 | MONEY DAILY | Commentary on Stocks - Bonds - Gold - Silver - Crypto - Oil/Gas and more |
| HOME | PRICE GUIDE | STORE | BLOGS | SPORTS | BUSINESS | WILD SIDE | CONTACT | ARCHIVES |
Weekly Survey of Gold and Silver Prices
Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark
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:
|
Ho-Hum, Another Record High for the Dow; Fed's BFF, Core PCE Meets Wall Street Expectations Friday, August 30, 2024, 9:24 am ET Another week, another month concludes. The last trading session for August is today, Friday, the 30th. The month has been kind to equity investors, with the Dow up roughly 1.5%, the NASDAQ about two percent and the S&P close to three percent higher. Here's all one needs to know heading into the final session of the week and month: The Fed's preferred inflation gauge showed prices increased at a pace in line with Wall Street's expectations in July. Core Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) index, which strips out the cost of food and energy, rose 0.2% from the prior month, in line with Wall Street's expectations for 0.2% and the 0.2% reading from June. On a year-over-year basis, prices rose 2.6% in July, equalling June's increase and below analyst expectations for a 2.7% increase. For the week, the Dow, which set another record closing price on Thursday, the third this week (Monday, Tuesday), is up 160 points though Thursday's close. The NASDAQ is lower by 361 points (-2.02%), and the S&P 500 is showing a loss of 42 points. Stock futures are soaring after the PCE announcement this morning. Dow futures are up 38 points, NASDAQ futures are plus 131, and S&P futures are up 17 just minutes prior to the opening bell. With a holiday weekend ahead, there's a good probability of stocks closing out the month with a bang higher. Happy Labor Day, serfs.
At the Close, Thursday, August 29, 2024:
Thursday, August 29, 2024, 9:18 am ET With the financial and political communities compacting the future into little more than the next few months, present value has become paramount in terms of investment horizons. Heightened awareness of current earnings and year-end forecasts, the Fed's imminent rate cuts, U.S. elections, inflation gauges, and ongoing military conflicts has squeezed the future right into the lap of the present, creating chaotic conditions in markets. Anybody looking past November or even into 2025 is considered either wildly optimistic, insanely pessimistic, or an oracle possessed with imaginative powers rivaling Nostradamus. There are simply too many moving parts upon which to base any rationale for buying, selling, or standing pat. Thus, the concern is only about the here and now, and when the now is revealed, reactions are swift and decisive. Earnings reports and forecasts, and of particular note, Nvidia's (NVDA) second quarter report released after the bell on Wednesday, are amplified, reflecting the high tension awareness surrounding anything that happens on a day-in, day-out basis. Emergence of 0DTE options have exacerbated the current condition into one in which markets can be whipsawed in either direction multiple times within a given session. This kind of investing environment is more akin to that of a casino than to any long-term savings strategy, producing a schizophrenic response unprecedented in financial markets. Two prime examples, just from overnight Wednesday into Thursday, are earnings from Nvidia and Dollar General (DG). After the close Wednesday, Nvidia released what some termed "the most important earnings report ever," underlining the immediacy for markets to react, adjust, and move forward (or backwards). By all accounts, Nvidia blew away the numbers, but, either because of valuation concerns or other external factors, selling shares of the second-largest company in the world quickly became the preferred path, with shares losing six to seven percent in the after-hours and proceeding to trim that back to losses of three to four percent upon the dawn of pre-market dithering. By contrast, Dollar General's earnings were a clear disaster, a swing and a miss for strike three with the bases loaded and the score tied with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. Bam! The stock is down 26% in pre-market trading. Nobody is joking around when it comes to money. This is hard and fast gambling and speculating on a world-wide basis. Holders of Dollar General, a company which is putting up new stores at a pace rivaling that of CVS, Walgreens, and Rite-Aid over the past decade, are simply gobsmacked this morning. Not to rub it in, but this kind of devaluation of one's investment doesn't happen with hard goods like cars, real estate, machinery, or precious metals. Those take a more level-headed, measured approach either up or down. Otherwise, nobody has any patience any more for the supposed miracle working of AI. That's a dead end, for now. Earnings from the last two quarters have been looking more like lead balloons than arrows toward fresh heights. Everything from here to the end of the year is going to be all about today, maybe tomorrow, but, for the most part, the market has become hyperactive, similar, for those who recall those days, to the skittish behaviors evident immediately following the 9/11 disaster. Predict what you like. You're likely to be right and wrong multiple times during any given day.
At the Close, Wednesday, August 28, 2024:
Wednesday, August 28, 2024, 9:05 am ET In Friday's Jackson Hole speech, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell virtually guaranteed an interest rate cut at the September 17-18 FOMC meeting. Though there was widespread jubilation on the floors of the various exchanges, stocks wobbled through most of the session but finally ended sharply higher as Friday's results pushed the major indices into the black for the week. The subsequent sessions have not seen the kind of buying enthusiasm that may have been expected. On Monday, the NASDAQ and S&P actually lost ground while the Dow Jones Industrial Average finished at a record high. Tuesday was somewhat better, with the majors posting small gains, the Dow marking another all-time closing high by a mere 10 points. However, the Dow spent much of the session in the red, the intra-day high only 30 points above the prior close, with the S&P and NASDAQ up just 0.16%, leaving them both down for the week. Entering Wednesday's cash session, stock futures are all down slightly, even though tech darling Nvidia (NVDA) will report second quarter results after the bell. It appears that the long-awaited rate cuts that Wall Street has been harping upon for the better part of the last 18 months may not be quite the tonic the market needs to inflate the stock bubble to even greater dimensions. After all, the majors are all at or near all-time highs, so now that the promised rate cut is just two weeks away there seems to be some hesitation, as in, "buy the rumor, sell the news" paradigm might suggest. An aged adage on Wall Street says "nobody rings a bell at the top," meaning there's seldom, if ever, any clear-cut evidence that stocks have topped out, but the proverbial bell may have been rung by Chairman Powell on Friday, or it could come Wednesday after the market closes, when Nvidia releases its earnings report. It had better reflect a blowout second quarter because investors need to see confidence that the AI narrative remains alive and well. They may be facing another disappointment, because everybody who hasn't been dumbed down by the fist-pounding expectations that AI is a revolutionary game-changer (like HIMARS or F-16s in Ukraine) that will alter the way humans interact with computers. As is usually the case with Wall Street hucksterism, the hyperbole is far afield from reality. So far, AI has produced exactly zero earth-shattering advancements. Nvidia, which makes the ultra-fast and power-hungry chips that power AI, has been the main beneficiary of the AI-related rhetoric. They make fast chips. Big tech companies buy them. End of story, it appears. Beyond Nvidia, another glance at the purposefulness of AI will be provided after the bell by Salesforce Inc. (CRM), which also reports earnings after the bell Wednesday. First quarter reporting by Salesforce left so much to be desired that the stock plunged 20% on the May 30th announcement. The stock has since rebounded from the low of 218 to a close at 264 on Tuesday, but analysts are kind of holding their breath on this one and various price targets are somewhat laughable, ranging between 300 and 315. CRM hit a record high at 316.88 on March 1 of this year. Getting the share price anywhere near that level would likely induce another round of selling as investors seek to cut losses or cap gains. Year-to-date, CRM is up just three percent, lagging the general market when it's supposed to be leading it because of the AI miracle. Another salient point heading into the fall is that September and October have traditionally been rough months for stocks, with some of the biggest crashes and corrections occurring within them, so investors are expectedly cautious, especially this year, with an unsure election coming in November and the BRICS Summit October 22-24. Speaking of which, here's a video explaining the implications of South American nations Venezuela and Bolivia receiving formal invitations to attend the BRICS Summit:
Further clouding the picture is the close of the U.S. federal government's fiscal year on September 30, with expectations for a deficit approaching $2 trillion. Also, bitcoin, which was supposed to be fetching $100,000 by now, continues to languish, overnight dropping from $63,000 to below $59,000. If everything the Fed has promised is supposed to come to fruition, bitcoin should be rising instead of falling. There's plenty for investors to think about beyond AI and rate cuts, and maybe that mythical bell has already been rung.
At the Close, Tuesday August 27, 2024:
Tuesday, August 27, 2024, 9:50 am ET It's common knowledge that central banks have been buying gold and adding it to their treasuries at a record pace the past three years. What's uncommon is understanding why they are doing so. Gradually, the truth is being revealed by the BRICS, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS, the banker of central banks) and various analysts such as Andy Schectman, seen in the video below. While most countries have repatriated their gold and purchased more gold, the two countries from which the gold is being retrieved, the United States and England, have not been actively buying gold. There's ample evidence that these two hegemonic nations not only are not buying gold to beef up their treasuries, but have been suppressing the price of gold (and silver) for decades via mechanisms such as England's LBMA, COMEX, the U.S. Exchange Stabilization Fund and their respective central banks. In the Greek myth of Pandora's Box, chaos is released along with hope. The Pandora myth is analogous to today's events, referencing the freezing of Russia's overseas reserves at the onset of the Ukraine conflict, in February, 2022. Furthermore, the U.S. and its NATO allies continue along with plans to zeize those frozen assets (some $300 billion) and use them to finance Ukraine's war. The current proposal is to take the interest being earned on the Russian assets - many of which are euro bonds of U.S. treasuries - and apply it as a loan to Ukraine to purchase more arms and supplies. With the freezing of Russia's reserves, the U.S., Britain, and the EU, set the wheels of de-dollarization - already in motion - spinning at a more torrid pace. The mBridge Ledger built to support real-time, peer-to-peer, cross-border payments and foreign exchange transactions and supported by the BIS, was accelerated, successfully tested in 2022, the project moved forward. According to the BIS:
Project mBridge is the result of extensive collaboration starting in 2021 between the BIS Innovation Hub, the Bank of Thailand, the Central Bank of the United Arab Emirates, the Digital Currency Institute of the People's Bank of China and the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. The Saudi Central Bank is joining mBridge as a full participant. There are also now more than 31 observing members. The basic structure of the mBridge solution involves a blockchain, decentralized ledger consisting of the currency, the "Unit", which purportedly will be backed 40% by gold and 60% by a basket of BRICS currencies, allowing for multiple options for trading participants. In the video below, Andy Schectman describes the events leading up to nearly universal adoption of the new mBridge standard, the "Unit" and predicts what's ahead:
What's perhaps even more shocking and concerning than the imminent release of the "Unit" as an international settlement currency replacing the dollar is how few people outside the participating countries and other interested parties (Donald Trump, Kamala, helloooo!) are even aware of these developments. The video above, even though it was released less than a day ago, has been viewed by fewer than 10,000 people, not even a rounding error in terms of the totality of English-speaking adults in the world. For now, while the U.S. financial media is focused on September rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, November's election, and Nvidia (NVDA) earnings and inflation metrics later this week, the BRICS, in concert with the BIS, are plowing ahead with Project mBridge. Is there any wonder why the U.S. is involved in multiple military conflicts, gold's price continues to rise as the dollar stumbles, and Russia is currently stepping up its assaults in Ukraine? The topic of de-dollarization and the establishment of an alternative international cross-border payment structure is a topic that cannot be satisfactorily covered in one or even a few blog posts. Money Daily will explore the rapidly changing structure of international finance on an regular basis through the BRICS summit and launch of the "Unit", purportedly to be on October 22, an event that looks to be evolving as an election year "October Surprise". With chaos, comes hope. More tomorrow.
At the Close, Monday, August 26, 2024:
Sunday, August 25, 2024, 12:40 pm ET Two disparate yet equally monumental events occurred on Friday that will have profound effects on the economy, politics and society for years to come. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell's nearly implicit announcement that the Fed was on track to cut interest rates in September was followed by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s declaration that he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Donald Trump for president. While Powell's statements at Jackson Hole set off a fire sale on Wall Street, sending stocks back near all-time highs, RFK Jr.'s speech all but sealed the deal for Trump on November 5. Unless the Democrats can find the ways and means to steal another election, Trump will be president, inflation will roar back to life and the man who has vowed to Make America Great Again (MAGA) will have his work cut out for him. The next few months figure to be chaotic, but are likely only a warm-up for what's to follow. No matter who wins the White House, the United States stands at the crossroads between civility and civil war. The dollar's death knell has been sounded. All hell is about to break loose. The other notable event from th week just past was the bungled revision by the completely dysfunctional Bureau of Labor Statistics, which revised job numbers for the past year through March down 818,000. Not only is the federal government totally irresponsible, inept and incompetent, they can't even count correctly. The BLS is the agency responsible for tracking jobs (NFP), CPI, and PPI. All of those numbers should be regarded as politically-motivated purposeful mistakes. As currently constructed, the U.S. government is quite possibly the worst regime in world history, though European nations, especially France, Germany, and England are vying for the title, to say nothing of the mess that is Canada.
While Wall Street was mildly positive leading up to Friday's Jackson Hole extravaganza, the close-out session for the week accounted for most, if not all, as was the case with the NASDAQ, of the weekly gains on the major indices. With earnings season in the rear-view mirror, Powell single-handedly gave over the market reins to the titanic traders of stocks and bonds, their acquiescence to his bubble-blowing prompting as disgusting a display of rigged markets as there has ever been. Like it or not, Wall Street is on a path to higher, longer, hopefully forever. What's stunning about the year-to-date gains in the stock market are that they are chasing those of bitcoin, silver, and gold. Check out these year-to-date returns as of Friday, August 23:
Dow: +9.17% Stocks should make record highs in the coming weeks, but, when the Fed actually does cut rates on Wednesday, September 18, will it be a "buy the rumor, sell the news" event, triggering a short term correction in stocks or worse, or will it be more of the same, with higher prices for everything from ice cream to Walmart stock? Chances are that it will be the latter, but gold and silver are almost certain to trade higher as well. When everything eventually collapses, as it must, what will retain value? Scrips of paper promises or those things that have constituted money for centuries? For now, buying stocks has been a winning strategy, but so has stacking precious metals. Seems a bit odd, doesn't it?
Reacting in a powerful manner to Fed Chairman Jerome Powell's nearly implicit guarantee of the first cut to the federal funds rate in more than four years (April, 2000), yields on Friday fell across the entire yield curve, though the declins were more prominent in longer maturities, with the two-year taking the prize with a drop of 16 basis points over the course of the week. Not only did the two-year yield fall below four percent for the second time this month, it's likely to continue falling as investors pour into treasuries while rates are still relatively high. Should the Fed follow through on their plan to lower interest rates in a series of cuts - as many as four in the proceeding six months - the deluge of buying long-dated notes and bonds should push yields back below levels from two years ago. Of course, the Fed knows that cutting rates at this juncture - with stocks near all-time highs and inflation stilling running above their laughable target rate of two percent - the result will be fabulous for Wall Street slicksters and disastrous for the middle class. Sure, 30-year mortgage rates may fall to five percent and perhaps even lower, but the price of buying a home is almost certain to remain at nose-bleed levels because supply remains constrained and home ownership is historically the least affordable ever. The Robb Report, citing analysis by Redfin, notes that the average salary needed to afford a home has increased 50% since 2020, and 15% in 2023. The numbers for 2024 and beyond are likely to be even more startling. By his own words spoken at Jackson Hole on Friday, Chairman Powell has knowingly positioned the Federal Reserve for what could possibly be the worst policy mistake in the Fed's 111-year history. Make no mistake, the Fed has erred grievously many times in the past. Since its inception, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has fallen by 98%. Powell has guaranteed to eviscerate the remaining two percent in lick-spittle fashion.
"The time has come for policy to adjust. The direction of travel is clear, and the timing and pace of rate cuts will depend on incoming data, the evolving outlook, and the balance of risks." Making currency cheaper implicitly promotes inflation. The U.S. and the world is at the peak of the most mammoth credit bubble ever, but it seems to be not inflated enough for the genius central bankers at the Fed. Nothing stands in the way of total annihilation of the fiat currency regime, which is now on schedule for its long-overdue extinction. Spreads moved in opposite directions, with 2s-10s gaining to -09, and full spectrum remaining near its most inverted, at -141, implying that an "adjustment" of 1.40%, either by lowering the overnight federal funds target rate or raising the 30-year yield or a combination of both is needed to flatten the yield curve and eventually normalize it. It will likely never happen under Powell's leadership. As soon as the rate cuts occur, prices will re-ignite and the Fed will be forced to reverse course or lose the currency completely. Since the Fed is not well-known for changing horses once on a given path, the rate cut announcement at the September 17-18 FOMC meeting marks the beginning of the end. Spreads:
2s-10s
Full Spectrum (30-days - 30-years)
WTI crude oil was lower again this week, closing Friday in New York at $74.96, down from $75.49, the prior Friday closing price. However, crude hit an eight-month low o Wednesday, dipping to $71.54. Prices soon began galloping higher, the biggest gains coming on Friday, thanks largely to Chairman Powell, who has effectively repriced everything higher. Gasbuddy.com reports the national average for a gallon of unleaded regular gas at the pump at $3.33 a gallon, down another seven cents from last week and the lowest in six months. In three of the past four years, gas prices have been lower in November than in August and that should be the case this year, with the election on the horizon, but, with the Fed dead set on lowering interest rates, don't expect gas prices to stay down for long after the election. Stock up now! California remains the highest in the U.S. at $4.56 a gallon, the lowest Golden State price in more than six months. Pennsylvania prices were down slightly, to $3.52, with the Keystone State remaining the price leader in the Northeast. New York is next, at $3.48. Other Northeast states saw more significant declines over the course of the past week, with Connecticut down six cents ($3.40), Massachusetts ($3.35) off four cents, and Maryland prices felling nine more cents to $3.28 per gallon. Prices in the Midwest continue to fall. Illinois, down another 11 cents this week, has dropped from just above $4.00 three weeks ago to $3.66 on Sunday. Mississippi continued with the lowest prices in the country, at a welcome $2.85 per gallon, joined under $3.00 by Oklahoma ($2.80), Texas ($2.88), Tennessee ($2.90), Louisiana ($2.91), South Carolina ($2.92), and Alabama ($2.95). Arkansas is an even $3.00. Georgia ($3.12) and Florida ($3.27) both were lower on the week. The Midwest ranges between lows in Kansas and Missouri ($3.08), to highs of $3.39 in Michigan and $3.37 in Indiana, almost all others in a range between $3.20 and $3.40. Arizona, at $3.44, remained below $4.00 for a 16th straight week, leaving only California and Washington ($4.15) above the $4.00 level. Oregon is at $3.78 and Nevada at $3.90, each down marginally. Utah ($3.49) and Idaho ($3.55) continue stabilizing at elevated levels but ae well off summer highs.
This week: $64,121.60 As noted in the section on stocks, bitcoin is up 45% year-to-date. It stands to reason that in the midst of the most mind-boggling bubble in economic history (rivaling Dutch tulip bulbs, John Law's Mississippi disaster in France, and the South Sea bubble in England), the asset with the least credibility would rise the most. Good luck with that.
Gold:Silver Ratio: 84.14; last week: 86.31 Per COMEX continuous contracts:
Gold price 7/26: $2,432.80
Silver price 7/26: $28.07 Gold and silver both experienced strong gains for the second week in a row. Gold set a new record, with the price on the COMEX as high as $2,568 on Tuesday, while silver hit $30.40 the same day. Both precious metals have out-performed stocks so far in 2024, and, with Jerome Powell's promise to cut rates in September, they should continue to rise. The gold:silver ratio dropped again this week, signaling to silver stackers that price is about to take off again and lead gold into autumn. Silver remains well below its all-time high and an explosive move higher could happen at any time. Here are the most recent prices for common one ounce gold and silver items sold on eBay (numismatics excluded, free shipping):
The Single Ounce Silver Market Price Benchmark (SOSMPB) was higher again for the week, rising to $38.65, a gain of 68 cents from the August 18 price of $37.97 per troy ounce. Sunday's survey of gold and silver prices on ebay discovered more non-numismatic one ounce gold coins offered for sale than in recent weeks. Perhaps the price topping $2,500.00 may have been a psychological sell price for some, though everything in that category carried a hefty premium, pushing the price well beyond, $2,600. Many more fractional gold pieces were for sale, ranging from one gram to 1/4 ounce, with quite a few offerings being listed in grams as the price of gold continues to spiral higher. Goldbacks are also becoming more prominent items for sale.
What happened on Friday should raise the eyebrows of skeptics and morons alike. What happens over the next two to three months may result serious jaw dropping. Hang on to your hats. This ride is not just going to be bumpy, it is going off the tracks and into uncharted territory.
At the Close, Friday, August 23, 2024:
For the Week:
All information relating to the content of magazines presented in the Collectible Magazine Back Issue Price Guide has been independently sourced from published works and is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. All pages on this web site, including descriptions and details are copyright 1999-2024 Downtown Magazine Inc., Collectible Magazine Back Issue Price Guide. All rights reserved.
|
