News

The analysis below covers the Employment picture released on the first Friday of every month. While most of the attention goes to the Headline Report, it can be helpful to look at the details, revisions, and other reports to get a better gauge of what is really going on. Current Trends The jobs report showed […]

Current Trends The US government has borrowed over $800B in the last three months. This is a gargantuan sum of money that annualizes to ~$3.2T. This is an astonishing amount of money given the economy is not technically in recession. If there is an even a minor bump in the economy, the government spending will […]

Wars are consistently sold to the public on false or misleading pretexts, and the true beneficiaries are rarely the citizens asked to fight and pay for them but the politicians, financiers, and military-industrial interests who profit regardless of outcome. Statist ideology and nationalism condition people to accept these sacrifices, obscuring the reality that the state’s […]

Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook delivered a familiar warning in a speech in Anchorage on August 5th: price pressures remain stubborn. Citing a 3.7 percent annual rise in the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index through June, Cook said flatly, “Inflation is too high.” Core PCE, which strips out food and energy, is running at […]

Socialists rarely abandon their ideology no matter how badly socialist economies perform, and that persistence makes sense once the goal is understood as the establishment of state control rather than genuine prosperity. Even the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ongoing crisis in Venezuela have failed to move true believers, who simply argue that […]

The latest Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) showed little movement across the major measures. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that job openings were “little changed” at 7.4 million in June 2026, a 4.4 percent openings rate that has barely budged for months. Hiring held at 5.3 million, while total separations stayed near […]

Life is infinitely divisible. It is impossible to break a situation down to its most fundamental level. The infinite complexity of the world means that we only run out of information when we stop asking questions. Physically, we proceed from molecules to atoms to quarks and particles, and finally to the intersection of energy and […]

Alexis de Tocqueville warned us of the dangers of paternalistic government in no uncertain terms. He visited America and was able to see the unique strengths and weaknesses of our Democratic system. He saw how much of our activity was controlled by the community, and the unique freedom that was possible in our country. While […]

A very strong start to the week for gold, as you might expect, following the US strike on Venezuela / capture of President Maduro on Sunday.  What’s perhaps a little more surprising is the blistering outperformance of copper, silver, platinum, palladium…but to be fair global stock and oil markets aren’t bothered at all, and so […]

A very poor rest of the day for gold.  It got whacked back below the October high by algos at the S&P cash open, couldn’t benefit at all from silver’s +4% rally from 10amET into the COMEX close, and overreacted to the downside with a modest US yield uptick following a mixed set of FOMC […]

More strength than I expected for the precious metals overnight; thanks to more demand at the China open, but perhaps more importantly due to the Chinese government announcing subsidies for electronic vehicles, phones, tablets, smartwatches and smart glasses…all of which consume silver.  Past rounds of similar subsidies have led to immediate sales surges, and so we’re […]

An unsurprisingly challenging rest of the day for the precious metals.  We saw modest bounces with the stock market since the COMEX closes, but neither metal came anywhere close to re-attacking its overnight range.  This hints that there’s a lot of trapped bulls out there who fell for this bogus “bank failure / forced silver […]

Some absolutely wild post-Christmas trading activity for the precious metals.  First, silver and platinum’s incredible +10% rallies on Friday, fueled by an odd rehashing of the China silver export restriction story from October and rumors that a bullion bank was blown out of its silver short position; and now scary -16% & -18% crashes off […]

Indeed an upside breakout attempt for gold above yesterday’s highs in early Asian trade last night, but this technical achievement was ruined by an obnoxious 4k contract, -1%, bashing off session highs in the final five minutes of the 9pmET hour.  There wasn’t a headline catalyst or abrupt negative shift in the broader risk mood.  […]

An impressive rebound for gold & silver to round out this Tuesday, thanks in large part to a calming down in bond markets / strong stock market rally following the much weaker-than-expected Present Situation reading in the December US Consumer Confidence report.  Silver and PGM markets naturally outperformed amid the risk-on environment, with platinum astonishingly […]

More strength for the precious metals as expected overnight, with Asian demand once again leading the way.  Europe was hesitant to chase gold higher though, despite a pronounced decline for US yields and the USD…and this turned out to be the correct move in retrospect because yields and dollar are now shooting higher following the […]