Waiting On Jay…

March 7, 2023

* currencies & metals get sold on Monday

* What’s a Humphrey Hawkins Act! 

Good Day.. And a Tom Terrific Tuesday to you! Well, this is the last day down here for my spring training buddies, Duane and Rick, as they fly home today. In their place my wife, Kathy, will return and she’ll be going to games with me here on out…  Lucky for her!  (NOT!) She really just goes to the games to placate me… The Cardinals won their last game yesterday for the boys… It was a truly beautiful day once again, and they have had wonderful weather for their visit down to Jupiter, Fla!  Congrats to Mizzou Tiger, Kobe Brown, who was named 1st team All SEC! That’s 5th time for a Tiger, since joining the SEC!   Marty Balin greets me this morning with his song: Hearts…  (Marty Balin was the lead singer of the Jefferson Starship, and then went solo… this is from his solo years)

Well, watching the currency markets these days is a lot like, counting flowers on the wall, that doesn’t bother me at all, watching Captain Kangaroo, etc.  In other words, the are down right boring!  But boring isn’t always a bad thing… At least if you are looking to diversify your investment portfolio with currencies, at least they aren’t moving away from you at the speed of fired bullet…

Yesterday, the dollar, drifted around, until finally succumbing to the pressure of the sellers, and the BBDXY lost 1 index point… Again, much like last year, when the only currency that looked perky against the dollar was the Russian ruble, this year it’s the Mexican peso… And we’ve talked about the peso, so much, that I’ll soon be called names again…  (years ago, a reader took exception to my story about singing in a Mexican outdoor mall, and basically accused me of being… oh, never mind, no sense in rehashing it!)

Gold never found a bid yesterday, and saw a lot of new short positions being put on, in place of all those old stale ones that were covered last week. Gold lost $10 yesterday, and ended the day at $1,847.50.. Silver followed Gold’s lead, and saw the same kind of selling… Silver lost 22-cents on the day, and ended at $21.14…  The price of Oil jumped to $80 yesterday…  Memo to the POTUS… You’ve released a good portion of our strategic petroleum reserve, to move the price of Oil down, and look here… the price of Oil is still strong… What a waste! Tsk, tsk, tsk…

There was no “crisis in oil” that would garner a release from the SPR… That leaves us with the only reason the release of the SPR would be made…  Political…

Moving on… In the overnight markets last night, the BDDXY gained back that lost 1 index point, and so we’re right back to where we were yesterday morning… I guess the currency traders are holding back from playing their cards until they see what  top Fed Head, Jerome Powell, shows his hand first… And that opportunity will come first this morning, as Powell, heads to Capitol Hill to give the first of his two testimonies to lawmakers, on the economy…  I see this as Powell’s final attempt to set the world straight, that he’s hell bent and whiskey bound to see inflation defeated, and the economy come to a soft landing… To date, the only markets that have believed him from the get-go, is the currency markets… 

This two-day trek to The Hill, started many years ago, when it was called the Humphrey Hawkins Act, that required the Fed Head Chairman to testify before, the Senate one day, and the House the next day… The actual ACT ended years ago, but… the Fed Heads have continued to honor the ACT, by making the trek to Capitol Hill and testify…

I can’t begin to think that Powell will announce a pivot, or a delay in rate hikes at his testimony… I see Powell, talking about how the economy is proving to be resilient in the face of over 400 Basis Points of rate hikes, and that inflation is still a problem and that it will require additional rate hikes…

Anything else from the Chairman, and I’ll be surprised… 

The price of Oil maintained its handle of $80 overnight, and the 10-year’s yield was unmoved…  Waiting for Jay, I guess…

Well, in a case of saber rattling going on once again… The Chinese are having their annual Communist National Meeting… and according to Reuters this morning this is what occurred… “The United States should change its “distorted” attitude towards China or “conflict and confrontation” will follow, China’s foreign minister said, while defending its stance on the war in Ukraine and its close ties with Russia.”

C’mon, why can’t we all just get along, we all live on the same planet, right?  Remember these are just words, and sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me… Well, sometimes, words can be very hurtful… so that old saying, isn’t really true…  The other thing in play here is the fact that in the past, China doesn’t say things it can’t back up or carry through… I’m just saying…

Ok, before we head to the Big Finish today, I wanted to highlight this snippet I took from the GoldSwitzerland.com site, where the head of the company, Egon von Greyerz, is talking with Chris Waltzek of Gold Seek Radio… let’s listen in: “The conversation opens with a critique of over-valued (bubbled) stock, bond and property markets. Their collective and historical rise has been supported exclusively by central bank (inflationary) money printing. The inevitable and longer-term consequence of this fantasy “solution”/support is a massive race to the bottom of assets and currencies in real terms. With fewer places to hide, gold naturally emerges as insurance against these asset and currency risks. Egon specifically addresses the demise of paper money and reminds that gold doesn’t effectively “go up,” currencies merely fall—a historical reality which only a small minority of investors fully understand today.”

Chuck again.. Yes, one of these days, Alice! Gold will take its place at the top where it belongs, has belonged, and will belong once again!

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday has the Factory Orders from Jan, and they surprised everyone by showing a gain of 1.6%…  I saw that print and immediately thought, “oh no, now the gov’t is cooking these books too!”…   UGH!   Oh well…

Today’s Cupboard is dominated by the Powell Testimony talked about above…  And then we’ll see what Consumer’s have been up to, when Consumer Credit (read debt) prints for January… I suspect that consumers piled on the debt in Jan…

To recap… Chuck is counting flowers on the wall and watching Captain Kangaroo, because the currency markets have gone boring… It could be because the Fed Head Chairman Powell, will speak today on the economy, and the currency traders want him to show his hand first…  Gold & Silver are seeing all the old stale short positions that were covered last week, be put back on… UGH!  And Chuck is still at odds with the POTUS for releasing the SPR…  

For What It’s Worth… This article came to me from longtime reader Bob… and it’s about how JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon is in deep dookie right now, (once again I might add), and you can read about it in its entirety, here: Jamie Dimon Is Fighting a Deposition in a Devastating Lawsuit Charging JPMorgan With Being the Cash Conduit for Jeffrey Epstein’s Sex Crimes (blacklistednews.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “ he Attorney General’s office of the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has filed a First Amended Complaint against JPMorgan Chase that has less redactions than an earlier version. The complaint makes devastating and detailed charges. It charges that the bank sat on a pile of evidence that Jeffrey Epstein was running a child sex trafficking ring as it continued to keep him as a client; accept his lucrative referrals of wealthy clients; and provided him with large sums of cash and wire transfers to pay off victims – one of whom was a “14-year old sex slave.”

Attorneys for the bank are now resisting allowing Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon from being deposed under oath in the matter as to what he knew and when he knew it.

The case is USVI v JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A. (22-cv-10904) in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York. As is becoming a regular occurrence when there is a politically sensitive case involving JPMorgan Chase, Judge Jed Rakoff is the presiding judge. (See Judge Rakoff Signs a Dangerous Protective Order in Whistleblower Case Against 5-Count Felon JPMorgan Chase.)

The lawsuit includes the following charges against JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States with more than 5,000 local branches serving mom and pop accounts:

“JP Morgan did business with Jeffrey Epstein from as early as 1998 to 2013. In that time, JP Morgan serviced approximately fifty-five Epstein-related accounts collectively worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“…at least 20 individuals paid through JP Morgan accounts were victims of trafficking and sexual assault in Little St. James, New York, and/or other Epstein properties. These women were trafficked and abused during different intervals between at least 2003 and July 2019, when Epstein was arrested and jailed, and these women received payments, typically multiple payments, between 2003 and 2013 in excess of $1 million collectively. Epstein also withdrew more than $775,000 in cash over that time frame from JP Morgan accounts, especially significant as Epstein was known to pay for ‘massages,’ or sexual encounters, in cash. Financial information also reflects payments drawn from JP Morgan accounts of nearly $1.5 million to known recruiters, including to the MC2 modeling agency, and another $150,000 to a private investigative firm.”

Chuck again… I just don’t know how the leader of an organization that has been accused of RICO crimes, been fined for manipulating markets, a few times, I might add, and then this, is not going to jail…  But then that’s the way things used to work… You broke the law, you went to jail…  These days, it’s more like: you broke the law, you get a bonus!

Market Prices 3/7/2023: American Style: A$ .6667, kiwi .6196, C$ .7338, euro 1.0669, sterling 1.2008, Swiss $1.0722, European Style: rand 18.3582, krone 10.4789, SEK 10.4978, forint 354.24, zloty 4.3944, koruna 22.0083, RUB 75.47, yen 135.90, sing 1.3460, HKD 7.8499, INR 81.92, China 6.9324, peso 17.97, BRL 5.1584, BBDXY 1,248.87, Dollar Index 104.40, Oil $80.10, 10-year 3.92%, Silver $20.95, Platinum $966.00, Palladium $1,433.00, Copper $3.99, and Gold… $1,842.11

That’s it for today…  Well the World Baseball Classic starts play tonight, with pool play in Taiwan, Tokyo, Miami, and Phoenix…  USA, USA, USA!  So, this will be a week chock-full-o-sports, with the WBC going on, and the college conference championships going on..  Today is the birthday of one my good friends… Gus! Gus is my Greek friend, that lives on Long Island, and owns the Candy Kitchen restaurant…  Happy Birthday, my friend, I raise a martini to you!  I was up very late last night playing dominoes with friends, and didn’t realize the time had gone by!   It’s time to hit send, so Neil Young takes us to the finish line today with his song: After The Gold Rush…  I hope you have a Tom Terrific Tuesday today, and will Be Good To Yourself!

Chuck Butler