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No worries normal will be here soon
What interesting to me is that China owns most of the shipping ports around the globe. The U S ports are owned by The Port Authority
Tracking China’s Control of Overseas Ports
This interactive map tracks China’s growing maritime influence through investments in strategic overseas ports. Users can plot the location of each port and view satellite images alongside detailed information on the share of Chinese ownership, the total amount of Chinese investment, and the port’s suitability for use by the Chinese military.
https://www.cfr.org/tracker/china-overseas-ports
Choosing Mining Stocks Through The Eyes Of The Beer-holder
MARKET ACTIVITY
TSX -77.01 (0.32%) 23,956.82
TSX Venture -11.19 (1.88%) 583.14
ASX 200 +8.50 (0.10%) 8,212.20
S&P 500 -7.20 (0.13%) 5,738.17
BMO Junior Gold Index -2.94 (3.01%) 94.64
VanEck Jr Miners -1.57 (3.07%) 49.62
Sprott Junior Miners -1.17 (3.05%) 37.18
COMMODITY PRICES
Gold (US$/oz) -14.10 (0.52%) 2,680.80
Silver (US$/oz) -0.43 (1.32%) 31.92
Copper (US$/lb) -0.05 (1.07%) 4.59
Platinum (US$/oz) -7.70 (0.75%) 1,014.50
Palladium (US$/oz) -35.20 (3.35%) 1,016.00
MARKET MOVERS
COMPANY CHANGE LAST TRADE
MP Materials 1.49 8.82 $18.39
Critical Metals 0.31 4.44 $7.29
Ivanhoe Mines 0.25 1.23 $20.56
Los Andes Copper 0.24 2.93 $8.44
Silver Elephant Mining 0.20 41.67 $0.68
Nouveau Monde Graphite 0.19 9.95 $2.10
Patriot Battery Metals 0.14 3.62 $4.01
Lifezone Metals 0.14 2.03 $7.03
Cameco 0.12 0.19 $64.87
Entrée Resources 0.11 5.61 $2.07
Valkea Resources 0.10 33.33 $0.40
Orogen Royalties 0.10 6.94 $1.54
South Pacific Metals 0.10 17.54 $0.67
NioCorp Developments 0.09 4.41 $2.13
Imperial Metals 0.09 4.09 $2.29
HIGH VOLUME
COMPANY VOLUME LAST TRADE
Uranium Energy 7,675,252 $6.37
B2Gold 3,714,829 $4.33
Allied Gold 3,538,003 $3.27
ValOre Metals 3,282,793 $0.08
Fission Uranium 3,132,792 $1.03
Calibre Mining 3,031,583 $2.65
First Quantum Minerals 3,002,504 $18.95
Bedford Metals 2,490,659 $0.90
Tectonic Metals 2,481,023 $0.06
Lundin Mining 2,341,250 $14.50
Kinross Gold 2,223,921 $12.79
Ivanhoe Mines 2,171,634 $20.56
Nobel Resources 2,170,755 $0.06
PPX Mining 2,130,000 $0.05
Wall Street Has Moved Vast Sums of Its Trading to Its Federally-Insured Banks
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 23, 2024 ~
President Bill Clinton Laughs It Up as He Signs the Repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, November 12, 1999
Taxpayer-backstopped federal deposit insurance at commercial banks in the U.S. was never meant to be a get-rich scheme for the wild and voracious appetites of traders on Wall Street. But a quarterly report produced by the federal regulator of national banks – those operating across state lines – shows that vast amounts of trading on Wall Street is now taking place inside the federally-insured commercial banks that are owned by the trading powerhouses on Wall Street: JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup and Bank of America. (Wall Street trading houses have been allowed to own federally-insured banks since the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999 under the Wall Street friendly Bill Clinton administration.)
For decades, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has published its “Quarterly Report on Bank Trading and Derivatives Activities.” The reports have shown that the Wall Street megabanks are increasingly moving their trading casinos to operate out of the federally-insured bank they own – which is holding mom and pop deposits for unsuspecting American families.
According to the most recent report from the OCC, for the quarter ending March 31, 2024, federally-insured banks in the U.S. reported $4.8 billion in revenues from trading stock (equity). That $4.8 billion represented 37 percent of all stock trading at the bank holding company level, which came in at $13.059 billion for the quarter.
Even more eyepopping, federally-insured banks reported revenues of $7.551 billion from foreign exchange trading, which represented 87 percent of all foreign exchange trading at the bank holding company level, which registered a total of $8.638 billion for the first quarter.
Why should a federally-insured bank be engaged in trading activities? How is it even legally allowed to do that? According to the Wall Street self-regulator, FINRA, only broker-dealers are allowed to have licensed traders and only licensed supervisors are allowed to oversee this trading. (For background, see our report: Jamie Dimon’s Top Women and Their Missing Licenses.)
Or how about the bizarre jump in trading in precious metals inside federally-insured banks, as we reported in 2022:
“In just one quarter, precious metals derivatives had soared from $79.28 billion to $491.87 billion. That’s a 520 percent increase in a span of three months….” (See JPMorgan Chase and Citibank Hold 90 Percent of All Gold and Other Precious Metals Derivatives Held by All U.S. Banks.)
And that trend in precious metals has continued. According to the most recent OCC report, in the first quarter of 2024, federally-insured banks held $438.60 billion in precious metals contracts. That figure is at least 12 times greater than the amount the same banks held in precious metal contracts in any quarter from 2007 through 2018.
The OCC report for the first quarter of this year shows that federally-insured banks generated 48.9 percent of trading revenues at the bank holding company level. Federally-insured banks have generated half or more of all trading revenues at the holding company level in 9 of the past 11 quarters, through the first quarter of this year. (See top chart above from the current OCC report, page 3.)
Do the millions of Americans that are depositing their paychecks at the 5,143 branches of Chase Bank that are spread coast to coast have any idea that the OCC reported that this federally-insured banking unit of JPMorgan Chase was sitting on $54 trillion in notional derivative contracts as of March 31, 2024? Do you think these customers know that this same bank used deposits from its federally-insured bank to gamble in derivatives in London 12 years ago and lose $6.2 billion of depositors’ money; get investigated by the FBI as a result; become the target of a Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations’ scathing 300-page report; – all while keeping the same Chairman and CEO, Jamie Dimon, at the helm of the bank for the past 17 years. Do you think the customers of this trading juggernaut are aware that it has admitted to five felony charges brought by the U.S. Department of Justice since 2014, which include money laundering, rigging markets, and being part of a trading cartel?
Of course these bank customers don’t know. Ask yourself when was the last time you turned on your evening TV news and heard one word about trading corruption on Wall Street?
*https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/09/wall-street-has-moved-vast-sums-of-its-trading-to-its-federally-insured-banks/
*Mike Campbell & The Dirty Knobs - Wicked Mind (Official Music Video)
The Consumption of the Ages
"It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes."
Andrew Jackson, On the Second Bank of the United States
"Jim, lad, there be consequences an' then there be consequences. Devil take 'em all, says I, and pass aft the rum."
Robert Louis Stevenson, Treasure Island
“Financial operations do not lend themselves to innovation. What is recurrently so described and celebrated is, without exception, a small variation on an established design. The world of finance hails the invention of the wheel over and over again, often in a slightly more unstable version.”
John Kenneth Galbraith, A Short History of Financial Euphoria
"It is no exaggeration to say that since the 1980s, much of the global financial sector has become criminalised, creating an industry culture that tolerates or even encourages systematic fraud. The behaviour that caused the mortgage bubble and financial crisis of 2008 was a natural outcome and continuation of this pattern, rather than some kind of economic accident.
This behaviour is criminal. We are talking about deliberate concealment of financial transactions that aided terrorism, nuclear weapons proliferation and large-scale tax evasion; assisting in major financial frauds and in concealment of criminal assets; and committing frauds that substantially worsened the worst financial bubbles and crises since the Depression. And yet none of this conduct has been punished in any significant way.
Charles H. Ferguson, Wall Street's Role in the Financial Crisis, The Guardian, 20 May 2012
"The asset bubbles since the turn of the 21st century have been enabled by four basic instruments of monetary policy error: Greenspan, Bernanke, Yellen, and Powell."
Jesse, Malice Domestic and Endless Foreign Wars, 31 July 2018
Gold and silver gave us some clean breakouts today, and went out near the highs.
The dollar chopped sideways again, finishing marginally higher.
VIX fell.
The major indices gave back a little of yesterday's meteoric rally.
"Great designs have linear consequences. Bad designs have exponential consequences."
The coming dislocation from illusion may prove jarring, and as always, inexplicable and unanticipated.
Some large entities may not make it, at least in their current forms.
They are sliding peacefully into the abyss.
Have a pleasant weekend.
*https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
*The Abyss OST
*The Dead South - In Hell I'll Be In Good Company @ The Bluebird Cafe
When Markets Slump The Choice Is Clear
Its ~*~Mining & Metals Du Jour~*~
These words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer have never held a stronger meaning for us.
“Against such foolishness we are defenseless. Reason falls on deaf ears; facts that contradict one’s prejudgment simply need not be believed – in such moments the foolish person even becomes critical – and when facts are irrefutable they are just pushed aside as inconsequential, as incidental.
In all this the foolish person, in contrast to the malicious one, is utterly self satisfied and, being easily irritated, becomes dangerous by going on the attack. Never again will we try to persuade the foolish person with reasons, for it is senseless and dangerous.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison
And so we see a strong rally in stocks, based on no new information that triggered the sharp sell off from the day before.
Gold and silver, which had sold off sharply the day before, rallied strongly.
Gold has held its short term breakout fairly well so far. It needs to regain some momentum to take out the resistance it now faces, and move on to its next objective. It may well do that.
Silver has not yet broken out of its trading formation on the weekly chart. It made it back up to the top of the range today, but rangebound it remains.
The mundane mind of the spokesmodels finds comfort is silly rationalizations and arcane auspices of the chief equity strategists from the Banks.
On the political front, our official narrative is simple madness, driven by the reckless lust for power and money by the dominant extremes of the halls of power, public and private.
Most are only looking out for their own short term advantage, whether it is truly good for them or not.
And the more frightened and uncertain people get, the louder and crazier they become.
This is a wicked and adulterous generation. It demands a sign.
Well, why don't you tell us what is happening, and what we ought to do?
This is what several voices have been doing, for some time now. Mostly to hardened hearts, in bare, ruined choirs.
This is how it has always been. They don't believe in war, and plagues.
Until something that will be missed has been consumed.
Have a pleasant evening.
*https://jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com/
*the rolling stones 19th nervous breakdown stereo edit
*Psychotic Reaction - Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers
The Stock Market Had a Psychotic Episode After the Fed Rate Cut Yesterday, Plunging 479 Points from the Day’s High Powell responded with this:
By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: September 19, 2024 ~
Fed Chair Jerome Powell Speaking at the FOMC Press Conference on Wednesday, September 18, 2024
The Federal Reserve yesterday cut its benchmark interest rate, the Fed Funds rate, for the first time in four years. The cut was by half a point rather than the customary quarter point increments typical of Fed rate moves. Only one member of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), Michelle Bowman, voted against the action. Bowman wanted a quarter point cut according to the FOMC announcement.
A Fed rate cut of a quarter point to a half point was widely anticipated by the market, so the stock market’s wild swings were puzzling to veteran Wall Street watchers.
The FOMC released its written announcement at 2 p.m. As the chart above indicates, the written announcement produced a surge in the Dow Jones Industrial Average to an intraday high of 41,981.97, which was also an all-time high on an intraday basis. But within a few minutes, the Dow had plunged by more than 300 points, then spiked by over 200 points as Fed Chairman Jerome Powell’s press conference got underway at 2:30 p.m.
Wild market gyrations like this, as the Chair of the Fed is about to take the podium, are not in keeping with what Michelle Smith, the long-tenured and detail-oriented Communications Director at the Fed, wants as background noise as the Fed Chair interacts with the press. (See Reporters Who Ask Tough Questions at Fed Press Conferences Have a Habit of Being Disappeared from the Room.)
The Dow gained some ground back as Powell read his prepared statement at his press conference but plunged further as reporters began questioning the Fed Chair. Craig Rugaber, the Federal Reserve and Economics reporter for the Associated Press, asked this question about 11 minutes into the press conference:
“The projections show that the Fed officials expect that the Fed Funds rate to still be above their estimate of long-run neutral by the end of next year. So does that suggest to you that you see rates as restrictive for that entire period? Does that threaten the weakening of the job market you said you’d like to avoid? Or does it suggest that maybe people see the short-run neutral as a little bit higher.”
“I think the way I would really characterize it is this: people write down their estimate – individuals [on the Federal Open Market Committee] do – I think every single person on the Committee, if you ask them what’s your level of certainty around that, and they would say, ‘there’s a wide range where that could fall.’ So I think we don’t know. There are model-based approaches and empirically-based approaches that estimate what the neutral rate will be at any given time but realistically we know it by its works. So that leaves us in a place where we expect in the base case to be continuing to remove restriction and we’ll be looking at the way the economy reacts to that and that will be guiding us in our thinking about the question we’re asking at every meeting, which is – is our policy stance the appropriate one….”
Powell’s press conference ended 50 minutes after it began, at about 3:20 p.m. EDT. Some of the worst damage of the day occurred after the press conference ended, with the Dow moving into negative territory and closing with a loss on the day of 103 points. From its high of the day to its closing price, the Dow had plunged 478.87 points. As Michelle Smith must have noticed, this was not a comforting vote of confidence that Jerome Powell – a lawyer, not an economist – knows what he’s doing. (See, for example, For the First Time in History, the Fed Is Reporting Billions in Losses Weekly; It’s Still Paying High Interest Income to the Mega Banks on Wall Street.)
Two of the components of the Dow Jones Industrial Average, JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs, are megabanks that have an incestuous relationship with the Fed. The Fed is their regulator; their serial source of bailout loans in the trillions of dollars; their trading partner at the New York Fed’s open market operations; and the banks’ executives sit on the New York Fed’s advisory committees, recommending “best practices” for Wall Street megabanks which have a serial history of getting slapped with felony counts by the U.S. Department of Justice, rigging markets and engaging in predatory behavior against their customers. (See watchdog Better Markets’ Rap Sheet Report here.)
And, most dangerous of all, the Fed is the federal agency that just cut in half the amount of capital it said in July of 2023 these megabanks need to hold to operate in a safe and sound manner.
The share prices of Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase also experienced wild swings between the 2 p.m. FOMC statement and the close of trading at 4 p.m. Both megabanks, however, own their own Dark Pools where, bizarrely, they are allowed by the Securities and Exchange Commission to trade their own bank shares in darkness, which might offer a possible explanation as to why they fared better by the closing bell than the Dow index. (See Wall Street Banks Are Trading in Their Own Company’s Stock: How Is This Legal? and Goldman Sachs Is Quietly Trading Stocks In Its Own Dark Pools on 4 Continents.)
The Goldman Sachs’ chart below, showing how its shares swung wildly yesterday afternoon, bears an uncanny resemblance to the Dow chart.
While the megabanks on Wall Street own their own Dark Pools, the New York Fed (the largest of the 12 regional Fed banks) has its own trading desks – one at its lower Manhattan headquarters at 33 Liberty Street and one near the futures market in Chicago. (See Mission Creep or Creepy Mission: The New York Fed’s Trading Desk Has Ballooned to $6.59 Trillion Today from $576 Billion in 2008 and The New York Fed Has Quietly Staffed Up a Second Trading Floor Near the S&P 500 Futures Market in Chicago.)
If all of this has the feel of an institutionalized wealth transfer system instead of an efficient market system worthy of a democracy, please contact your U.S. Senators today. Tell your Senators to hold immediate hearings on the Fed’s non-stop bailouts of the megabanks and demand the restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, which would separate federally-insured commercial banks from the trading casinos on Wall Street.
https://wallstreetonparade.com/2024/09/the-stock-market-had-a-psychotic-episode-after-the-fed-rate-cut-yesterday-plunging-479-points-from-the-days-high/
*MUSE - Psycho [Live from MUSE: Drones World Tour]
Black and Yellow Gold Nearing Breaks as Participants Regroup
The two quintessential commodities crude oil and gold both appear to be near inflection points.
Carley GarnerSep 16, 2024 6:45 PM EDT
For this article, we have turned our attention to the two quintessential commodities: crude oil and gold. As we generally do, we are paying attention to what the Commitments of Traders (CoT) report issued weekly by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission tells us.
We suspect both products could be nearing a break in the trend as market participants regroup. Let’s start with oil.
Black Gold (Crude Oil)
Crude oil speculators haven’t gone short the market, but their long positions have dwindled to about 200,000 net long futures; levels that are generally supportive of prices.
In the mid-2010s, each time speculators held this small of a bullish position, the oil market found a reason to tag $20.00 to $30.00 to the price of oil. In 2016, a similar setup on the CoT chart pushed prices from about $30.00 per barrel to nearly $80.000, and in 2023, we saw a rally from the low $60.00s into the $90.00s. It is still unknown if speculators will continue their unwind to push oil prices much lower or if we will see another price bump as speculators put long positions back on, but we are leaning toward the latter.
The weekly crude oil chart depicts technical support roughly between $65.00 and $60.00 per barrel. In fact, last week’s sudden flush-out might have been the low for the move. In any case, there is a good argument for being bullish on dips as we advance.
The 200-week moving average near $78.00 is still in an uptrend, and it would be par for the course to see oil prices make another run at it. If the market can chew through it, trendline resistance at about $80.00 will present another challenge to the bulls, but above this level, we could see a nice boost as traders unwind their deflation trades (long stocks, short commodities). Who knows? Maybe $90.00 is still in play.
Gold of the Yellow Variety
Just as everyone is finally starting to get on the bullish gold bandwagon, it feels like the rug could be pulled from beneath the market.
According to the CoT report, large speculators hold one of the most significant net long positions ever recorded in gold futures. In the past, this group getting aggressively bullish hasn’t always resulted in immediate selling pressure, but it might be a sign that the “easy” money (if such a thing exists) has been made on the upside. Things could get pretty rocky as we advance.
Seasonality doesn’t offer the bulls any comfort. According to our friends at MRCI, the last 15 years of price data suggest a seasonal high in early September, followed by about three months of weakness.
Lastly, we revisit the monthly chart of gold. We have been following and sharing this chart for two or more years to support the idea of a run to about $2,600 (the target started around $2,450/$2,500, but due to the passing of time and the slope of the trendline, the new target is $2,600/$2,650). In any case, we are roughly there.
If you made money on the way up, be sure to lock-in, or at least protect gains. If you are a bear, this is probably a time to be net-short gold in a small way while we see what happens with the Fed meeting and the U.S. election.
All along, we have assumed that the 2023/2024 gold market is a replay of the 2010/2011 rally. Thus far, that has been a relatively accurate take.
If we continue to follow the 2010/2011 game plan, the highs in gold are probably near. The RSI indicator on this chart displayed three rally waves to conclude the 2011 rally in which the middle wave produced the highest RSI reading. With this in mind, we suspect the third wave of the current RSI pattern will fall short sooner rather than later. Perhaps this week’s Fed meeting will be the catalyst for lower prices. It should also be noted that the 2011 high occurred in September. Never underestimate the market’s tendency to repeat history.
Conclusion
We’ve seen market participants become comfortable with the idea of lower crude oil and higher gold prices. Still, perhaps everyone in a position to act on this opinion has already done so.
In short, the oil speculators have liquidated long holdings, and gold bulls have likely deployed the majority of their capital. Unless we get a continuous stream of overwhelming fundamental news confirming these stances, the most likely scenario is a trend reversal (firmer oil and softer gold).
https://pro.thestreet.com/market-commentary/black-and-yellow-gold-nearing-breaks-as-participants-regroup
*John Fogerty - Centerfield
AI
