The BLS is up to their old job creation tricks again

• Metals end the week strong.
• The shorts are dwindling.

Good Day... And a Marvelous Monday to you! What a beautiful week that just ended yesterday, weather-wise down here... All seashells and balloons...Today, is my oldest son's Birthday... Happy Birthday, Andrew! My digestive system problems have abated, and if I felt any better, I would go out dancing! (not really, but you get the gist) The National Championship College Football Game is set... The current powerhouse Indiana team VS the former powerhouse team Miami... I don't believe I've ever seen a college team so dominant as Indiana... Just shows to go ya, that money buys good football players... I'm just saying... The Beatles greet me this morning with their song: Golden Slumbers...

Well, The Jobs Jamboree last Friday, was not a good reading, but the dollar bugs latched onto it and said, "with no labor disaster, the Fed Heads will pause rate cuts" and with that the dollar rallied going into the weekend the BBDXY stood at 1,209... That's a far cry from the dollar's year-end figure of 1,198... Here's the skinny on the Jobs Jamboree: 

The BLS reported that in December the US gained 50K jobs... And here's where the games are played with the numbers... The change in total non-farm payroll employment for October was revised down by 68,000, from -105,000 to -173,000, and the change for November was revised down by 8,000, from +64,000 to +56,000. With these revisions, employment in October and November combined is 76,000 lower than previously reported. So, their monthly prints of jobs created have now been revised lower in every single month of 2025.

So, back to their old Job Creation tricks for the BLS... Report a strong number one month and revise it downward the following months under the guise of "it's just a revision"... But, the markets don't care about revisions, their only focus is on what's going on now...  So, I'd bet a shiny quarter that this month's 50K total will be revised downward next month, if I were a betting man... 

Oh, and this last thing about employment in 2025... Last year was the worst year for job creation since 2009, excluding the 2020 pandemic year. Now, that's saying something, and once again I will point out that the Fed/Cabal/Cartel's rate cuts aren't going to help this scenario one iota!  But I'm just a lonely voice out in the wilderness trying to get my point across, but the markets don't listen.... I'm just saying... 

And the rate cuts debase the dollar, and... invite inflation into the country... But the Fed Heads don't care about inflation right now... Their absence of mind will come back to haunt them, but we'll have to wait for that... 

Gold & Silver didn't care about false numbers and recovered the selloff from Thursday for Silver... Gold had rallied $23 on Thursday, but many dollars from its intraday high, as the SPTs took aim at Gold's rally... To me, it was interesting that the SPTs laid into Gold, but allowed it to close above $4,500 on the day... The brunt of their selling was in Silver, and Silver lost $1.22 on the day... But as I just said, on Friday, Silver recovered its loss and gained $2.87 to end the week at $79.96, and Gold gained $31 to end the week at $4,510... 

My good friends, and former publishers, The Aden Sisters are true believers of the charts, and they told their readers last week that, "Gold, meanwhile, remains firmly near the highs.  The market will remain very strong by staying above $69 for silver, $4300 for gold, 690 for the HUI index, $1770 for platinum, and $1650 for palladium."

And this from Kitco.com: "The resilience of silver has been particularly impressive as short-term downside risks have started to pile up in the marketplace. The gray metal has bounced back from its sharp drop last week after the CME Group raised margin requirements to tamp down speculative momentum.

For many analysts the play book that they were using last year remains relevant, which means dips will be bought fairly quickly.

Specifically for silver, it is difficult to see any significant downside as industrial consumption and investor demand continue to compete for dwindling supplies. No silver mine can be built in the next couple of months to alleviate the ongoing supply crunch — no matter how much the market might wish otherwise. "

Chuck again... I know, a long-winded start to the letter today with the metals, but I needed to get all that in for you someplace, so why not at the beginning?

And my good friend, and former Big Boss, Frank Trotter, the lead man at Battle Bank, sent me this from Grant's letter: "Index-tracking commodity focused funds are unloading $5.6 billion in gold and $6.1 billion in silver holdings over the week through Jan. 15 as part of their annual rebalancing, analysts at JPMorgan calculate, after the major price run-ups pushed that cohort’s holdings above their target allocation"

Chuck again, that means... That there will be pressure on the metals this week, and will require tons of physical demand to offset it... So, don't panic if you see some drops this week, they won't last long, in my humble opinion.... 

The price of Oil bumped higher to end the week with a $59 handle... And the 10-year ended the week trading with a 4.17% yield.

The other item that I wanted to mention this morning regarding metals is that from the looks of the days to cover graph that Ed Steer provides every Saturday in his letter. The days of production in Silver have fallen from the 180's a few months ago, to a 128 as of last week... That means the short positions are either maturing or getting closed out... And the latter of the two is what I think is going on... I've talked about a "short squeeze" and this report really illustrates that... Silver is the item that gets sold short the most... It is reported that Bank of America has one heck of a short position, and then there's JP Morgan's short position that is monstrous... They reported that the closed out their shorts, but I don't believe them one iota... But the key here for Silver is that the shorts are dwindling... And that's a really good thing!

In the overnight markets last night... the dollar got sold and it appears that its brief return to the rally wagon is over... The BBDXY starts the day/ week at 1,208, and the currencies have been awakened. The metals are screaming higher to start the day/ week this morning... Gold is up $76, and Silver is up $4.19! Copper is roaring again, and so is Platinum and Palladium. 

There was more saber rattling from the U.S. over the weekend and those geopolitical problems are really fueling the run upward of the metals this morning. Tje folks in the Eurozone are not taking the POTUS's comments about Greenland as false bravado, and are really steamed about his comments... This is going to get very interesting, don't you think?

The price of Oil slipped back to start the day/ week with a $58 handle... And the 10-year Treasury's yield is on the rise again and starts the day/ week trading with a 4.17% yield... I have something for you later on Treasuries, so stay tuned, same Bat Time, same Bat Channel. 

I mentioned inflation above... and I came across this on Kitco.com: "Year-ahead inflation expectations in January held steady at 4.2%. “This is the lowest reading since January 2025 but remains well above that month’s 3.3%,” Hsu wrote. “Long-run inflation expectations ticked up slightly from 3.2% in December to 3.4% this month. In comparison, readings ranged between 2.8 and 3.2% in 2024, and were below 2.8% throughout 2019 and 2020.” -Kitco.com

Chuck again... That's quite a rise from 3.3% to 4.2% in inflation, don't you think? And the Fed Heads keep cutting interest rates... Go Figure... 

With the dollar back on the rally wagon, again... The currencies were all looking sickly again... For instance, for a couple of days last week the A$ rose above the .67-cent figure, but then retreated... The euro had been flexing its muscles above the 1.17 figure, but now the euro too has retreated... Remember, that a weak trend is NOT A ONE-WAY STREET! So, this was just another of those short-term rallies for the dollar, in my opinion...

The dollar has too many other problems to deal with... And one of them is...

The U.S. will have over $9 Trillion in maturities of bonds this year.... this from YouTube.com... "Nearly $9 trillion of the national debt must be refinanced or paid back, and almost no one is talking about what that actually means. That's about ¼ of the entire debt stock... 

This isn’t about politics. It’s about math. Decades of borrowing collided with higher rates, shrinking demand for U.S. debt, and a global financial system already stretched thin. As refinancing costs explode, the pressure shifts to taxpayers, consumers, markets, and the dollar itself. From bond auctions to inflation risks, from government spending cuts to emergency interventions—this is where theory meets reality."

Chuck again... This is serious stuff folks... When the plandemic hit, the issuing of debt changed, and we, as a country began to issue short-term Bills and notes and they took over the brunt of our financing in place of long bonds... The problem with that is that they come due long before long bonds do... And this year, nearly $9 Trillion of them come due and will have to be refinanced, at higher rates, and what that will do to our Debt is explode it higher... Like I said above the dollar has problems, far too many to list too! 

The U.S. Data Cupboard is empty today, but tomorrow's Cupboard has the Stupid CPI for Dec... So the markets will be rapt awaiting for that data... Me? I'll shrug it off because it's all made up of false numbers and useless as far as I'm concerned... 

To recap... Siver got sold on Thursday, but came back with vengeance on Friday, and closed the week so close to $80 that it could spit in the $80's backyard!  Gold rallied on both days, but also saw a ton of SPT's short trading thrown in, but closed the week above $4,500, so there's that... The dollar is on the rally tracks again, but Chuck thinks it will be short-lived... And our country will have to deal with nearly $9 Trillion in maturities this year... Good luck with that!

Here's your snippet: "Persistently thin silver inventories mean prices are likely to remain highly sensitive to flows, increasing both upside potential and downside risk for the gray metal, according to analysts at Goldman Sachs.

“Thinner inventories have created conditions for squeezes, where rallies accelerate as investor flows absorb remaining metal in the London vaults and reverse sharply when tightness eases,” Goldman analysts Lina Thomas and Daan Struyven wrote in a Wednesday note.

The analysts said that the price turbulence is not being driven by a global shortage of silver, but by localized supply bottlenecks that are keeping the market distorted.

Silver supplies in London, where the global benchmark price is set, are unusually low after much of the metal was moved into U.S. vaults last year amid concerns that the Trump administration could impose trade tariffs.

Silver's historic 2025 rally was driven by investor inflows tied to safe-haven buying, Fed rate cut expectations, and asset diversification, they said, but the London squeeze is amplifying the impact of these moves.

Thomas and Struyven said that under normal conditions, a weekly net demand of 1,000 metric tons would lift silver prices by around 2%, but in the current environment, Goldman estimates that sensitivity has surged to about 7%. The analysts warned that these extreme price moves will likely persist – in both directions.

And even at these all-time high prices, the analysts said investor's demand may not be overstretched. They point out that silver ETF holdings remain below their 2021 peak, and could rise higher on the back of rate cuts and investor diversification."

Chuck again... This was interesting, especially coming from Lola, aka, Goldman Sachs... I've chronicled the short squeeze previously here, so you shouldn't be surprised at the mention of that phenomenon.

Market Prices 1/12/2026: American Style: A$ .6707, kiwi .5759, C$ .7205, euro 1.1683, sterling 1.3467, Swiss $1.2540, European Style: rand 16.4195, krone 10.0680, SEK 9.1638, forint 331.12, zloty 3.6024, koruna 20.7913, RUB 78.74, yen 157.83, sing 1.2855, HKD 7.7968, INR 90.16, China 6.9731, peso 17.90, BRL 5.3599, BBDXY 1,208, Dollar Index 98.79, Oil $58.70, 10-year 4.17%, Silver $84.16, Platinum $2,359.00, Palladium $1.791.00, Copper $6.03, and Gold... $4,586.

That's it for today... Happy Birthday to Andrew again... It was a day of a heavy snowstorm the day he was born... I still remember the look of happiness and joy in his older sister's face when we went to the florist the next day to buy Kathy some flowers, She told everyone there, that she was now a big sister! She was only 2 ½ years older than her new baby brother.. Memories... I hope to God that I never lose those memories, they are a fabric of my life... I hope your Birthday is grand, Andrew! Our Billikens won on Saturday, but my beloved Mizzou Tigers lost on the road at Ole Miss... Poor foul shooting was their bane... I have a story about sitting next to the old St Louis U coach, Charlie Spoonhour that I'll share with you someday... Carlos Santana takes us to the finish line today with his song: Europa (Earth's Cry) it's an instrumental so no singing along for me this morning... I love Carlos Santana's guitar playing... I hope you have a Marvelous Monday today, and Please Be Good To Yourself!