We live in interesting times.
My weekend was filled with intense focus, late hours and hard work... as that tends to be my reaction, always, to increasing intensity in the environment... is to match it, and exceed it... with my own.
Many interesting results... among the least surprising, perhaps, is that a review of recent market events suggests to me that the "noise"... or much of it... is largely manufactured for purpose. Shouldn't be a surprise that what I see, now, in the recent trade in oil looks like that, to me... with the "spike" engineered to enable "what goes up" in implementing the expected in what follows. Other trades appear to contain "some" and "similar" as that... including gold and silver, and very probably the PGE's and SBSW are that...
And, what do you see in result ? In oil, a brief bloodletting... then a bounce... and then right back to tracking higher following the same slope as it was on prior to "the spike". I'd say that's a "whiff" in the effort to suppress the oil price... and the manipulation it appears was applied clearly did far more to destroy basic market function... and amplify risks of market failure... than it did to suppress price.
In gold and silver... or the miners, in any case... there's an imposition of an "tilt" in the inflection... so that as shares dropped and popped in the Fed focused craziness last week... they've resumed course, like oil, only with many now adopting a lesser slope in the ramp relative to what they had been following before... That prior move... was, for some, as exuberant as you might expect given long delays building "anticipation" of "coming attractions" as paired with the presumed ending of the suppression trade... along with multiple and overlapping reasons to expect "higher"... to much higher... to much, much, much higher, etc.
Having waded through a huge number of charts over the weekend... I saw and recognized "patterns" depending on where a mining stock "fits" in the trade. Shares that spiked higher in November when "the market" wobbled... are different than those that did not. I'd say that in hindsight, November looks like it was "a market test". Larger name issues among the existing producers... have out-performed recently, if without able to shed the influence of "market volatility"... while sleepers continue to sleep. Among the juniors, many are still tracking along lower, very often following patterns that are recognizable as "cleaning up in the wake of the end of the short trade"... until ending up ignored by everyone in exhaustion... which patterns I've discussed at length on my page. "Now" is the reason I've been nose to the grind stone since May... sifting through the market's trash looking for gold nuggets.
That's where we are now in the junior miners... as the previously manipulated and suppressed trade is now orphaned... launching them into a period of aimless drift... as many of June's $1 stocks are now $0.10 stocks... and the same management who were quick to breathlessly drop a PR about nothing last June... are apparently now on extended vacation. The slow response times from the labs still has last summers assay results slowing trickling in and being reported... a tad wistfully, now... as not one is paying attention. If you know of and look for those chart patterns... its a problem now... because "it's raining junior mining stocks"... and, the impact you see... has about zero to do with any "real value"... as happens at market bottoms. If you went "all in" on miners back in October thinking "this has to be the bottom"... well... nope. But, from here... there's a whole lot of upside... at least in the better managed sort... and some limits in the downside risks, as shedding 80% from summer will tend to impose.
[Edit... But, note... I'm not saying "all the miners have bottomed now"... as some have... but others pretend. ]
Same is true in oil, now... as its been topical in our discussions for many months... I noted it in recent posting the first time I saw an oil stock, and a mining stock finally make the "most active" trade lists while being on the "green" side of the ledger. And, today... there was a competition for slots on the most active list... XOM made a brief appearance in last place... but was bumped before the close by Pioneer... Suddenly, right about the time those of us who have been focused on oil shares since last year... when no one wanted them... are starting to suspect the trade may be growing long in the tooth... But, suddenly, it seems, Wall Street has re-discovered that oil is actually not "evil" as much as rather essential to sustaining basic economic function... and "green" futures don't exist without oil enabling and subsidizing them. And, in Wall Street's view... oil stocks now are "an recent innovation"... that everyone needs to own to prove how much they were not a part of causing... "this"... by knuckling under to the morons efforts in social engineering... but, recognized all along that "they don't actually know how things work"...
That's useful perspective... not only because of how it merges with my views on cyclical sequences as a "bead on timing"... but also because... with oil as the leader now... "commodities" are become topical... and what you see happening in oil shares now... will have them be paired up with, or replaced by... miners of shiny stuff... "soon"... And, then... those long ignored things we've been collecting as others laughed... will be "the hottest play"... at least for a time. Those of us watching this cycle evolve... easily stupefied by others "who should know better". I read an current article at Zack's today... dissing silver miners as "the lowest ranked in Zack's universe"... because... no one could possibly see the changes now afoot ?
I've been living on this planet now for 65 years... and, for 59 of them have been active in the market... A lot has changed in that time... since I spent afternoons as a kid circling stock listings in the newspaper...
And, with very few exceptions... the market has always been there. On a bad day in 1987... the odds of getting your broker on the phone were pretty slim. And, 2008 was clearly worse than that... as they just didn't want to answer... But, even the events of 9/11 didn't "end the trade"... even if delaying it a bit.
I think its prudent to recognize "past performance may not be indicative of future performance"... and to be well enough and independently provisioned to "muddle though" without too much worry on bad days.
But, otherwise... the "blood in the streets" trade... requires being out in the streets to trade it... at least metaphorically, while keeping your head in it... and your body out of harms way as best you can. So, as a philosophical issue... "this is what you've been practicing for all those years"... which, admittedly, does not exactly mitigate risks... only less if you have not been practicing catching falling knives, while thinking ahead to the opportunity for building a collection of them.
The war is the war. I didn't ask for it. Have made clear it was avoidable... and gave my inputs on how to avoid it...timely enough. One should not expect "our leaders" today would manage to avoid it... as they have not. And, I see no reason, now that the dogs have been unleashed... to expect they will suddenly behave for an feckless owner who has never taken the time to properly discipline them. That the stakes are raised... does nothing to make those incapable of preventing it more capable in containing it... as "unintended consequences" have only just begun... while the "secret agenda" of fools is transparent to those not fools.
Have noted before... as long as the current circumstance persists... that's "as good as it gets"... as with any result in an outcome... things will immediately become much worse. This is still "early"... with many not fully realizing what's occurring... but, every element i see suggests "more" coming... likely accelerating and delivering surprises to those thinking they're in control of events... or only stand to benefit from them. That, also, seems to me a mirror of what led WW I to grow from humble beginnings into "we didn't really want that"... at a pace left that most seeing events running far out ahead of any expectation...
I expect devolution... and while I hope to be proven wrong... note that hope is not "a plan"... and without a plan, events will tend to impose themselves as they will in lieu of well made choices. The distinct absence of any adult leadership as we see now... is not ever a thing that is wired to somehow resolve itself optimally in anticipatory, or preventive fashion... more as focus suddenly shifts from anticipating benefits to preventing risks not well enough considered before they suddenly opt to appear ? And what's new about that today... from known knowns to unknown unknowns is... absolutely nothing.
Physical silver... is a puzzle... If you look at it as a "historical" element as "store of value"... or look at it more as an industrial and technological metal... so, potentially the "platinum of the future"... How best to value it in the future... when we're not there, yet ? Some note history says its value is more 1 :10 vs gold... while others are saying its future utility dictates a move toward 1 : 1 in ratio... which "could never happen" in exactly the same way it "could never happen" to platinum... before it did ? None of which makes greater storage capacity magically appear.
I think all crypto faces an increasingly bleak future... which should surprise no one... But, "a trade is a trade" as far as that goes.. I note BTC has adopted trading patterns that show "the market" treats it as if is a tech stock... Problematic already to have a "counter risk" position... mimics and amplifies the risk you hope to avoid by owning it. That also contains other issues I don't want to own... as when it ceases to incorporate "value appreciation" as a function of a fixed Ponzi-based design... I think most of the reason for market interest... much less owning it... for those "assumed" future values beyond what the market does attribute to it now... might simply go away. I suspect its "mostly" been a con job all along... with willing participants signing up for the beta test with expectations of function unlikely to be realized... in beta.
I do not believe as stated long ago on SI that Team China is at all interested in having the RMB (CNY) be categorized as reserve currency. China only wish to trade goods denominated and paid for in RMB / CNY and avoid the reserve currency ‘honor’.
That's what I've assumed all along... only, not seeing a reason to expect that a more considered and deliberate lack of responsibility is likely to end well any more than it might without such consideration.
It's rather like... looking to buy a new car... wanting the benefit of all the features... but, not wanting the bother of having buy fuel or do maintenance... so demanding "give me that option" ?
China's plan is one that "fails the system"... in the same degree that China sees benefit in seeking unilateral advantage in exploiting the system while seeking to destroy it... and ignorantly assuming that the advantages the system enables... will magically continue without it... It would be no different in a shop with one employee among many who "dipped into the till"... until it forced the business to fail... and then all the employees are left without work... The residual, then... fosters a reversion to feudalism... and all its advantages and efficiencies.
"Happily", there would probably be a resolution through war before that eventuality were enabled... except... and perhaps in large part because of the subversive role China has opted to play in undermining the system... of which they are a primary beneficiary... the west is also abandoning its legacy in opting out of meeting those responsibilities... as not worth the cost to us... in subsidizing China's exploit.
So, whatever it is that's likely to be left "without the advantages of the system we've mutually benefited from for the last 75 years"... it appears "we're going to find out"...
I think it is often in the nature of critics... to be irresponsible and destructive... and, among many other avenues that might act as introductions to that awareness... which I've taught the kids... I think that is one of the better ones as:
"Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it"...
But, it should not be a surprise, whether in finance or in war... that in a world that lacks responsible, visionary and talented leadership... one way or another, the world's probably going to get it...
So, I guess... in a myopic world cut loose from the influence of those capable of reason... "stack on"... is not the worst possible way to pass time ?
But, of course... we're only pretending that there's not "a plan" waiting in the wings ? And, that being true also being what got us where we are in the world today... still seems not a reason enough to drive pause on the part of the myopic, irresponsible, destructive and irrational..."leaders"... pushing it ? |
