July 7, 2020
* Currencies rally during the day, but lose ground overnight
* Gold gains $10 gives back $7… Same-0, same-0, for the shiny metal!
Good Day… And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, I may be finished with the wound center on Thursdays but…. I still have my monthly visits to my oncologist, and those happen to fall on Thursday mornings too… So, going forward, (I hope) I’ll only be gone 1 Thursday every month… So, you’ve got that going for you! HA! OK, my beloved Cardinals were called off the field on Monday, because…. They hadn’t gotten the test results back yet… So, riddle me this Batman, Major League Baseball says it’s going to check players twice a day, for temperature, and every other day with a COVID test, but if they haven’t gotten the test results back from the previous test, how are they ever going to tell what’s up? Just a viewpoint from the cheap seats…. The band, Yes, greets me this morning with their song: Long Distance Runaround…. I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating, the recordings of the band, Yes, is what headphones were made for!
I guess there were more Traders getting back from the Hamptons yesterday, because there was little movement in the currencies. I checked them last night, and they were bang on what I had reported for their levels Monday morning! Gold on the other hand had a good day, gaining $10VS the dollar, or the dollar lost $10 to Gold, same thing, but somehow it gains more attention to people if you say the dollar lost $10 to Gold…. I have a dear reader who always reminds me of this, so I wanted to give kudos to Bernard….
As has been the trend of recent trading nights, the overnight markets saw some slippage in the currencies, so their lofty levels of yesterday have been shaved a bit… And Gold has given back $7 of its $10 gain yesterday…
See what happens when everyone is in their places with bright shiny faces? When the boy in the band reassemble and the maestro, (JPMorgan) taps the baton on the podium, well then it’s time to start manipulating the markets… Why? Well, you simply can’t have free flowing markets, for these investors don’t know what they’re doing, they have to leave it up to us Big Boys, for we all know what the markets need…
I’m so jaded by the Big Casino Banks, folks… They are my arch enemy, although I’m sure that one day, my bank account will be held by one of them. Yes, I’m afraid that the smaller regional banks are going to be bought out by the Big Casino Banks, especially after hearing and reading that they received the bulk of the stimulus bailout money, instead of the smaller regional banks… Was that done on purpose?
Well, my conspiracy blood is tingling again… And I’m sure that there was some pre-disposition of the money meetings that went on to decide who got what… I’m just saying…
The price of Oil lost 26-cents yesterday closing at $40.37… There’s BIG news on the Shale Producers in the FWIW section today, you won’t want to miss that! The BIG news is also BAD news, and I don’t want to spoil the entrée, so I’ll leave it at that!
And… I’m getting out of the business of giving people writings from G. Edward Griffin… (author of the Creature From Jekyll Island) He’s simply trying to give people information that they haven’t heard, but sometimes he reports things that are questionable… So, I apologize for yesterday’s FWIW article, I know that, for me, you’ll all be saying, why does this COVID treatment cost so much in the future, but so be it….
I had one dear reader, say to me, Chuck why don’t you fact check things before you write about them? Oh, brother! Look… I do this for free… I don’t have research teams, I don’t have the wherewithal, to invest in more computers to do research, it’s just little old me, here, hoping to spread some information to make better investment decisions… If that’s not good enough then, fine, I truly don’t have any idea why I wake up each morning early, that is, to write, for free, again I might add…
I know that some of you are saying, Oh, come on Chuck, what else do you have to do? Oh, don’t get me started on that! And I do want to say that I feel real bad when something that I’ve put out there comes back to bite me, but I could just quit putting FWIW articles out there… But I won’t do that!
OK, back to the markets…. I read this morning, didn’t do a fact check, but I believe it to be true, that Russia has added to their FX reserves, which is interesting in this time of a pandemic, but shows to go ya, that the Russian Central Bank Gov. knows what she’s doing, and that’s fact Jack! For the last 10 years, Russia has foregone buying FX for their reserves, and bought Gold instead… At first the other countries that weren’t seeing their currencies bought by Russia, made fun of Elvira Nabiullina for her insistence on buying Gold, but after the dollar went on a long term strong trend, and those currencies lost value, those same countries were touting the Russian Central Bank Gov. for her strategic move….
So, I wonder what she’s telling us now? That the dollar’s strong trend is nearing an end, and owning the foreign currencies again is in vogue? Well, I don’t know the answer to that question, but should they continue to add to their FX reserves, one will have to be paying attention, right?
The Best performance overnight goes to the Indian rupee! Wow, it’s probably been a year of Sundays since I last said those words! Every morning when I do my rundown of the currency prices, I get ready to jot down 75 for Rupees… But not this morning… It seems that some large inflows into the Central Bank, and the news that the Central Bank is no longer buying dollars, got rupee traders all wound up and the currency ended up having the best performance of the night for the currencies!
Again, is this another sign to us? India is no longer buying dollars…. The signs are beginning to add up, right?
You know the bond boys continue to speak their position on the U.S. economy, as the 10-year Treasury trades around .70%, and has for some time now… I was taught many years ago, to always pay attention to what the bond boys are saying about the economy, and while things have changed for many of the rules I learned in my years trading, bonds, and currencies, this one remains strong in my mind, as to how much it should be paid attention to…
I told you yesterday that the economic data from last week, all beat expectations, but that it was coming from such lows. And later in the day I had this thought… That all the data prints were doing was showing that the deep plunge is over, for now, that is, not that we’re doing great!
Keep in mind the news I have you yesterday, and no I didn’t fact check it, that bankruptcies in the U.S. during May skyrocketed to 722 from 562 in April… Now April was the worst month ever, think about that one…
The U.S. Data Cupboard this morning doesn’t really chalk up the real economic data prints, but they do have the current Job Openings in the U.S. not that this data does anything for the markets… But it prints nonetheless… I told you yesterday that the Data Cupboard had little in the way of real economic data for us this week…
To recap… The currencies and metals had a good day going for it yesterday, but in the overnight markets we’ve seen some slippage, as if the dollar bugs just won’t give up the king of hill routine. Chuck goes into the plan to buy out the smaller regional banks, by the Big Casino Banks, well in his mind anyway! And Chuck thinks that if what he’s writing about isn’t good enough, then so be it!
For What It’s Worth… Well, I mentioned this above today, but saved the real meat for the FWIW section today… This is about the pulse of the shale Oil business, and it doesn’t look good folks…. It all can be found here: https://srsroccoreport.com/chart-of-the-week-the-collapse-of-the-u-s-oil-drilling-rig-count-spells-big-trouble-ahead/
Or, here’s your snippet: “U.S. Energy Independence that lasted for less than one year, is over. With the collapse of the domestic oil drilling rig count, U.S. shale oil production will begin to fall off a cliff in the next 3-6 months. This should also destroy the notion of a “V-Shaped” economic recovery once and for all.
According to Shaleprofile.com, U.S. shale oil production peaked at 8.3 million barrels per day (mbd) in November 2019 and declined to 7.8 mbd by March this year. However, the oil rig count from November to March was about the same, 683 rigs. During these five months with the oil rig count about the same, shale oil production declined 500,000 barrels per day.
Unfortunately, since mid-March, the domestic oil rig count has collapsed from 683 to 185 today (Source: Baker Hughes). That is nearly a loss of 500 oil drilling rigs:
Again, with the U.S. oil drilling rig count down 73% in just the past four months, watch for a significant decline in shale oil production over the next few months. Even if the shale oil industry starts to add more drilling rigs, the damage is already done.
As I have stated several times, I believe the U.S. economy will be in serious trouble in the second half of the year, and especially during Q4 2020. But, it won’t end there. The economic situation will likely continue to weaken in 2021.
Investors better start considering protecting some of their wealth in physical Gold & Silver.”
Chuck Again…. Remember when I told you that the Saudis were attempting to run the Shale Producers out of business? I bet they’re all jumping with joy over in Saudi-land… But we’re not here, now I’ve never been a fan of fracking, but if it took fracking to get us independent of Middle East Oil, then that was a game changer to me… I know this guy that wrote this article sounded a lot like me, but it goes to show ya, that more and more people are waking up and smelling the coffee….
Market prices 7/7/20: American Style: A$ .6940, kiwi .6538, C$ .7370, euro 1.1291, sterling 1.2521, Swiss $1.0608, European Style: rand 17.0850, krone 9.4285, SEK 9.2637, forint 313.07, zloty 3.9550, koruna 23.6272, RUB 71.58, yen 107.71, sing 1.3950, HKD 7.7498, INR 74.57, China 7.0284, peso 22.57, BRL 5.2992, Dollar Index 96.88, Oil $40.41, 10-year .68%, Silver $18.12, Platinum $829.95, Palladium $1,932.50, and Gold… $1,777.97
That’s it for today…. I almost didn’t answer the bell this morning… You see most mornings I wake up on my own before the alarm goes off, but this morning the alarm went off, much to my chagrin, and I dozed back off, thus the reason for the lateness of the letter this morning! If sports don’t come back soon, I do believe I’ll go batty! I’m searching for anything that is a competition, and on Saturday, there I was watching the National Cornhole Championships! Now I know that things have sunk to new lows, when I’m getting into watching men throw bags, something we do in the back yard! Oh well… got to get going this is running late… REO Speedwagon takes us to the finish line today with their song: Riding The Storm Out… with that, I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday, and will continue to Be Good To Yourself!
Chuck Butler