April 25, 2022
* The dollar has very strong rallies
* Japan asks for help…
Good day… and a Marvelous Monday to you…We’ll my beloved Cardinals went for a sweep of the Reds yesterday but came up short but still won the series taking 2 of 3… The Mets come to town tonight with their King’s Ransom payroll…went to a party ( thanks Danielle) Friday night and saw some of my former colleagues a good time was had by all! Argent greets me this morning with their great 70’s song: Hold Your Head High…
Well there was a bloodletting in stocks last Friday as the Dow lost nearly 1,000 points.. Danielle Di Martino Booth said that in all her years, she had never seen a close like we had on Friday… With all that rot being exposed on the stock market’s vine, the dollar had one of its best days in a very long time… The BBDXY closed up 8 index points on Friday…
And Gold got taken to the woodshed, along with Silver. Last Monday Gold was working its way to $2,000, Silver was trading over $26. After Friday’s engineered takedown by the sort sellers, Gold ended the week at $1,933.30 , and Silver closed the week at $22.28… Early last week it appeared that these two metals were on their respective ways to higher ground… But then the trap door sprung, and they weren’t any longer… I shake my head in disgust at these folks that keep pushing Gold & Silver down… They’ll get theirs one day… I can only hope!
The good folks at GATA sent me this note on Friday last week, regarding an interview that was shown on Bloomberg.com here you go: “Gold is the metal with the lowest risk in possession and “the bargain of the century,” Swiss Asia Capital founding partner Juerg Kiener tells Bloomberg Television in Singapore in an interview today. But, Kiener adds, “We see a lot of paper market interventions” in gold.
Noting the London Metals Exchange’s recent default on its nickel futures contract, Kiener says metal inventories generally are small and their futures markets are in backwardation. He says there is “huge pressure” on the exchange.
Russian gold will not be coming into the market becayse Russia will be keeping it, Kiener says.”
Chuck again… We need more people to speak out against the short selling paper trades, and then maybe, just maybe someone would do something about it!
In The overnight markets last night… OMG! This has really gotten out of hand folks! Gold is down $34 this morning and has dropped below its support at $1,900.00.. And Silver is down 73-cents! Stock futures are down again, the price of Oil has dropped $4, and bonds are stuck in the mud… There’s nothing out there, other than the dollar, that’s on the rally tracks this morning… The BBDXY has gained another 4 index points overnight, and the dollar is in an extreme overbought position again! I think, I’ll just stop writing this morning and go back to bed! I don’t remember a day like this is starting out to be… Better batten down the hatches because a storm is brewing folks…
So, what to do now? My publishers, The Aden Sisters, issued a letter last week talking about how Gold had reached a C phase, and that it could go down to support levels of $1,900, and below, but most likely, Gold would continue its rise… Well, right after that issuance, the price manipulators went to work on making sure Gold didn’t rise… I feel for Mary Anne and Pam, they work so hard, and then the price manipulators make all their work for naught…
What to do about the dollar? After taking a two-day break last week, the dollar went wild on Friday, and now it is trading at levels we hadn’t seen in a long time… Robert Rubin, would be proud of the dollar bulls, for if you recall back in the 90’s Robert Rubin was famous for saying, “ A strong dollar is in the best interests of the U.S.”… And theoretically he was correct.. .A strong currency does benefit a country that issues it… But… he said those things back in the day where fundamentals ruled… And U.S. rates were around 6%… and the euro was just getting started, so the strong dollar back in the late 90’s made sense… But not now…
Why, not now? Because the U.S. economy is teetering and on the brink of collapsing into a long recession… The economic data, other than jobs, continues to be weak and disappointing… Shoot Rudy, even the vaunted, and well respected analyst, Martin Weiss, is saying the U.S. economy is heading for a recession…
On a sidebar, at EverBank, we used to attempt to get Martin Weiss to grade the bank higher, and he was steadfast in his rating, which affected a lot of our ability to raise deposits… Back in the day, I called the Weiss people one day, and tried to explain how the bank did their loans, but they wouldn’t listen, and so we never got anywhere with his group…
Oh! Did you hear about what Japan was asking for last week? OK, recall that I mentioned last week that the yen had dropped quickly, and appeared to be ready to drop some more… Well, the Bank of Japan (BOJ) called the U.S. Treasury Sec. Janet Yellen, and asked for some coordinated intervention to support their yen… Sec. Yellen turned him down…
These coordinated interventions used to go on all the time… One country would call the country that had the currency that was so strong, and ask them to sell their currency and buy the weak currency… This all started in 1985, at the Plaza Hotel in NYC, where finance ministers from the major countries met and expressed their views that the Current Account Deficit was too high… (Imagine their horror if they saw today’s number?), and it was decided that the countries would intervene and sell dollars and buy whatever currency…
I used to be a part of the Sovereign Society, and one year, we decided that we would go on tour… We called it FX University, and a group of us traveled to 7 cities and gave presentations on what FX was and how they could invest In it…
The publisher at the Sov. Society, was Erika Nolan, and recently I asked her if any of those videos of me doing class still existed, and she sent me 3 of them!
These are huge files, and it’s only the audio, but you get to hear me explain the origins of currencies, and the history, along with why to invest in them and how to invest in them… I’m working on how to get them into the letter, so if you were not a part of the class as we went from city to city, you would be able to hear me teach class! So, hopefully that will happen…
My good friend, Dennis Miller, of www.milleronthemoney.com called me last week with an idea for a letter, and I helped him with it… Not be on spoiler alert, but the gist of the letter goes back to what I said a couple of weeks ago… The Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel, employ 100’s of economists and at least one of them should have been more than a “yes man” and stood up and got on his toes to shout that the Fed Heads idea of inflation was wrong! But they didn’t, so.. either they didn’t know inflation when it was staring them in the face, and therefore they should be fired, or… they knew, and they lied to us…
I’m still betting that free undercoat that they lied to us… There’s no way that 100’s of economists didn’t have at least one say, “Whoa, there partners, we’ve got an real inflation problem!”
And the other thing that I keep harping about, that no one else seems to think is going to be a Big Deal, and that is the lockdowns in China… Shanghai, the largest port for containers, has been shutdown since March 28th… What I believe that’s going to happen here is that shortages of things that can’t get out of China, will turn to price increases… I’ve told you this before, but my dad always told me that “there’s no such thing as a shortage, it’s merely an item that is in need of a price adjustments”… And that’s what we’re going to be seeing in the near future folks… higher prices still!
If I think that Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel is dragging their feet to go to war with Inflation, then I have to think that the U.K. and Eurozone are stuck in the mud… Inflation in their regions are soaring jus like here in the U.S. and still their respective Central Banks sit on their hands, and deny the inflation…
The U.S. Data Cupboard is empty today… no data prints to share with everyone… Tomorrow’s Cupboard has Durable & Capital Goods Orders, which if you recall in Feb they both printed negative… I don’t believe that March’s prints will show negative numbers again, but the numbers they do show will be remain very weak, and disappointing…
To recap… Stocks got the snot knocked out them on Friday last week, and the machines that are supposed to stop sell offs like we say, never kicked in… Hmm… The dollar took no prisoners on Friday last week, and the BBDXY is soaring! This is exactly what the U.S. economy doesn’t need right now, a strong dollar… But, the strong dollar is helping in the fight against inflation… Japan asks the U.S. for some coordinated intervention. And the U.S. said, “no thank you”… And Gold and Silver have been taken to the woodshed and have lost major ground in the past two trading sessions!
For What It’s Worth… I’ve made such a Big Deal out of the Chinese lockdowns, that when I saw this article I knew it had to be the FWIW article for today. Because that’s what it’s about, and it can be found here: China lockdowns: A nightmare for supply chains and inflation | Fortune
Or, here’s your snippet: “China’s strict COVID-19 lockdowns will exacerbate global supply chain woes and add to inflation in the coming months, experts say.
President Xi Jinping’s zero-COVID policy is being tested as the country struggles to tame its worst virus outbreak yet. Frustration is rising over food shortages, people being locked down in their homes for weeks, and a policy of killing pet dogs suspected of being infected with COVID.
While China’s tech hub Shenzhen has emerged from its nearly month-long lockdown, China’s biggest city, Shanghai, home to the world’s largest container port, has remained shuttered since March 28.
Now, the economic effects are starting to show. Fuel demand in China is on track to drop 20% this month in the biggest decline since the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns more than two years ago, sources told Bloomberg on Friday. And global supply chains are beginning to feel the crunch as well.
A supply chain nightmare
One in five container ships is now stuck at ports worldwide, with 30% of the backlog coming from China. And Lars Jensen, the CEO of the shipping container industry consulting firm Vespucci Maritime, told Fortune that the full impact of China’s policies will only begin to reveal itself over the coming weeks.”
Chuck again… the article is much longer, so if you have time, click on the link above and read it… You’ll see what I’ve been harping about for weeks now…
Market Prices 4/25/2022: American Style: A$ .7179, kiwi .6619, C$ .7840, euro 1.0753, sterling 1.2747, Swiss $1.0753, European Style: rand 15.6735, krone 9.0187, SEK 9.6266. forint 347.85, zloty 4.3144, koruna 22.7028, RUB 75.30, yen 128.17, sing 1.3728, HKD 7.8469, INR 7.6430, China 6.5515, peso 20.35, BRL 4.8380, BBDXY 1,228.31, Dollar Index 101.40, Oil $97.44, 10-year 2.83%, Silver $23.41, Platinum $917.00, Palladium $2,153.00, Copper $4.53, and Gold… $1,895.10
That’s it for today… Well, I have some not so good news to share with you today… Today, and tomorrow will be the only Pfennigs this week, due to me having doctor appointments both Wednesday and Thursday mornings. Wednesday is my oncologist, of whom I’ve not seen in 4 months, so this should be interesting… Our Blues have not allowed their trip to the West Coast slow them down. Last night in Anaheim they trailed 0-2 after 1 period… they the Blues went on to score the next 6 goals, to win the game! Let’s Go Blues! There are only 2 more regular season games left, and then the Stanley Cup Playoffs begin… Don Mclean takes us to the finish line today with his song: Vincent… A sad song, eh? I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and please remember to Be Good to Yourself!
Chuck Butler