Dull day?

US Cattle 30 September 2100

Today there is not much happening. I have to pinch myself as I write those words. At one point the FTSE was down 122 points and it ended almost 70 points down. And the Dow Jones has been 158 points down. In the days when the stock market made sense, movements like these would be rare and would have signalled something amiss. In the past few months they have become everyday events. I think that is a massive signal that something very bad is happening and we need to worry. In the mean time I can report that the markets continue to dither inside their trading range. But let's not forget that that range is almost 7% from top to bottom. It's almost 9% if you include the two intra day downward spikes to 10600, as a friend has reminded me. I speak of the DJI. The rather more untidy FTSE has a range of about 10.5%.

As gold and silver fall and I lick my wounds I think to myself this is what I am doing to assuage my growing fear about a calamity to come. Much is written about the dangers of buying exchange traded funds because they are poorly regulated and they rely on paper trades. Paper trades, by definition, have counter parties who may go bust and fail to divi up when the shit hits the fan. I agree it is a worry and I would not rely entirely on ETFs that are structured in that way. For my gold and silver the bulk of my holdings are in PHAU and PHAG. The producers of these ETFs swear that they hold actual gold and silver bars and a list of those bars is available on the internet. They are kept in vaults that belong to reputable banks. At times when I was feeling particularly paranoid I bought a version of their ETFs which held its gold in Swiss banks. The argument goes that there is a risk that when the S really hits the F solid western Governments will start to confiscate gold. I am not immune to paranoia but I don't I have the lightness of foot that I would need to cope if life became that bad. So it's best not to think about it.

To lighten the gloom of that last paragraph I can report that my friend the spider has had a good day. Two flies and a fair bit of exercise hauling them in and repairing her web. Also COW is starting to do its stuff and I have made 3.6% in about 10 trading days. Now that is a normal world. The fundamentals look good and the price is chasing after them. First area of resistance has been broken. We must now watch the second. That's my chart for the day.

Have a good weekend. Here in the West Country the weather has been beautiful. Lets hope it lasts a bit longer. I've always liked September.