the round down

market vibes

February 20 …)

Philly Fed came in a bit hot, and initials a bit meh, LEI at 10:00.

Speaking in a Bloomberg interview this morning Scott Bessent said, “Revaluing gold reserves is not what I had in mind.” Whether it was or it wasn’t, the remark takes very little pressure off the question of whether or not the reserves exist intact. Shame on BBG for not pressing for an audit or even suggesting the market’s concerns.

Later in the interview Bessent said, “Zelensky made inappropriate remarks in Munch. If we need to, we will lift Russian sanctions (heads on oil). And…Musk is like a high-performance athelete.”

In other news this morning, Trump’s blunt ultimatum to Zelensky yesterday, posted on Truth, left little to the imagination. I will paraphrase: “Make a deal, my deal, or I’ll walk and leave you and Europe to sleep in the beds you have made for yourselves.” Trump’s message is, in my opinion, “this war is globalist military adventurism not a just cause, not defense of democracy, not the will of the American people. And, I want our money back.”

In the markets

Gold levitated to a new all time high by a hair’s breath and paused. Patience. Open interest is immobile indicating futures are trading flat at settlement. Volume remains typically low.

Silver is higher on very light voulume recovering from Fridays sector wide “round-down”. A round-down is the opposite of a round-up which is what the gold dealers used to do when people actually traded markets.

A round-down meant calling out to every counterparty at once, asking for a price on 10 or 20 bars for which they were obliged by custom to make … and selling it to them. The desired effect being the entire street would run to Comex and sell it to the pit. The locals would dump it and gold would go lower. It used to work great if done properly. My compliments to the entity that foisted it last Friday. A round-up is of course buying.

In time guys like Martin Stokes with a lot of money and balls would call everyone back and ask them for a price on 2 lacs and buy it from them if they dared to make it. Very effective! But that was before algos and their owners paid for laws to make trading illegal because real trading per se, makes algos unprofitable.

Copper, stox, oil with a view, the Yen!! and bonds plus some bucking up for tempations to vascillate in the vibe…