Moth Into Flame

If you’ve been dropping by the lair for more than a few weeks then you probably know that I’ve been a huge Metallica fan since the mid 1980s when they released Master Of Puppets. So the other day I’m at the gym listening to some testosterone inducing station on Spotify. And out of the blue ‘Moth Into Flame’ pops up, which confused the heck out of me as I had been completely unaware that Metallica was releasing a new album. I thought to myself ‘wait a minute, this sounds like some of their old stuff but somehow I must have missed this one‘. You can imagine my joy when I later realized what was actually going on. 

Now look, I get it. Many of you guys aren’t metalheads and thus couldn’t care less. But the reason why I’m mentioning this here is because Metallica has a huge following across the entire planet, irrespective of culture or religion. James and his crew will most definitely be considered one of the most influential rock bands of both the 20th and 21st century. So here comes their first album since Death Magnetic in 2008 and along with Hardwired To Self-Destruct I’m sensing a certain theme here. Which on hand is is dark and bordering the apocalyptic. But at the same time the underlying energy that drives it is not only raw and surprisingly catching (many fans, me included, feel like Metallica decide to return to their roots with this one) but I would dare to say that it is actually positive and certainly in no way depressive at all. We’re not talking death metal here – this is good old bare metal 101 as we used to enjoy it back in the 1970s and 1980s. So what’s going on?

I have always considered popular music as well as movies a very accurate gauge as to public sentiment and I know that many much more renowned analysts agree with me on this. Clearly we’ve seen a lot more dark themes in the movie genres than on the music side where it often feels like we’re being inundated with plastic sounding boilerplate synth crap that doesn’t survive the public attention of a single season. But that seems to be slowly changing now and usually these things develop early in musical niche markets, of which metal and punk in particular have always been fertile grounds for experimentation. And although the year isn’t over yet it’s already becoming clear that 2016 may have been a very depressing year for traders but a stellar one for metal heads.

Maybe all the frustration, negativity, and increasing nihilism we are seeing in politics, economics, the markets, and popular media is slowly starting to produce a counter response. One that seeks a renewal of sorts, a reset that propels us out of this never ending cycle of crisis on all fronts, not only economically but also ecologically, socially, culturally, and of course politically. Whatever happens one hopes that the underlying anger coupled with the positive and productive energy that James, Lars, Kirk, and Robert somehow managed to unlock will spearhead a shift in popular sentiment as well. Because we desperately need it. Frankly – if you’re only halfway informed these days and you’re not pissed off on a regular basis then there’s probably something terribly wrong with you. So Metallica – lead the way!

Now, I had collected a bunch of E-Mini charts highlighting the sideways churn we’ve been enduring over the past six months or so but decided to keep them for another day as it doesn’t fit today’s theme. Instead here’s a quick pointer regarding the EUR/USD which seems to be descending what I consider bounce territory. Suffice to say that I’ll be stopping by the ATM on my way back from the gym today.

Setups – nothing today on my plate unfortunately. If you must participate play the swings on the E-Mini as outlined yesterday. I may try a long on the EUR/USD but will need to wait for a spike low on the hourly first.