Why Is Consumer Confidence Soaring Higher?

Rocktober 27, 2021

* Currencies & metals get sold on Tuesday… 

* But the overnight markets sell dollars again… 

Good Day… And a Wonderful Wednesday to you! Just a friendly Spider Man reminder that this is the last Pfennig for this week. I’ll talk to you next on Nov. 1st. Longtime readers know that I dislike November for a number of reasons, and the only good thing about it is that  25 days into the month is Thanksgiving… Funny, I used to list Thanksgiving as one of the reasons I disliked November… Long story there, so I won’t bore you with it, but I’m good with Thanksgiving now! Coming this Sunday is Halloween! I always sit outside to greet the Trick-or-Treaters and give out candy, so I can talk to the little ones, that are so darn cute! I have to tolerate the older kids so that they don’t egg my house, but I don’t like it! The great Steve Winwood greets me this morning with his song: Roll With It…

And that’s what I had to do yesterday is to just roll with it, the engineered takedown of Gold, that occurred yesterday… I’m going to go through the data yesterday first today, because they played a minor part in this selling of Gold yesterday…  So here goes…

The U.S. Data Cupboard yesterday had the stupid Consumer Confidence report for the current month yesterday, and it surprised everyone by rising to 113 from 109… This was the first positive gain in this index in 4 months, with the 3 previous months showing downward movements… And to what, did the experts claim was the reason for the uptick on confidence?  Well, they say that consumers are planning on buying cars, homes, appliances and going on vacations…  Hmmm…  I wonder where they’ll find the cars to buy that don’t need a computer chip? Or the appliances that are rising in price faster than a speeding train… Oh well, who am I to quibble with these folks that think that everything is seashells and balloons?  Let them eat cake, right?

Yesterday, I told you that the stupid Consumer Confidence report was a Tier 2 report that might or might not move the markets… Well the strength of the move in the report got traders all silly like school girls, and the dollar rose, and Gold was subjected to a barrage of short Gold paper trades at the COMEX, and really dropped on the day…

So, seeing the opportunity to takedown Gold the price manipulators showed up at the COMEX with arms full of short Gold paper trades, and it didn’t take long for Gold’s price to fall from $1,808 the previous day to $1,794.20.  At once point in the day Gold was down $21, so I guess I should be happy that it was able to recover some of that loss on the day.

The dollar, which was getting sold before the data print, found a way to rally and push down the higher levels of the currencies. The BBDXY that started the day at 1,155.76, ended the day at 1,156.75, really not a HUGE move, but something was going on that I haven’t been able to uncover, that got the dollar bought yesterday…

So, Tuesday was not a turnaround Tuesday, unless that is you are a someone that would like to see Gold lose ground, and the dollar rebound… The dollar rebound is like a stay of execution, in my humble country boy opinion… As I said yesterday, Congress is ready to send through their two deficit spending bills to the President… They just need some rubber stamp approvals from the House & Senate… And if all the accumulation of debt previously hadn’t been enough to sway dollar holders to sell, then these next two increases to our current debt could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back… And if it’s not, then I give up on mankind, and womankind… If they can’t see or refuse to allow themselves to see that the U.S. is in deep dookie then I can’t help them…  I’m just saying…

So, Gold closed at $1,794.20 , And Silver closed at $ 24.25  yesterday, and in the overnight markets last night… there hasn’t been much movement, but what we did see was dollar selling… The BBDXY begins the day lower than it closed last night, with today’s level at 1,155.77… But again the only two currencies that seem to show gains that are worth talking on the phone about, are the Chinese renminbi and the Russian ruble…  The Aussie dollar (A$) gives us these bumps higher and then sits there for days before we get another one…

There are two Central Bank meetings today.. The Bank of Canada (BOC) and the Brazilian Central Bank (BCB)… Here’s what I think we’ll see from these meetings… The BOC will not change rates, but… will most likely announce that they are reducing bond buying…  And the BCB will most likely hike rates once again… You may recall me talking about inflation in Brazil a week or so ago, and from all reports the inflation in Brazil is still surging higher, so we could actually see a strong rate hike here today…

The U.S. Data Cupboard today has already produced two real economic reports, and they were mixed…. Durable Goods Orders for Sept were negative -.4%, but that was better than what was expected which was for a negative -1.0%, but it was still negative, for a second consecutive month… On the other side of the coin we saw Capital Goods Orders for Sept. rise .8%… This marks the 5th consecutive month of increases for Capital Goods… Which really surprises me, folks… But then I get surprised easily… But I digress… This is one good sign for the U.S. economy, but it’s only 1, like when I lose weight, I always say, it’s like removing a bucket of sand from a beach!

We’ll also see the Sept print of Factory Orders this morning a little later… I would expect this print to be very weak…  Auto plants around the country have been shutting down, or at least not producing many cars, And many machinery plants around the country have been held up by parts that are sitting on ships of the California coast…  No parts, no machines working… OK boys, go on home today, come back tomorrow and we’ll see if any delivery trucks arrive… 

All this data continues to go through the wringer of hedonic adjustments, and cooking, massaging , and primping before being presented to the masses… Just like markets, that are no longer free moving markets, but instead all of them and I mean all of them  are manipulated in some way…  For instance, earlier this week the yield on the 10-year Treasury was 1.61%, and last week it was 1.67%, and just when it appeared to long time markets analysts, like me, that bond yields were heading much higher, along came a spider and sat down beside Bonds, and voila! Bond yields have fallen to 1.57%… I know that doesn’t look like much, but… what you don’t see is that there is a ton of bond buying that has to occur to move bond yields in that direction…

So… who’s buying these bonds?  I talk to my investment advisor from time to time and she wants me to put cash to work, and I say< “But there’s nothing out there with any yield”, and I’m sure that conversation goes on all throughout the country, folks… And investors like you and me, don’t buy these bonds… So, who’s buying them?  Well, some of the buying is done by pension funds, corporations, etc. that HAVE to buy Treasuries because of their investment guidelines… But the bulk of the rest of the bond buying is done by the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel…  

Next week will be the beginning of my most disliked month, November… And what will November bring us? Ahhh grasshopper… this is where we get the cheese that binds… The Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel, will meet and this is the month that they said they would begin to taper…  Now, we’ve gone through Chuck’s thoughts on their ability to taper significantly, and Chuck just doesn’t see how that happens, given the size of the debt… and the costs that attributed to bond servicing (paying interest)…

But that’s what’s on the docket for November… A FOMC meeting with the chance of an announcement of tapering…  But have you noticed that there’s been little talk about tapering recently?  Have the Fed/ Cabal/ Cartel heads been instructed that’s mum’s the word on tapering so that the markets forget that they had talked about how this is the month the bond buying would stop? It sure appears that way to me… I’m just saying…

To recap… The dollar got sold yesterday until there was a strange increase in the stupid Consumer Confidence report, and from there the dollar got bought, and Gold got sold… Gold saw another run at its value by the price manipulators yesterday, and they took Gold down more than $23 at one point, but the physical buying of Gold brought the shiny metal back some, and it ended the day down $14.20…  We start the day today with the dollar being sold in the overnight markets, and Gold up $2.70… The data cupboard will get a workout the rest of the week…

For What It’s Worth…  Well, remember when the President of a couple of terms ago, said that he ws going to fundamentally change the U.S.? Well, that was put on hold until there was a better setting, and having control of both the senate and the house, the fundamental change is happening folks… This article that was found in the WallStreetOnParade.com site, talks about the nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller has introduced major changes, and it’s becoming very scary folks… This article can be found here: Biden’s Nominee Omarova Has a Published Plan to Move All Bank Deposits to the Fed and Let the New York Fed Short Stocks (wallstreetonparade.com)

Or, here’s your snippet: “This month, the Vanderbilt Law Review published a 69-page paper by Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee to head the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), the Federal regulator of the largest banks in the country that operate across state lines. The paper is titled “The People’s Ledger: How to Democratize Money and Finance the Economy.”

The paper, in all seriousness, proposes the following:

(1) Moving all commercial bank deposits from commercial banks to so-called FedAccounts at the Federal Reserve;

(2) Allowing the Fed, in “extreme and rare circumstances, when the Fed is unable to control inflation by raising interest rates,” to confiscate deposits from these FedAccounts in order to tighten monetary policy;

(3) Allowing the most Wall Street-conflicted regional Fed bank in the country, the New York Fed, when there are “rises in market value at rates suggestive of a bubble trend,” such as with technology stocks today, to “short these securities, thereby putting downward pressure on their prices”;

(4) Eliminate the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) that insures bank deposits;

(5) Consolidate all bank regulatory functions at the OCC – which Omarova has been nominated to head.

Republican Senator Pat Toomey has been running a Red Scare campaign against Omarova, who was born in the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic (now Kazakhstan) and attended Moscow State University on a Lenin Personal Academic Scholarship.

The real threat that Omarova poses to U.S. financial stability, that Democrats should be calling out, is that she wants to further concentrate all major aspects of the U.S. banking system in the hands of the Federal Reserve, a captured regulator whose 12 regional bank tentacles are, literally, owned by the banks. Omarova offers not one scintilla of a suggestion about restructuring the Fed so that it is not owned by or controlled by the banks.”

Chuck again.. .Ok, before we jump off cliffs here… This is the nominee, and it remains to be seen if she gets the job, and then if she gets her way with changes to our financial system… But, like I said above, with control of both the house and senate, it most like will be a layup for her nomination…

Market Prices 10/27/2021: American Style: A$ .7517,  kiwi .7167, C$ .8060, euro 1.1618, sterling 1.3745, Swiss $1.0890, European Style: rand 14.9659, krone 8.3838, SEK 8.5823,  forint 313.25,  zloty 3.9754,  koruna 22.1195, RUB 69.55, yen 113.64, sing 1.3456, HKD 7.7751, INR 74.93, China 6.3842, peso 20.18, BRL 5.5627,  BBDXY 1,155.77, Dollar Index 93.87,  Oil $83.82, 10-year 1.57%, Silver $24.19, Platinum $1,036.00, Palladium $2,050.00, Copper $4.46, and Gold… $1,796.90

That’s it for today, and the rest of the week, as I remind you that there will be no Pfennig tomorrow.. . So, Sunday is Halloween…  Since I’ve given up sweets, I won’t be able to sample of candy bars that I give out! UGH! I was a Chocolate lover, but my body wasn’t… I do miss my cookies, and muffins in the morning with my coffee, but… that doesn’t work out too well, when I take my blood sugar count! The World Series began last night, I watched some of it, and saw history being made, when the leadoff hitter of the game hit a home run! First time ever in the World Series!  Braves take a 1-0 lead in the best of seven series… Go National League!  I did sit outside a bit yesterday, as the sun came out and while it was chilly, it was very nice… I hope it’s a nice day/ night on Sunday for Halloween… The Outlaws take us to the finish line today with their song: Your Love…   My good friend, Rick will get a kick out of that one!  I hope you have a Wonderful Wednesday, and I’ll talk to you again next Monday, All Souls Day… Please continue to Be Good To Yourself! 

Chuck Butler