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Money Daily has been providing business and financial market news, views, and coverage on a nearly continuous basis since 2006. Complete archives are available at moneydaily.blogspot.com.
PRIOR COVERAGE:
2/6-2/12/2022
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Stocks Down for the Week; Canada's Government Invokes "Emergency Act", Begins Freezing Bank Accounts Friday, February 18, 2022, 9:33 am ET How's that retirement account looking? On Thursday, the Dow suffered its worst day since November. That alone should set off alarm bells because November was just a few months ago and it wasn't pretty. On November 8, the Industrials peaked at 36,432. By December 2, the index closed at 34,022, 2410 points lower. The day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, November 26, was the bad day in question. The Dow fell 905 points that day, and the market was only open for a half-day session, closing at 1:00. Yesterday, the Dow dropped 622 points, making it five times this year that the Dow has lost more than 500 points in a single session. Listening to the talking heads at Bloomberg, Fox Business, or CNBC, one might surmise that this is all rather routine, that - as market guru Gregory Mannarino keeps telling his followers - this is nothing more than a normal corrective phase. The market is sure to come back, he says, telling his people to buy the banks - BAC, JPM, and GS - and watch stocks soar back beyond all-time highs. Credit where credit is due, Mr. Mannarino has made some solid calls in the past, but nobody is right 100% of the time, and this time he may be very, very wrong. Let's take a stroll through the indices and see where they stand as Friday and options expiration approach. For the week thus far, the Dow is down 426 points, the NASDAQ is lower by 74, S&P 500 off 38, and the NYSE Composite has shed 173. Friday sets up as another make or break session for equity markets. Major indices are all lower for the year, led by the NASDAQ, which is down 13.37% thus far. The Dow is off 6.21%, the S&P down 8.68%, and the NYSE is off 4.26%. Aside from stocks not performing very well and market analysts blaming the volatility on the instability at Ukraine's borders rather than making the honorable admission that the good times of the past 13 years are likely over and stocks may continue to be poor investments throughout the year, what's happening in Canada should be of concern to anybody with a bank account. By invoking the Emergencies Act, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has put on notice truckers striking in Ottawa and elsewhere, along with any persons contributing to their cause. The government has sounded the alarm, insisting that they will freeze and/or seize bank accounts involved with the ongoing protests. Late Wednesday, five major Canadian banks - Royal Bank of Canada (RBC), BMO (Bank of Montreal), Scotiabank, TD Bank Canada, and the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) - all suffered outages to their online banking and transfer facilities at the same time. Customers were denied access to their accounts, debit cards purchases were declined and some said ATM machines weren't working. The banks offered nothing in the way of an explanation and were all back up and running On Thursday. The government has frozen accounts of people supporting the truckers with donations. While there hav yet to be outright seizures of bank accounts, that would be the next likely step for the government. They've been trying to get insurance companies to cancel coverage on those involved in the protest and have also threatened to revoke drivers' licenses. Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, key organizers of the Canadian trucker "freedom convoy," were arrested on Thursday. Lich says her bank account has been frozen. All this for expressing views contrary to that of the government. Make no mistake, this kind of heavy-handedness is sure to make its way to the United States. The ability of the government to shut down free speech by impoverishing its people is not written into the constitution. As such, it is illegal, though the tyrants in Washington DC and Ottawa aren't exactly playing by any rules other than the ones they inflict upon the people. Canada has set a dangerous precedent. Taking all but the bare essentials to pay bills out of banks would be a sage decision in light of these developments.
At the Close, Thursday, February 17, 2022: BITCOIN, 9:30 am ET: $40,329.40
Thursday, February 17, 2022, 8:58 am ET The Dow Jones Industrial Average finished down 54 points on Wednesday, but it was much cheaper prior to the close, lower by 334 points before the release of minutes from January's FOMC meeting. There was nothing in the reading most people didn't already know, but the release of FOMC minutes usually offers a buy signal to Wall Street, especially on days in which the bottom appears to be falling out, as it was yesterday. All of the indices rose from 2:00 pm ET into the close and reached positive ground. A violent selloff over the final seven minutes of trading (yes, seven minutes), smacked them down somewhat, though the S&P managed to remain positive. It's all so tawdry and boorish, the stock market. Unless one owns a significant portion of a company's stock, it's about as useful a gauge of wealth as the number of TVs in a household. In other words, your 1000 shares of Apple may look like $172,000 today, but, half a year ago, it was only $144,000, so you feel richer. Some day, if the real owners - Vanguard, 7.73%; Blackrock, 6.25%; Berkshire-Hathaway, 5.44%; and State Street, 3.88% - determine that the share price should be 124, or 224, you'll be either happy or upset, based on your tiny 0.0001% of the company that you own. Vanguard alone owns $224 BILLION of Apple. Do they need any more money? Unlikely. Can they make the stock move any which way they like? Absolutely. The point is, your individual "wealth" can be easily advanced or eviscerated by forces more powerful than you. The path for the last 13 years has been to create more wealth by boosting the prices of stocks and real estate. That's all well and good for you, but the biggest companies profit excessively. You and your friends feel rich, you spend, they make money. Stocks and real estate prices go up. It's a virtuous cycle. What could possibly go wrong? Sorry for boring you.
At the Close, Wednesday, February 16, 2022: BITCOIN 8:54 am ET: $42,373.46
Wednesday, February 16, 2022, 9:00 am ET After a while, it just becomes too much to bear. According o the federal government of Canada, Canadian truckers are terrorists and so are people who try to support their cause. The Canadian government, by invoking the Emergencies Act will freeze their bank accounts, cancel their insurance and effectively deprive them of their livelihood because they won't comply with a government mandate. Canada's government will also freeze (seize, steal) bank accounts of people who tried to support the truckers. That's releasing the Kraken of third-world dictatorships or first-world communism. China is probably jealous. The message from the Canadian government is quite clear: oppose us and you will die. There's nothing subtle about their approach to quell the popular uprising in Ottawa, at their border crossings, and ostensibly in the hearts and minds of patriotic Canadians across the vast terrain. There's really nothing much wrong with the world other than the mindless madness the governments and mainstream media continues to shove in our faces every damn day. If all of the governments around the world all collapsed in an instant, the planet would be better off in a major way. Governments and multi-national corporations, cheered on by the compliant media, are the ones who commit the most crimes, tell the most lies, steal the most money, and make life miserable for the most people. We can't just wish them away. They've grown too big and powerful. That's a real problem. Until a suitable solution is discovered, it's probably not a bad idea to get your money out of the banks, out of the stock market and into gold, silver, bitcoin, maybe a useful vehicle or two and all the other things preppers have been advising for the past 30 years. Having a useful skill and learning how to grow at least some of your own food is sage advice. For those still invested in the roller coaster stock market, there's still time to convert some of it (or all of it) to cash, and then to bitcoin, gold, and silver. Mind you, bitcoin is the only crypto to own. Most of the others are trashy, speculative gambles. Bitcoin is MONEY. Those who do not hold any bitcoin are in for a rude awakening very soon. As some have recently said to those who try to denigrate or demean bitcoin and its proponents, "you'll eventually buy some at the price you deserve." Bankers, Wall Street, and governments (except El Salvador) hate bitcoin. They also hate free expression. They hate truckers. They are haters. They hate their own citizens. Eventually, the government of [insert fascist country here] will attempt to seize the banks and your money with it, denying your economic freedom. Without economic freedom, the rest of your freedom will be disabled, destroyed, defunct. Governments will seize your bank account and your money and they will not give it back. Many will be ruined. Money Daily has tried to warn people about the dangers of big government. The warnings are over with now that the danger is blatant, obvious, and has been allowed to grow its power. Good luck.
At the Close, Tuesday, February 15, 2022: Bitcoin 8:57 am ET: $43,603.01
Tuesday, February 15, 2022, 9:05 am ET This recent spate of propaganda got old fast. Russia invasion imminent. Stocks go down. Russia withdrawing troops from Ukraine border. Stocks go up. In all probability, Russia was never going to invade Ukraine. The narrative was advanced by corporate media and the US and UK governments so they could look good, showing that they could push back against bad Mr. Putin and those nasty Russians. After two years of CON-VID and associated rules, regulations, masking, lockdowns, and vaccine passports, the world's population wasn't quite ready to deal with WWIII. It was all a show to keep the plebes off balance, and it pretty much worked. People are catching on, however. Many nations have already done away with virus-related mandates. Meanwhile, soon-to-be-ousted Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has decided to go the martial law route on the Freedom Convoy and other trucker protests. What an idiot. Soon enough, there will be a vote of no confidence and he will be removed. Next up, fake president Biden. Or, he'll back off in the face of mass protests and life in America - the majority of which isn't suffering any outbreaks other than freedom - will go on as if nothing had happened. The danger in not challenging authority is that the longer they remain in power, the more time they have to plot and plan stupid things. They should all be forced to resign, especially, Biden, who was not duly elected. Trump won, everybody knows it, but Americans are still either too afraid of their government or just don't give a damn, the system being the most corrupted in world history. People want freedom, jobs, stable money, a decent life. Most of that was threatened the past two years. There are more than a few people who aren't going to forget the evil that was foisted on the American public by its own government. Payback is... well, you know. A trucker convoy is slated to run from LA to DC beginning March 6. It's doubtful that it will go off as planned. The deep state desires there to be no protesting, no cheering for liberty, no chance for the general population to enjoy life. Too bad. Meanwhile, now that the markets have gotten the news about Russia pulling back its troops, all is well in ponzi-land. On Monday, European stocks were all down between 2 and 2 1/2 percent. Today, they are all recovering well, now that the threat of war has been removed from the economic equation. They're all up one to 1 1/2%. Russia's MOEX is up more than three percent. Stock futures are insanely higher, all up more than one percent. Gold, which reached as high as $1,880 overnight, has been slammed back down to around $1,850 and US markets aren't even open yet. Silver has been likewise savaged, topping out near $24 an ounce overnight, but currently leveling off around $23.15. Apparently, all of this is good news for cryptos. Bitcoin is currently (8:47 am ET) $44,225.08. Carry on, and watch out for further propaganda on the TV.
At the Close, Monday, February 14, 2022:
Sunday, February 13, 2022, 10:54 am ET Government and media is full of twisted, deranged and dangerous people. There's Joe Biden, Jen Psaki, General Milley, Pete Buttigieg and countless others behind the scenes in Washington, DC and various state capitals (Gretchen Whittmer, anyone?). The media is littered with useful and useless idiots, among their numbers, NBC's Chuck Todd, Rachel Maddow of MSNBC, the duplicitous George Stephanopoulos of ABC, Nora O'Donnell on CBS, and just about everybody at CNN, though their purge continues apace. Somewhat unnoticed because he's so second-rate and disingenuous is Yahoo! Finance's Editor-in-Chief, Andy Serwer, possibly the most useless buffoon to ever achieve the rank of editor, anywhere. Serwer, a completely-brainwashed leftist tool, leads off his company's home page with the headline, "Inflation is the business opportunity of a lifetime." Serwer's editorial doesn't even attempt to explain what business or whose lifetime might be affected so positively by high single or double-digit inflation, though he does supply a chart showing eggs, coffee, gasoline, and ice cream all costing less, on an inflation-adjusted basis, today than in 1982. His outlier is bacon, which he has pegged as 20% higher than the inflation-adjusted price in 1982. Taking a line from Buggs Bunny, "What a maroon." People like Serwer don't belong in media. They belong in a looney bin. (Sorry, just had to get that out there.) As far as markets are concerned, the week just ended wasn't very kind to anybody. All of the major equity indices closed out the week below their 200-day moving averages, with the NASDAQ leading the way down the circling drain with a nearly three percent loss. Essentially, markets were flat to slightly lower on Monday, up sharply on Tuesday and Wednesday, and suffered deep declines Thursday and Friday, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average posting consecutive 500+ point losses, the third and fourth of the year (January 18, Feb. 4th, 10th, 11th). Though the aforementioned performance is not the stuff of textbook bear market metrics, four huge losses in less than a month surely should give one pause before plunging into the rigged casino. On a year-to-date basis, the Dow is down 5.05%,; NASDAQ, -12.90%; S&P, -7.88%; NYSE, -3.26%; Dow Transports, -9.00%. This is certain of a corrective phase. Any worsening, especially on the Dow Transports and Industrials, would give rise to calling it a bear market. Despite official wisdom deeming bear markets only on ocassion of a 20 percent decline, the overall weakness evidenced recently by low volume up days offers opportunity to change positions before the inevitable collapse. Treasuries were thrashed about like placards in a wind storm, but were eventually sold and bought back to nearly unchanged status for the week. Yield on the 30-year bond rose from 2.23% to 2.24%, but not before ratcheting up to 2.30% on Thursday, which was the most volatile day of the week overall, due to the reveal of a 7.5% year-over-year rise in the January CPI. Most notable was the leveling of the 7-year and 10-year notes, first, at 2.03% for the pair on Thursday, then closing out the week Friday at the exact same level of 2.92%. Those two might as well be twins, though this pairing off is the first concrete sign of impending inversion. That there is considerable turmoil in the treasury complex is without doubt. The most notable of the moves during the week came in the 2-month, 2-year, and 5-year yields, which, respectively, rose 19, 30, and 18 basis points from the prior Monday through Thursday. They all were knocked lower on Friday, which constituted some of the most suspicious trading ever witnessed in the bond pits. Yields suddenly rising precipitously one day, then falling in grandiose fashion the next raised more than a few eyebrows. Market corruption is rampant. Money Daily detailed Thursday's yield eruption in Friday's note. Cryptocurrencies were likewise whipsawed, as bitcoin gained from just above $41,000 last Sunday to $45,855 by noon ET on Thursday, only to see the rally dashed thereafter, with the reserve crypto holding steady at $42,500 today. Lesser coins suffered similar or steeper losses. In the sea of tumult, one spot of tranquility was the dollar index, which gained from 95.48 to 96.03 over the course of the week, though even its usually stable charting was marred by spikes, especially Friday afternoon's quick rise around 1.30 pm ET. With the level of deceit and corruption running to record highs, it's difficult to trust any government or otherwise "official" numbers. Wild assumptions and adjustments to the January non-farm payroll data on January 4th was not the first release of questionable data, though it was among the most egregious of late. That release seemed to get the numbers fakery rolling, a trend that should frighten even the most ardent bulls and bears. If indeed we've reached the point of complete distrust of institutions, nothing good portends. All one could count on would be empirical evidence through our own ears and eyes, immediately verifiable, rather than massaged, adjusted points, figures, and headlines. The current hysteria over the "impending" invasion of Ukraine by the evil Russians is only the most obvious of government and media collusive derangement. Inflation is likely 15%, the unemployment rate 10 percent rather than four, the dollar index probably closer to 85 than 95. Things that are certain are beef prices out of this world, 4-pound roasts costing over $50, and gas prices at the pump are over $3.50 in most of the country. WTI crude oil topped out at $94.40 prior to closing out the week at $93.90, an 8-year high and going higher. According to gasbuddy.com, the national average for a gallon of unleaded regular is $3.49, nearly a dollar higher than a year ago. California tops the states by a wide margin, at $4.69. Oklahoma is the lowest, $3.09. The winner for the week turned out to be gold, which spiked Friday to $1859.00 an ounce, the highest price since mid-November of last year. Silver followed, as shown below, though the gain was not as pronounced as gold's.
Gold price 01/30: $1,791.60
Silver price 01/30: $22.46 Here are the latest prices for common one ounce gold and silver items sold on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping - often free - included):
The Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark (SOSMPB) fell slightly over the course of the week, to $37.89, a decline of $52 cents from the February 6 price of $38.41.
At the Close, Friday, February 11, 2022:
For the Week:
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