Y'all will get a kick out of this. Bloomberg reports that US regulators are investigating how trading in gold financial instruments in New York & Chicago happened so fast after the release of the FOMC statement last week. Trading in gold futures & ETFs intensified within one millisecond of 2:00 pm Eastern Time on 18 September. Buddy, them folks have some reflexes if they can read that statement & hit that button within one millisecond, especially when it takes 7 milliseconds to travel to Chicago from Washington, where the FOMC statement is released. What's that? Somebody leaked the statement in advance to traders who might profit? Why, perish the thought! Surely y'all wouldn't tarnish the reputation of our Nice Government Men by thinking such thoughts! Friends, it's ALL for sale, and it's all bought & sold. 'Pears that this time around the debt ceiling debacle is depressing all markets, even gold. Me, I'd be happy as a hog in slop if they all locked horns & the yankee government went out of business come 1 October. What would happen? They would stop sending out "swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance"? Stop "keeping among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies"? Stop "subjecting us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, & unacknowledged by our laws, giving assent to their acts of pretended legislation"? Stop "imposing taxes on us without our consent"? Stop "abolishing our most valuable Laws, & altering fundamentally the Forms of our government"? So, exactly how would we lose by that? But back to markets. Stocks keep inching toward their 50 Day Moving Averages (15,300 & 1,679). The Dow peeled off 66.79 points (0.43%) for a close at 15,334.59. S&P500 scraped off 4.42 points (0.26%) to land at 1,697.42. Dow in gold is playing above its 50 DMA, still falling. Ended today practically unchanged at 11.652 oz (G$240.58 gold dollars). Dow in silver just hit its 50 DMA yesterday, peeked through it today. 50 DMA stands at 707.78, Dow in Silver closed at 711.95 oz, up 0.8% or 5.62 oz. Big Picture: In May both indicators broke upwards through their ca. 14 year downtrend lines, rallied to a high on 27 June, rolled over, then dropped like a hammer in a beer vat. Toward the end of August both hit their long term downtrend lines, and bounced up in a reaction that has recovered 1/2 to 2-3 of the fall. About time for that reaction to end. Still need both to close below their long term downtrends to breathe completely freely. No slightest facet of the US dollar index chart inspires confidence or optimism, except statements like, "Well, at least the bottom hasn't fallen out yet!" Dollar gained 13.7 basis points (0.18%) today & ended at 80.590. Should the dollar index fall through 79.5, twill look like a man trying to swim with a 200 lb. anvil for a life preserver. All that love fest for the euro that poured out of Ferkel's election victory washed away pretty quick. Euro today closed $1.3473, down 0.15% and back beneath its upper channel trading boundary. If I had to name a candidate as catalyst for the next financial panic, it would be the Eurozone. Just bear in mind, a mountebank remains a mountebank even if he speaks Italian or French. A central banking criminal by any other name . . . Yen rose 0.9% to 101.28 cents/Y100. Directionless. Both Gold in euros & gold in Yen have established & thrice tested uptrends, by the way. Silver & gold closed lower today, but without much effect on the charts, which have traded sideways for two days. Silver lost 26.6 cents to 2153.9. Gold misplaced $10.90 & ended Comex at $1,316.00. In the aftermarket they are trading $1,323 and 2167.5c, little lower than yesterday. What do you make of markets like these? On an end-of- the-day chart, not Comex closes, gold has actually bounced up today and closed 50 cents higher. More, it has bounced off an uptrend line from the June low. See it at http://bit.ly/14EO1eu If gold is so weak, why doesn't it break down? Where are all the sellers hiding Of course, that it hasn't broken down YET doesn't' guarantee that it won't break down at all. Still, it made a low today at $1,312.35 & seems to strengthen whenever it drops down around $1,315 - $1,305. It's a messy chart, but you can see silver here: http://bit.ly/18UnFbC Maybe silver made an upside down head & shoulders & completed it in early August, maybe it's completing the bottom of a right shoulder presently. Whichever, as long as it can hold on about 2130c (low today 2144.2c), it's still flying like a bumblebee. If silver & gold did not bottom on 27 June & intend one last push down, we will see it by end-October. Otherwise, it's a little hard to picture that the goofs & incompetents in Washington won't drive gold up with their debt ceiling squabble. Whenever I have a question, I go to my readers 'cause y'all are the cleverest people in the world. I leave all my plumbing to my wife, not because I am a slouch but because she loves plumbing. However, she has played her last trick, & can't solve this problem. Back of the hot water knob, the part behind the shower wall, is leaking where the brass fixture connects to the PVC pipe. She has coated it several times with some epoxy material that looks like chewing gum but sets like granite, yet it leaketh still. Last she tried the shrinking black tape, yet it leaketh still? Do any of y'all have any suggestion how to stop this leak. I'm afraid that epoxy gum she put on will require a low-level nuclear blast to remove. If you have a solution, email me at . On 24 September 1862 the "Great Liberator" Abraham Lincoln suspended the write of habeas corpus. During the war his regime jailed over 50,000 dissidents. Y'all didn't read that in your history books, did you? Or about Ohio Democratic politician Clement Vallandingham, whom Lincoln exiled for opposing his war?
Argentum et aurum comparanda sunt —
Silver and gold must be bought.
— Franklin Sanders, The Moneychanger
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