, investment, is up $75 this morning, and climbed above the $3,400 figure!  Silver is joining in and is up 43-cents to start the day/ week this morning. This is one for the ages, folks… So, mark this down in your daily journal as a day that sent the dollar into a new weak dollar trend…  There I said it!  

The price of Oil remained trading with a $63 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury’s yield has jumped higher with the dollar getting sold, and the 10-year’s yield sits at 4.40% this morning…   That’s up 10 BPS from where it closed last Thursday… 

I spent an hour listening to a James Rickards message this past weekend… I don’t know why I do that, it always leads to the same conclusion, “join my letter for ‘X’ dollars, and I’ll send you the report”…  I tell you this so 1. You won’t fall for these things, and 2. That he made a good statement about raw materials here in the U.S. that have been protected by dumb legislature for years. No, instead we, as a country, import these raw materials, and pay quite dearly for them, when we have oodles of raw materials in the ground here in the U.S. that haven’t been touched…   Well, that’s about to change… 

It was reported by the good folks at GATA this past weekend that the POTUS has approved 10 new mining projects here in the U.S. This could be a game changer for the U.S. folks… We had better keep our eyes on this development, don’t you think? I do… I’m just saying… 

And then I received an email with a link to an article that explains this move by the POTUS, an it can be found here: Trump to fast-track permitting for 10 mining projects across US | Reuters

So, as you can see, I don’t make this stuff up!  

I can’t think of anything else this morning, except for the dollar getting sold down the river..  This is a long time coming, folks…  All the pent-up frustration as the dollar gained when it shouldn’t have…  There have been days when I didn’t even want to write about the dollar and its rally… But with the dollar down more than 8% this year, that appears to be over..  The PPT and their treasure trove of funds that have been used to save the dollar in the past, have been absent from the currency tradeing, and that’s very suspicious to me, but I say “leave sleeping dogs alone”  

And the POTUS and Fed Chairman, going back and forth, doesn’t help things… The POTUS wants to fire Jerome Powell, because he won’t cut interest rates…  Now this is nothing new, but has been brought to a head, because of the overall meanness that has been brought to the table… Here’s Bloomberg.com this morning: ““Firing Powell not only undermines the principle of central-bank independence, but risks politicizing US monetary policy in a way that markets will find unsettling,” said Christopher Wong, a strategist at Oversea-Chinese Banking Corp. If the Fed’s credibility is called into question, that could erode confidence in the dollar and accelerate flows into havens, including gold, he said.”

I got a kick out of that last part regarding The Fed’s Credibility being called into question… Did they have any credibility left?  I would have to argue that point, because I feel that when the Fed Heads cut rates three times last fall when inflation was nowhere near their previously stated target of 2%. The remainder of their credibility was lost…  I’m just saying… 

And the guy quoted in Bloomberg. Com above, is a little too late for the party, because those flows are already into Gold…    But that’s the problem with coming out with a statement, it’s old before you finish it! 

Oh well, I just say, “can’t we all just get along”..  Apparently, no is the answer… And that’s a very sad thing in my opinion… 

You know, Easter Monday used to be a holiday for yours truly, back when he ran the currency desk at EverBank… Good Friday, and Easter Monday were always taken off. I didn’t think that I needed to work on days that were so important!  To me that is…

The U.S. Data Cupboard ended last week with some awful numbers that didn’t help Gold any… First, we had the Philly Fed ISM (manufacturing for the region) and it came in a negative -26.4…  and then we had Housing Starts come in for March showing an 11% drop…   Both bad numbers as far as the economy goes…  And that should have gotten the rate cuts bugs crawling out of the woodwork, but the only rate cut bug that made everyone feel queasy, was the POTUS, who claimed that he was going to throw Fed/ Cabal / Cartel chairman, Jerome Powell, out with the trash…  Powell, basically said, “Come and see if you can do that!”   in truth, I made that last part for Powell up, but I sure imagined him saying it! 

This week’s Data Cupboard is null and void of real economic reports, after starting the week with the leading Indicators, which have been mostly negative for months now… 

To recap…  The dollar is getting sold down the river this morning folks, as it was ambushed overnight, and the BBDXY is down 10 index points to start our day/ week this morning.  The euro has climbed over the 1.15 handle, and Gold is up $75 to start the day/ week! The dollar is getting sold because its safe haven is being called into question, and that is derived from the bickering that’s going back and forth between the POTUS and the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel chairman… Chuck thinks that this day should be an entry in your journal… 

For What It’s Worth… Well, I spent a lot of this morning talking about the dollar selloff, so I think it apropos to have the FWIW continue that thought, and so this is about the dollar at a crossroads and it can be found here: The U.S. Dollar Stands at a Major Crossroads

Or, here’s your snippet: “The U.S. Dollar Index is testing a key technical level that has triggered major rebounds in the past—making this an important setup for commodities and precious metals investors to watch closely.

The U.S. dollar has fallen sharply since the start of the year, which has boosted commodity prices—especially metals like gold and silver—due to their inverse relationship.

This decline stems from several factors, including a plunging stock market that triggered foreign capital outflows, rising recession risks and expectations of future interest rate cuts, and growing uncertainty over America’s new tariff policies.

But after three months of steady declines, the dollar now finds itself at a key crossroads—one that will significantly influence its next move, as well as how commodities and precious metals respond from here.

The crossroads lies in the fact that the U.S. Dollar Index—a measure of the dollar’s exchange rate against a basket of major world currencies (not its domestic purchasing power)—is now sitting right at a major long-term support level around 100.

This level has held for several years and has triggered significant rebounds in the past, including the most recent bounce in September 2024, which created a headwind for metals over the next few months.

How the U.S. Dollar Index behaves from here will have a major influence on the direction of commodities and precious metals.

A decisive break below this level would likely open the door to a deeper decline — potentially into the low 90s or even lower — which would be highly bullish for commodities and could propel gold toward the $4,000 mark and silver to $40-$50+.

However, if the Dollar Index finds solid support at the 100 level, it’s likely to bounce — which would pose a headwind for commodities. That said, I believe gold, which remains in a strong uptrend, would likely consolidate and cool off rather than experience a sharp pullback. “

Chuck again…  Nothing more to add to all the talk this morning regarding the dollar and its current situation… 

Market Prices 4/21/ 2025: American Style: A$.6424, kiwi .6010, C$ .7242, euro 1.1542, sterling 1.3395, Swiss $1.2417, European Style: rand 18.7037, krone 10.3958, SEK 9.5009, forint 352. 84, zloty 3.7039, koruna 21.7020, RUB 81.20, yen 140.70, sing 1.3092, HKD 7.7602, INR 85.17, China 7.2893, peso 19.70, BRL 5.8268, BBDXY 1,214.57, Dollar Index 99.56, Oil $63.20, 10-year 4.40%, Silver $32.99, Platinum $978.00, Palladium $963.00, Copper $4.84, and Gold… $3,404.83

That’s it for today… I finally got out of the house for a little time last Friday, that wasn’t sitting out back, reading, or going for a short walk…  I got to be with my friends, Rick, Duane, Mike, Denny, Kevin, Lisa, and Debbie, Nancy, and Kathy went with me! I hadn’t seen some of those folks since December, so a lot of catching up was due…  I was supposed to be going to lunch with my classmates this Thursday, but that’s the day I’m due for my next infusion…  So, there will be no Pfennig this Thursday, as I will be getting my next infusion…  It was an awful weekend for St. Louis sports… My beloved Cardinals got swept in NY, Our Blues lost their first playoff game, and the City soccer club couldn’t score again…  UGH!  Our Blues had the lead with 10 minutes left, and then they didn’t… Just like that! I was so frustrated with their play in the 3rd period….  Oh well.. We move on…  Jackson Browne takes us to the finish line today with his song: Ready Or Not… I hope you have a Marvelous Easter Monday today and will Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler

• Currencies & metals take liberties with the dollar on Wednesday
• What’s going on with the ECB?

Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday to one and all!  Well, my beloved Cardinals didn’t really find their bats on Wednesday, but found them enough to win 4-1 and win the rubber gaee of the 3-game series with the Astros… It was a day game, which in times past would have had me at the Ballpark to watch the game in person, but with me being able to walk about a 50 yards right now, me going to the ballpark was out of the question…  Sugar Ray greets me this morning with their song: Every Morning… 

Yes, wouldn’t it be great to wake up every morning and look at the price of Gold and be able to that the short paper traders didn’t gain an inch the previous day? Before you answer, that it’s what happened yesterday, and Gold was left to trade on its own devives… And it gained… Drum roll please…  $139 on the day to close at $3,354.. Holy Cow! Now that’s the way to drive the ball out of the ballpark!  I know, I know it wasn’t slow and steady, but like I said on Monday, I’m not going to shake a stick at it!, like it had done something wrong! 

The dollar started the day down Index points in the BBDXY, and then proceeded to lose more as the day went on, with the loss coming in at the end of the day,  of 10 index points to close the day at 1,224…  The fear went rampant through the markets again yesterday, of a Trade War… I guess they were paying attention to Jamie Dimon’s warning that I brought to you yesterday. 

The euro traded near the 114 figure before the rug got pulled form under it… The ECB issued a warning that they saw a rate cut coming more sooner than later,  And that did the trick! You see, even during the last weak dollar trend that saw the euro climb to 1.50, The ECB (European Central Bank)  whined and moaned about it’s value just about every day!  At that time, German was a manufacturing giant, and their exports to the U.S. were very expensive, given the price of the euro…   But The Secretary of the Treasury, in the 80’s had this to say about the strength in the dollar, before it was brought down after the Plaza Accord in 1985… “The dollar is our Currency, but it’s your problem”…   or something like that…  At that time a strong dollar was the pride of the U.S. Gov’t… Nowadays, they don’t give a hoot about the dollar..  

The price of Silver tried to keep up with the Gold price, but didn’t have the legs to run with Gold, this time… Silver gained $58 on the day, to close at $32.75…  I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but ever since the price of Silver traded over $32 at the beginning of March, it hasn’t come close to getting there after the shsort paper traders took it down nearly $10 in week… Silver has done a nice job of recovering lits lost ground, albeit slowly…  

The price of Oil bumped higher to end the day yesterday trading with a $63 handle…  And the 10-year Treasury bond saw some buying and the yield on the bond slipped to 4.31$… 

In the overnight markets last night… The dollar got sold further down the river, with the BBDXY starting today down 2 more index points at 1.227… I read yesterday that the old Dollar Index had fallen below the line in the sand that would be the 100 figure, and that, in the writer’s opinion, signaled that the dollar was in deep trouble of losing even more value (if that’s possible, given the dollar is now worth pennies.)  

Gold is seeing some profit taking after a record day of price rise, yesterday and is down $5 to start our day today and Silver is down 15-cents to start the day… It does appear to be profit taking to me, and not short paper trading, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the short paper traders enter the markets here and use the profit taking as their excuse to sell… Not that they need an excuse, after seeing their brazen engineered takedowns in the past…  Boy, I’m full of seashells and balloons this morning, eh? (McGuire)  

The price of Oil remained trading with a $63 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury remined trading with a 4.31% yield… The selling of Treasuries has abated folks, for now that is…  In my humble country boy opinion, I think the Chinese wanted to show the U.S. what it could to its financial system if they continued to go down the trade war rabbit hole, and they then sat back and watched the U.S. Treasury market go haywire last week…  I say the selling is over for now, but it could very easily return if we, as a country, continue to tick off the Chinese… 

I read this morning that China has decided to leave importing Oil from the U.S. and turn to Canada for its Oil imports…  And that’s not a real bad thing in my opinion, I’ve long been of the opinion that whet ever Oil we garner here in the U.S. needs to stay in the U.S.  Why on earth would we, a country so rich in raw material be beholden to other countries for these materials?   I’m just saying… 

Well… The fear that gripped the markets last week, has returned… The VIX (Volatility index) rose 2 BPS yesterday, still noting like the way it sored last week, but rose nonetheless… So, her we go again… Riding this wave of volatility… Hang on to your hats folks,…

I don’t know what the problem is that that The ECB has with a strong euro… But , it sure slhows that they do have a problem with a strong euro, given that there hadn’t been any discussion  recently about rate movements from the ECB, and then suddenly when the euro reached 1.14 a level it hasn’t seen in a long time, the ECB comes out and starts warning its markets about a rate cut…   Coninquidink? I don’t think so…

Well, trade negotiations are ongoing as the countries saddled with high tariffs attempt to work out new trade agreements… You know, someone, I don’t remember who it was, but someone asked me to tell them my wish for peace in the world…  And I said, ” we need trade agreements, where both parties win, so in other words a win-win trade agreement, and go back to the smooth global trade that existed before the plandemic, that would go a long way to normalizing the Globe and everyone would be happy. ” Shiny Happy People (REM)  

The tough nut to crack here with negotiations will be China…  The U.S. is to blame just as much as China is here for the tensions that are rising between the two super nations.  China is puffing out its chest, and the so is the U.S. to see to blinks first… I can tell you that from my experience it won’t be China…  Although they did lay out some parameters that they need to have before negotiations can begin… Let’s go to the Bloomberg.com for the skinny there:  

“While both China and the US probably want to see tariff rates lowered due to domestic pressure, negotiations are “unlikely to lead to a meaningful de-escalation,” said Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale SA.

“There is a bit more clarity on what China is looking from: respect, consistency and a point person,” she said. “So now the ball is in US court on whether they can meet these demands. But that is still difficult — especially if the aim is to contain China’s rise.”

Chuck Again… So, China feels like they been spit on, and dissed?  I can see that…  But c’mon this is the real world and things will be said that shouldn’t be taken personally…   So, there you have it, all in a  nu shell… China has come out and said what they need to see to begin negotiations, now it’s up to the U.S. to respond to these parameters…  I doubt anything comes of this, these two countries are too far down the rabbit hole of a pending trade war to come out…  You know that reminds me of a saying that my dad used to tell me…  “When you’re in a hole, stop digging”…  

A lot of ink has been used to talk about China and the pending Trade War… I thought that today was a good  of time to talk about it as any other, given the lack of news on the newswire today. But to me, it seems like a bunch of chests puffing and saber rattling…

So, what we have today, is a clean up of the day yesterday, which saw the fear grip the markets once again, Gold soar, Silver get positive, and the dollar get treated like a rental…  Treasuries weren’t sold to make the dollar selling worse… No, like I said the other day, this dollar selling is a case of: We’re getting the hell out of Dodge, and this is the last chance saloon for the dollar…   

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the March print of Retail Sales, of which I had said it would be a decent print, and it was… With Retail Sales rising 1.4%… Not earth shattering but a rise in the end, and I’m actually somewhat surprised by the growth number in that I would love to look under the hood and see what means were used to secure those Retail Sales… Credit Cards?   rotary charges?  I would have to think that consumers went further into debt…  

Industrial Production in the U.S. in March printed a neg. -.3%…  So, there was no joy in Mudville for that print!  And Capacity Utilization was pretty much same-o, smae-o as the Feb print so the glaring black eye on the day’s reports was the Industrial Production print.. 

To recap… The fear was back in the markets yesterday, and the selling of the dollar wen full bore again… The BBDXY lost 10 index points for the day yesterday, and the PPT was nowhere to be found…    The selling was just too strong for the PPT to do anything about it…  Even if they were champing of the bit to intervene, they stayed on the sidelines… The ECB threw a cat among the pigeons yesterday, coming out and saying that the  timing for a rate cut was good…  The euro remained trading above 1.13, but was cllosing in on 1.14 when the ECB told the markets that they were going to debase the currency again… 

For What It’s Worth… This article came to me from the good folks at GATA, and it’s about how while the U.S. leaders may claim that the U.S. has a strong dollar policy, it rings hollow right now and the article can be found here: https://www.reuters.com/markets/currencies/us-strong-dollar-policy-rings-increasingly-hollow-mcgeever-2025-04-15/

Or, here’s your snippet: “U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Monday repeated the mantra we’ve heard from his nine predecessors:

“We have a strong dollar policy.”

While the words are familiar, the conviction behind them may have softened.

The ‘strong dollar’ policy has always been about more than just the exchange rate, although a more expensive currency can help keep inflation and interest rates low. This policy has represented the world’s trust in the U.S., and, consequently, the greenback’s role as the lynchpin of the global economy.

But times have changed since 1995. A lot. The world today is losing faith in the dollar, losing trust in the government institutions backing it, and losing confidence in America’s role as leader of the ‘free world’.

Back then, the North American Free Trade Agreement was in its infancy, China was about to emerge as an economic force, globalization was accelerating, trade and regulatory barriers were being torn down, and global capital flows were exploding. The dollar was pivotal to all that and it soared for the next seven years, right up until the dotcom crash.

The dollar slumped around 40% in the following seven years to the Global Financial Crisis and then drifted for several more years after its post-Lehman surge. But this didn’t stop central banks from growing their dollar FX reserves to $4.5 trillion in 2015 from around $1 trillion in 2001.

That was a strong dollar, the world’s reserve currency in its prime.

U.S. dollar’s share of FX reserves reported to the IMF has been gradually falling

The dollar has remained dominant by any measure. Central banks’ dollar holdings have largely flat-lined for the past decade, but private sector buyers have increased their exposure significantly. The greenback is still the most dominant currency in FX reserves, global trade and financial market trading.

But as Steven B. Kamin, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Mark Sobel, U.S. chairman at the Official Monetary and Financial Institutions Forum, have written, future dollar dominance rests on three factors: “preserving the underpinnings of the dollar’s global role; maintaining trust in the U.S. as a reliable partner; and avoiding overuse or abuse of financial sanctions.

Doubt now hangs over all three as the Trump administration’s ‘America First’ agenda has caused foreign investors to look at the dollar in a new light.

Last November, before his confirmation as Chair of the U.S. Council of Economic Advisers, Stephen Miran published a paper, ‘A User’s Guide to Restructuring the Global Trading System’, in which he argued that the dollar, from a trade perspective, is “persistently over-valued in large part because dollar assets function as the world’s reserve currency.”

Perhaps more importantly, he also noted that while Trump supports the dollar’s reserve status, he had floated “substantial changes” to dollar policy. “Sweeping tariffs and a shift away from strong dollar policy can have some of the broadest ramifications of any policies in decades, fundamentally reshaping the global trade and financial systems.”

Chuck Again…  yes, the dollar does remain entrenched as the reserve currency around the Globe, but the dents in its armor are beginning to grow in size, and are more visible to every man… 

Market Prices 4/17/ 2025: American Style: A$ .6363, kiwi 5941, C$ .7202, euro 1.1357, sterling 1.3250, Swiss $1.227, European Style: rand 18.8266, krone 10.5318, SEK 9.7178, forint 358.76, zloty 3.7625, koruna 22.0126, RUB 81.81, yen 142.58, sing 1.3120, HKD 7.7637, INR 86.57, China 7.2963, peso 19.90, BRL 5.8739, 

BBDXY 1,227, Dollar Index 99.56, Oil $53.26, 10-year 4.31%, Silver $32.39, Platinum $968.00, Palladium $961.00, Copper $4.65, and Gold… $3,335.80 

That’s it for today and this week… Just when I thought it was safe to enter the markets again, the fear gripped the markets again yesterday, and will probably be around for the last two trading days this week, so hold onto to your hats…  And all the Gold Bugs out there… Are you smiling like the Cheshire Cat? I can’t imagine a world where you would be unhappy with Gold’s rise…   My beloved Cardinas travel to Citi Fiedd to play that pond scum, I mean the Mets the next 4 games… I see the Mets a lot in Spring Training… And it appears they are moving in the right direction, abeit with their owner paying out HUGE Contracts to the players… He’s trying to get the best team money can buy… Oh well, it is what it is… Looks like it’s going to rain on the kids’ easter egg hunt Sunday, as holy week comes to an end…  UGH!  The band, Jet, takes us to the finish line today with their song: Are You Gonna Be My Girl?  I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday today, and a fantastico Good Friday tomorrow, and a blessed Easter on Sunday!  And please, oh please, with sugar on top, Be Good To Yourself! 

• currencies & metals rally strongly overnight
• China posts a strong GDP…

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Well, after a night of watching my beloved Cardinals ring the bats in an 8-3 victory over the Astros, the bats went silent last night, and the Cardinals were shut out for the first time this season… UGH! No consistency in this team that’s for sure!  The Marshall Tucker Band greets me this morning with their great song: 24 Hours At A Time… 

Well, the dollar rallied a bit yesterday, gaining 4 index points in the BBDXY, but the euro remained above the 1.13 handle, so not all was not lost in the currencies… The best performing currency in the last week is the Russian ruble…  And posted a gain yesterday to a price of 80… We’ve seen the ruble rally before, only to lose its rally a short time after… So, there’s that…  keep in mind that this is an investment and not a political position!  And even with this rally the ruble is still a long, long way from the level it traded when we first started offering the ruble… Which was 35… 

Gold fought through the short paper trading yesterday to post a gain of $9, and Silver did the same to post a gain of 13-cents…  Ok, back to normal trading, and that makes me happy to see…  Yes, I was happy with Gold’s $93 gain last Thursday, but that was NOT normal trading.. That was panic with fear buying  that the sky was falling…  But Chicken Little didn’t get her way, and the sky didn’t fall, so Gold goes back to normal trading… 

There’s still fear in the markets folks, but it was manageable to start the week…  The VIX has backed off of the level seen last week (52), and had dropped to a 30 level… So, still more volatile than it had been, but not as Volatile! 

The price of Oil remained trading in the $61 handle yesterday, and the 100-year Treasury actually saw some buying yesterday, so the yield dropped a few BPS to 4.33%…  It wasn’t a HUGE amount of buying, so I don’t suspect the Fed Heads from doing any of their yield curve control buying…  

In the overnight markets last night… Well the dollar is back on the chopping block, as it got ambushed overnight getting sold without Treasuries getting sold… So, this selling was just straight out get rid of my dollars selling… The BBDXY is down 6 index points to start our day, and the euro is within  spittin’ distance of 1.14….   Gold’s 2-day respite from all the fear buying, ended overnight, as the shiny metal is up $60 to start our day today, and Silver is up 65-cents!  Like I said the other day, I’m not going to shake stick at a $60 gain in one day, but I would prefer that the gains were more normal… But I get it… The fear in the markets prevails, and who can blame anyone striking up the fear again?

The price of Oil remained in trading with a $61 handle overnight, and the 10-year Treasury is 4.33% this morning… I did a double take on the 10-year Treasury screen for the yield hadn’t moved overnight, but after refreshing the screen just for good measure, I showed the same figure, so it is what it is… 

There was some news overnight from China.. Here’s the skinny from reuters.com: “China’s first-quarter economic growth outstripped expectations, underpinned by solid consumption and industrial output.”

Chuck again… Yes, the 1^st QTR GDP Growth in China was 5.4%…  That’s a pretty strong GDP without gov’t spending…  And the People’s Bank of China allowed the renminbi to gain ground on the dollar overnight…  

When China was booking 10+ percentage gains in GDP a decade ago, I used to tell you dear readers that we could believe about one-half of what China told us…  I don’t think it’s that bad any longer, so we’ll go with the 5.4% gain and that’s that! 

Here’s some good news for the euro that ran in the Bloomberg.com this morning, “Europe’s common currency hit its strongest level in three years at the end of last week as economic uncertainty radiating from US tariff policy raised questions about the dollar’s traditional haven role.

Three out of four options contracts bought Friday were for more euro gains, according to data from the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. Traders say hedge funds are targeting a move to $1.20. And strategists at Mizuho International Plc see rising odds that the currency hits that level — the highest since mid-2021 — in the coming months.”

Where is all those naysayers that were calling for the euro to fall to parity with the dollar a month ago? Long time passing. (Seeger) .. It’s been a long… Long time coming, it’s going to b a long time gone… (CSN)  I thought at the time when those forecasts were made that they were being a little too hard on the Beaver. (euro), I watched an old episode of Leave It To Beaver yesterday… So there’s that!   

Another currency that has been bought like funnel cakes at a State Fair, is the Swiss franc… I was interviewed by good friend, Dennis Miller, for his letter www.milleronthemoney.com  last week, and it I was asked who might be the winners and losers in Europe…  I talked about the Swiss franc being a winner, along with the euro, IF, their leaders changed some things, and the losers being the Club Med currencies (Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal) ,for not being able to get their debts in line with the Eurozone requirements…  I said in the interview that I thought the Club Med countries would be asked to leave the euro…    That’s a strong statement, folks… But as Cliff Claven explained to Norm on the old Cheers show… The slowest Buffalo makes the herd faster… And the Club Med countries would be the slowest Buffalo here… 

Remember when I told you here, that the money supply was gaining again? Well, I found his on Mises.org “Money-supply growth rose year over year in February for the seventh month in a row, the first time this has happened since mid-2022. The current trend in money-supply growth suggests a continued reversal of more than a year of historically large contractions in the money supply that occurred throughout much of 2023 and 2024.”

And let me repeat myself here: Money Supply growth is equal to inflation coming…  or Money Supply is inflation… No wonder the future inflation outlook for the U.S. is rising daily…   

And what have I taught you regarding the Gov’t and inflation for over probably 2 decades now?  That the U.S. Gov’t wants inflation , they need inflation, as the only means left to them to deal with the $36 Trillion Debt, they are hoping to inflate the debt down to a workable level of debt…   The Gov’t doesn’t care about how the high inflation will affect you and me, and the middle class…   So, make sure you have investments that are inflation beaters…  Got Gold?

I think the action or non-action in the markets so far this week, (2 days) has had more to do with market participants wanting fresh news, as they had already traded on the news last week. And the Data Cupboard could hold some sway on that front, but then most times in recent days, the markets ignore the Data Cupboard… And I can’t blame them, given all the hedonic adjustments the Gov’t agencies throw into the data prints…   But what happened overnight is the question here…  The selling of the dollar was strong,  I think it has more to do with the comment that the U.S. leaders are trying to get across regarding the delayed tariffs on the electronics from China, and that is that the delay is only temporary… In other words, we think that your euphoria in the tech stocks is unwarranted, and you need to calm down….   

Speaking of the U.S. Data Cupboard… Today, we’ll see the color of the March Retail Sales report…  As I said yesterday, the BHI (Butler Household Index) indicates that this should be a decent print in Retail Sales… Nothing to write home about, but decent… And positive, after printing a negative number for February.  We’ll also see Capacity Utilization and Industrial Production for March… I don’t expect either of those two to ignite dollar buying today, so, we’ll just move along now, for these are not the droids we’re looking for…  Oh, and there will be 3 Fed Head speakers out on the road today spilling their lies, and false readings…  

Do, you get the feeling that I do NOT hold the Fed Heads in high regard?  Geez, I don’t know how that could happen! HA! 

To recap… The dollar rallied a bit on Tuesday, gaining 4 index points in the BBDXY, after a getting sold down the river all of last week… Gold gained $9 on the day, and Chuck believes that market participants are awaiting fresh news to trade on. The fear is still out there folks, just not as unbearable as it was last week. The euro, Swiss franc, and ruble are the three currencies Chuck highlights today, let’s hope he didn’t jinx them…

For What It’s Worth… Well, I told you on Monday that I was loaded for bear with FWIW articles this week, but every now and then, I come across a different article that is timelier, and it buts the line with the FWIW articles on tap…  This is JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon talking about the effects on the economy that A Trade War will cause, and it can be found here: JPMorgan chief Jamie Dimon warns trade war risks recession and higher prices

This is a Financial Times article that worked for me, without a subscription, so hopefully it’s still free to view for you:

Or, here’s your snippet: “JPMorgan Chase chief Jamie Dimon has warned that a global trade war risks tipping the US economy into a recession and driving prices higher, while undermining the country’s long-term alliances.

In his widely read annual letter to shareholders published on Monday, Dimon said the tariffs announced last week by US President Donald Trump “will likely increase inflation and are causing many to consider a greater probability of a recession”.

“The quicker this issue is resolved, the better because some of the negative effects increase cumulatively over time and would be hard to reverse,” Dimon wrote.

He said many uncertainties remained from the planned tariffs, including potential retaliation from other countries and their impact on business confidence, investments and capital flows.

“I am hoping that after negotiations, the long-term effect will have some positive benefits for the United States,” Dimon added. “My most serious concern is how this will affect America’s long-term economic alliances.”

Chuck again… Man, you would think that Mr. Dimon was reading the Pfennig, for these are things that I’ve said previously about a trade war! 

Market Prices 4/16/2025: American Style: A$ .6376, kiwi .5919, C$ .7184, euro 1.1366, sterling 1.3268, Swiss $1.2229, European Style: rand 18.8639, krone 10.5798, SEK 9.8270, forint 358.86, zloty 3.7784, koruna 22.0166, RUB 82.39, yen 142.72, sing 1.3139, HKD 7.7600, INR 85.68, China 7.3059, peso 20.08, BRL 5.8860, BBDXY 1,228, Dollar Index 99.57, Oil $61.89, 10-year 4.33%, Silver $32.89, Platinum $ 968.00, Palladium $ 978.00, Copper $4.69, and Gold… $3,295.27

That’s it for today… I’m doing much better these days, my breathing has almost returned 100% to normal, and my heart racing has calmed down…  I walked further than I had the previous day yesterday, without problems or needing to stop and rest… I’ll attempt to walk even further today!  Yesterday, I talked about how my younger sister, Terri, visited me…  I have 2 sisters left after having lost my two older sisters… I told her that I was seriously thinking my time had come with this last hospital trip,  and then told her, Grandad died at 70, our dad died at 70,  I was oh-so close to 70! But it was not my time… And I thank the Good Lord for that!  Our Blues are in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, after missing them the last 2 years! They start in Winnipeg this weekend, the same team they started the playoffs against in 2019, when the Blues won the Cup! Good Karma? I sure hope so!    Let’s Go Blues!  Three Dog Night take us to the finish line today, with their song: Easy To Be Hard…  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler

• the selling disappears on Monday…
• The rot on the dollar’s vine has been exposed…

Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, a good sign for me occurred yesterday, and will happen Tomorrow… The company that brought out the oxygen generator, is coming to pick it up tomorrow! That means that I’m on my own, which I’ve been for about 6 days now…  My beloved Cardinals sure play better at home than they do on the road… My dad taught me long ago, that for a team to be good, they need to play .750 ball at home, and .500 on the road…  So, there’s some work there, on the road, to go for the team…  My younger sister, Terri, came to visit me yesterday… She lives in Houston, but was here for a visit… It was a nice visit, and it was good to see her again.  Gordon Lightfoot greets me this morning with his song: Carefree Highway… 

Pfennig tradition calls for this :Let me tell you how it will be

There’s one for you, nineteen for me Cause I’m the taxman

Yeah, I’m the taxman

Should five per cent appear too small? Be thankful I don’t take it all

Cause I’m the taxman Yeah, I’m the taxman

The robbers of our hard-earned money, come for your share to run the country today, folks… It’s Tax Day… 

Do you get the feeling that I despise Taxes…  Well, in case you missed the signal, I do not like Taxes, I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. I do not like green eggs and ham. My apologies to Dr. Seuss… 

Well, after a week that will go down in history, this week started with a whimper…  The dollar moved sideways, which means it didn’t get sold down the river, nor did it gain any ground.  The BBDXY ended the day at 1,230, down 2 index points, but really, a wash on the day for the currencies.  Gold was sold by $27 to start the day/ week yesterday… I told you yesterday that I wasn’t sure if the selling was profit taking or short selling but was pretty sure the short Gold paper traders were at the scene of the crime.  Gold closed the day at $3,209.56

The short Gold paper traders watched as Gold first was rallying and up to $3,260, and then as Ed Steer said it, “something happened”… And Gold ended up losing $58 in a NY Minutes, and then proceeded to go below its starting price to its loss for the day… Short paper traders those dirty dogs…  Silver was treated much the same as Gold, as Silver saw an intraday move of more than 70-cents! The metal was allowed to gain 3-cents on the day, in the end and closed the day at $32.26… 

The price of Oil slipped a bit and ended the day trading with a $61 handle, while the selling in the 10-year Treasury was absent… The yield in the 10-year ended the day at $4.43%…  Same level it was to start the day…  I’m somewhat happy that the selling abated, for now that is…  I was beginning to fear that the wall was crumbling down, and there was no stopping it from happening, no Fed Head, no POTUS, not anyone, and that was a bad fear, folks… 

In the overnight markets last night, the dollar bobbed along in the water, buoyed by the wake from the ships passing through…  In other words, the dollar was stuck in the mud, and didn’t gain or lose any ground overnight, and starts today at 1.230….   1,230 is a long way from home for the dollar, which started April trading around 1,271 in the BBDXY…  The dollar’s loss of value isn’t of major significance just yet, but it is worrisome for the dollar bugs… And they should be worried!  The rot on the dollar’s vine has been exposed and there’s no “not seeing it”…   

Gold is up $10 to start our day today…  and Silver is up 2-cents…  The price of Oil remains at $61 and the selling in the 10-year Treasury sure has abated quite a bit… Makes one wonder what the hell is going on here?  But then that’s just me… 

Where do we go from here? Well, with the rot on the dollar’s vine exposed, one would have to think that more dollar selling is coming… Now, I wouldn’t bet the farm on that happening, but I would make a shiny quarter bet, like the one’s we used to make on the trade desk at Mark Twain Bank… I would like to think that the smart people in the world, know that the U.S. debt is unsustainable and that financing the coming additions to the $36 Trillion in current debt is going to be a tough row to hoe…  I’m still of the opinion that a new round of quantitative easing is in the cards for the Fed Heads, and our economy… But that’s down the road, so not so “today”… 

Did you know that today, is the day in our country’s history that President Abe Lincoln died from the gunshot wound that John Wilkes Booth delivered to him the previous night?  Imagine what a different path the U.S. would have gone on to take, if, that hadn’t taken place? The same goes true for the assassination of John F. Kennedy…  I visited the JFK assassination museum in Dallas years ago, and came away with the conspiracy theory that he was set up to be murdered…  That’s my story and I’m sticking to it! Not that it has anything to do with the markets today, so c’mon Chuck get with the program here! 

I don’t know why I went down that rabbit hole folks… I had it in my mind that I wanted to talk about was the death of Abe Lincoln, and then the next thing I knew I was talking about JFK, and conspiracies…  

I know I’ve talked about Ed Steer quite a bit lately, but… For good reason! Here’s Ed in his letter this morning, that can be found here: www.edsteergoldsilver.com   “Without doubt — and if left to their own devices, all four precious metals would haven closed at God-only-knows what prices yesterday. It was particularly true of gold, where the collusive commercial traders of whatever stripe weren’t even going to allow it a sniff of the unchanged mark.

Silver’s resilience was amazing, especially considering its low volume — and why they allowed it to close up on the day was a surprise. However, they did stop it from penetrating its 50-day moving average to the upside for the second day in a row.

However, it still remains about $2.25 below its high tick of a couple of weeks back before ‘da boyz’ crushed it — and is almost the sole reason why the gold/silver ratio has blown out to 100 to 1.”

I find it better to give you the words of the person that made the quotes, then to paraphrase them in my own way…   

I read this morning that 60% of CEO’s polled believe that a recession is coming, soon…  I’m of the opinion that we’re already in a recession that will be confirmed by the powers that be at some point in the future, when it doesn’t matter any longer…  Did you pick up my sarcasm there?  

I’m of the opinion that recession should not be worried about…  These recessions usually happen after a period of boom, but the Fed Heads have seen to it that the economy evades these recessions, and that’s a bad thing, in my opinion…   I think a financial collapse is more worrisome than a recession, folks…  And we were oh-so-close to touching on that last week…  Another round of selling like we saw last week, and this whole shootin’ match will break…  I’m just saying…   And I have something for you in the FWIW section today from Ray Dalio, someone that should be listened to at all times!

And here’s something to think about: “there is a liquidity crisis according to JPMorgan.”

To which Fed Head Susan Collins replied: “we’re not seeing liquidity concerns overall”

Yeah, just like the Fed Heads didn’t see inflation, preferring to call it “transitory”…   These Fed Heads are clueless, folks, so don’t be looking for them to bail us out of this mess… They haven’t got the gray matter to figure this out…

I took this conversation from Zerohedge.com, and they concluded the article with this: “So while the Fed may ignore warnings by entities – such as this website – that liquidity is gone, imagine a world where there is a full-blown funding crisis, banks are failing and the Fed is blamed for ignoring not just the all too clear signs, but also ignoring a warning from the largest US bank, JPMorgan.

That is not a world that Jerome Powell, no matter how much he wants to listen to Bill Dudley and crush Donald Trump, would want to be in.”

Chuck again…  I hate to be the bearer of bad news, here folks, but this was getting very ugly… And it’s all driven by our debt… The need to finance it, pay for it, and deal with it… I’ve been warning everyone about this ever-increasing debt for decades now, and nothing as been done about it, and now, the chickens have come home to roost…  There’s a fox in the chicken coop… And all the chickens are screaming, The Sky is Falling!

The U.S. Data Cupboard today already printed the April reading of the Empire State ISM.. (manufacturing) and it printed a negative -.1%… Nothing to see here, just move along…  Tomorrow’s Data Cupboard will have a few real economic reports for us to view, including Retail Sales for March… The BHI tells me that this will be a decent report, so the dollar has that going for it tomorrow… 

To recap… The selling has abated in stocks, bond, the dollar, and moved to the metals yesterday…  The short paper traders were making it known that they are still here yesterday…  Chuck is fearing a financial collapse, and that is something that everyone should look into…  Chuck also talks about Abe Lincon this morning… 

For What It’s Worth… I teased this article above, regarding Ray Dalio and what he had to say…  Well, with no further ado, you can find this article here: Billionaire Ray Dalio: ‘I’m worried about something worse than a recession’

Or, here’s your snippet: “Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio said Sunday that he is worried that the turmoil resulting from President Donald Trump’s tariff and economic policies will threaten the global economy.

“Right now we are at a decision-making point and very close to a recession,” Dalio said on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.” “And I’m worried about something worse than a recession if this isn’t handled well.”

The hedge fund billionaire said he’s more concerned about trade disruptions, mounting U.S. debt, and emerging world powers bringing down the international economic and geopolitical structure that has been in place since the end of World War II.

“We are going from multilateralism, which is largely an American world order type of thing, to a unilateral world order in which there’s great conflict,” he said.

Ray Dalio on Trump’s tariffs: I agree with the problem, I am very concerned about the solution. Dalio said five forces drive history: the economy, internal political conflict, the international order, technology, and acts of nature such as floods and pandemics. Trump’s tariffs have understandable goals, Dalio said, but they are being implemented in a “very disruptive” way that creates global conflict.”

Chuck again… I’m of the opinion that much like the old E.F. Hutton commercial, that when Ray Dalio speaks, people should listen…  I’m just saying…

Market Prices 4/15/2025: American Style: A$ .6353, kiwi 5916, C$.6995, euro 1.1322, sterling 1.3222, Swiss $1.2225, European Style: rand 18.8265, krone 10.6858, SEK 9.7764, forint 360.21, zloty 3.7839, koruna 22.1459, RUB 82.10, yen 142.96, sing 1.3170, HKD 7.7679, INR 85.77, China 7.3166, peso 20.06, BRL 5.8583, BBDXY 1,230, Dollar Index 99.82, Oil $61.17, 10-year 4.43%, Silver $32.24, Platinum $962.00, Palladium $962.00, Copper $4.66, and Gold… $3,219.64

That’s it for today… My beloved Cardinals beat the Astros last night 8-3… The game started at 6:45, a time that should start all night games, as the game ended at decent time, and I was able to watch it end!  I have a really difficult time staying awake for games that start late… I fall asleep watching them, and then I wake up and the game is over…  My sleeping during the day has abated… That’s a good thing, in my opinion… But I did like my naps whenever they were short and not drawn out 3 hours!  Radiohead takes us to the finish line today with their song: Karma Police…   I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and please Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler