Renaissance Boy Plunger Par Excellence

François-Marie Arouet, otherwise known by his nom de plume Voltaire, was a most interesting man and is counted as one of the most salient French philosophers of the late Renaissance. He was an outspoken advocate of civil liberties, despite the rather unforgiving censorship laws prevalent all across Europe at the time. Instead of being ‘doxed’ on the Internet you most likely wound up being strung to a wheel and then starved to death, or let to slowly rot away in some dungeon without air conditioning or even high speed Wifi.

Which why I was rather surprised to learn that Voltaire found himself thrown into prison not once but twice whilst avoiding imprisonment on several other occasions throughout his life. He earned the  first eleven months in prison after suggesting that Philippe II, Duke of Orléans was maintaining an incestious relationship with his own daughter. Which was followed by shorter second stint in government sponsored accommodations for dueling an aristocrat who had insulted and beaten him. So the guy most definitely had brass balls and a disposition toward speaking truth or at least cynicism to power.

The Renaissance Boy Plunger

What most people however do not know about Voltaire is that he teamed up with mathematician Charles Marie de La Condamine and a few others to exploit a loophole in the French national lottery. Apparently the government was shelling out massive prices for each month’s contest whilst being unaware of an error in the calculation which meant that payouts were larger than the value of all the tickets in circulation. So Voltaire and his motley crew of Renaissance quants repeatedly cornered the market and in the process raked in massive winnings. Which in the end left him extremely wealthy and and able to devote himself solely to his literary career. And of course pissing off fat-ass wig wearing aristocrats and wealthy regents. My kind of guy.

I think a quick glance at precious metals would be very befitting of the today’s historical theme. Gold for one has been losing quite a bit of its luster of the past few weeks but now appears to be heading straight into daily, weekly, as well as monthly support. So let’s back up the truck, right? Well, not so fast – I think we need a bit more context here as most of that context hasn’t been tested much over the past year.

Similar situation over in silver which has been leading gold toward the downside. It’s been one nasty sell off and true to character as of late – daily volatility has been on the increase and silver has always been rather volatile to begin with. Here we want to see a drop all the way into the lower 100-day Bollinger and perhaps even the lower 25-week BB. So quite a bit of time to go here and if you’re short I would continue holding after taking some partial profits now.

I’m posting copper once more as a tape reading exercise. If you ignore yesterday’s tape then you see how that long spike low looked like a pretty juicy long entry opportunity. But lacking any meaningful technical context on the hourly panel all we had to rely on was the lower 100-day BB. Not enough to justify a long campaign and obviously our patience got rewarded now. So look at this as a textbook example of not BTFD too early unless perhaps after a very massive wipe out that (roughly) exceeds three standard deviations on the weekly panel.

Campaign Updates

EUR/USD is still in the running (much to my chagrin) and I’m now moving my stop to break/even as we’re at 1R in MFE. I fear this one is just going to keep pushing higher as the 2nd round of the French elections draws nearer. I can only guess what Voltaire would think about the events that are unfolding in his home nation. Let me suggest a few applicable quotes right from the source.

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.

It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.

So long as the people do not care to exercise their freedom, those who wish to tyrannize will do so; for tyrants are active and ardent, and will devote themselves in the name of any number of gods, religious and otherwise, to put shackles upon sleeping men.

Many are destined to reason wrongly; others, not to reason at all; and others, to persecute those who do reason.

No opinion is worth burning your neighbor for.

I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it.

I think I’ll leave it at that. Enjoy your weekend.