June 13, 2019
* dollar fights back on Wednesday, despite some awful debt news…
* Two Oil tankers are attacked, and the U.S. is pointing at Iran….
Good Day… And a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday! Blues Win, Blues Win, Blues Win… For the first time the 50 year history of the Blues, they are the Stanley Cup Champions! I can’t even begin to tell you what this means to me… I’ll have more on this as we go along… Today’s letter is going to be more about the Blues winning than currencies and metals, so if that bugs you… Sorry… Come back next Monday for regular programming! Laura Branigan greets me this morning with her song: Gloria… That was the Blues rallying song this year, and while I had to go to youtube to find it, because I can assure you it’s not on my iPod, it’s beautiful music to hear!
When I was 13 years old, in the 2nd year of the Blues existence my good friend, and live-in pal, Frank Weiler, and I, would take two city busses to the old Arena and buy tickets at the window to watch our Blues play hockey… The total cost for the night was less then $7.50, and since I worked all the time back then, that was no big deal for me… People would dress up in suits and fancy dresses to go to hockey games back in those days… But those were the days that I first saw hockey played live, and I was hooked!
The Currencies saw the dollar bounce back yesterday, let’s listen in to hear what Reuters had to say about this move: “The U.S. dollar gained on Wednesday as trade tensions and U.S. interest rate policy remained in focus after President Donald Trump expressed optimism over making a trade deal with China.”
Really? There’s optimism about a trade deal with China, a day after you, President Trump, threatened to raise tariffs if Chinese leader, Xi, didn’t meet with you at the G-20 later this month? Really? Oh brother, what line of BS will the PPT used next to cover their rears as they buy dollars to keep it from falling off a cliff?
I know I can hear you saying, Chuck, how do you know it was the PPT (plunge protection team) buying dollars yesterday? Well, I put one and one together, folks… you tell me how the dollar could rally when this was a headline news item…..
Federal Spending Tops $3 Trillion Through May for First Time; Deficit Hits $738 Billion…
And Gold? Wouldn’t Gold be soaring on news like that? But it didn’t, and actually lost a buck and change on the day…
Our Deficit spending is soaring through the roof once again, and I just keep thinking about how I kept saying that our budget deficit was forecast to be $1 Trillion this year and on out, and I would say that I bet that it was more like $2 Trillion per year soon… So…. Got Gold?
In the overnight news, 2 Oil tankers were attacked in the straits of Hormuz, with one set ablaze and sailors had to be rescued by the U.S. Navy… This news has heightened the fears of a Middle East war with Iran, and the price of Oil jumped by a buck…. But Gold? no real movement so far today in Gold, even though with something like this, we should be seeing tons of buying in Gold… I’ve highlighted this news in the FWIW section today, so in a bit you’ll be able to read more.
OK… with 3 minutes to go last night, my youngest son, Alex, who’s doing clinicals in Montgomery Alabama, face timed me, and we began to talk about how cool this was, and as the time ticked away in the game, both of us were crying! I had received texts earlier in the day from two former colleagues at my old bank… They’re both from the South, and they were watching the game and cheering on the Blues… I said, that’s pretty cool, I’ve converted some Southerners into Blues hockey fans!
And then last night I received an email from a longtime customer, who’s a famous rock singer and guitar player, congratulating me, even though he was a born and bred Bruins fan… Lot’s of texts from friends and family… it’s was a trey cool night, for sure…
But the topper, well, the topper right below the winning of the Stanley Cup, was my good friend Duane, who stopped by with a bag of Jack-in-the-Box tacos… I fired up Gloria on my Bose speaker, and we hugged and reminisced about all the Blues hockey games the two of us had gone to together, throughout the years… Not so much in the past few, with me being sick and gone for most of the winter, and the increased costs of tickets for games, but there was a time when the two of us would see probably 25 games a year! Which most were weekend games, but some were not, and getting up for work all those mornings after, was not a sunshine and lollipops for yours truly!
We used to always stop on our drive home at the Jack-in-the-Box for tacos… it was our winners dinner… So, it was so apropos that he brought over tacos last night!
So… I can tell you that I really had begun to think that the Blues were the Cubs (before 2016) of hockey… We would have the best team in hockey for the year, and bow out in the first round of the playoffs, and there were other strange things that happened to keep them from going to the Stanley Cup Finals, much less winning it! Somebody pinch me… did this really happen? I’m still getting chills down my spine every time I think of the team that I’ve followed for 50 years, finally winning the Stanley Cup…
All the team members, even healthy scratches, get to hold the Stanley Cup above their heads and skate in a circle and then hand it off to the next team member… I think I should be given the chance to lift it over my head! But there are bigger fans tham me, I’m sure…
I played hockey in the school yard, and I played it on roller skates in gyms… let me repeat that for those that don’t think that’s something worthy of talking about… not rollerblades…. Rollerskates!!
They had 20,000 at the Enterprise Center last night to watch the game on the jumbotron… They had 25,000 people at Busch Stadium to watch it on the Big Screen, and another 5,000 at the Ballpark Village to watch it on the big Screen… I was so proud of my fellow St. Louisans they partied, but didn’t let things get out of hand, no property damage, no cars overturned, or burned, no looting, just good old partying into the night!
The U.S. Data Cupboard had PPI yesterday, and like recent prints it was not up to snuff, when considering sending price pressures into the inflation pipeline… May PPI was 0.1% to the good… And immediately, really smart economists began talking about deflation… Today’s Cupboard will have the stupid CPI (consumer inflation) and it too will probably show just a 0.1% increase in May…
I’ve told you this before but it bears repeating here… The Fed Head don’t really rely on CPI for their inflation gauge… They prefer the PCE (Personal Cost Expenditures) But even the PCE has been slip sliding away recently, which should be telling the Fed Heads that they need to get on the rate cut train before this turns into a real deflationary situation…
One of those really smart economists is David Rosenberg, and he had this to say about the PPI print on his Twitter handle yesterday: “The key in today’s PPI data were the deflationary impulses in the core pipeline price measures. The Fed is way behind the curve. Yield on 10-year T-note down to, or through, 1% in the coming twelve months.” – David Rosenberg on Twitter…
To Recap… The Blues Win!, The Blues Win! And the dollar bugs came back to fight the currencies for ground that the dollar lost so far this week yesterday… There was news of more Debt, but that didn’t keep the dollar bugs from buying… Chuck smells a rat, because Gold didn’t move either on that news or the overnight news that two Oil tankers were attacked… UGH!
For What It’s Worth… I almost bagged this today, but shoot Rudy, what’s a day without a FWIW article? HA! OK, I told you above I had more on the 2 Oil tankers that were attacked and here it is, and it can be found here: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/two-oil-tankers-attacked-in-gulf-of-oman/
Or, here’s your snippet: “Two oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz were reportedly attacked on Thursday, leaving one ablaze and adrift as sailors were evacuated from both. The U.S. Navy rushed to assist, amid heightened tensions between Washington and Tehran.
Iran claimed it dispatched search teams that rescued the 44 sailors who were on the two vessels.
But a U.S. Defense Department official told CBS news senior national security correspondent David Martin it’s “likely” Iran is the source of the attacks — and said Iran’s rescue claims were “patently false.” He said the USS Bainbridge picked up 21 of them.”
Chuck Again… Think back in history… World Wars have been started over smaller aggressions than this… I’m just saying…
Currencies today 6/13/19 American Style: A$.6906, kiwi .6565, C$ .7517, euro 1.1290, sterling 1.2676, Swiss $ .9928, European Style: rand 14.8313, krone 8.6507, SEK 9.4722, forint 285.36, zloty 3.7734, koruna 22.6524, RUB 64.67, yen 108.46, sing 1.3665, HKD 7.8282, INR 69.44, China 6.9158, peso 19.16, BRL 3.8534, Dollar Index 96.99, Oil $52.78, 10-year 2.11%, Silver $14.80, Platinum $812.55, Palladium $1,435.46, and Gold… $1,336.69
That’s it for today and this week… It’s time to party, St. Louis! The plans for a parade will be announced today, and I have to wonder just how many people went to work today here in St. Louis! On a night when it was all about the Blues, my beloved Cardinals took one on the chin… So it was not ALL Good for us last night… Good enough for me though! When the Blues scored their 4 goal to make it 4-0 I began to cry, with joy, for I knew then that they had won the Stanley Cup… OK… well, I was up very late last night, as you can imagine, and this was the best I could do today… I hope you have a Tub Thumpin’ Thursday, and Fantastico Friday tomorrow, and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler