Yes.
The stock market “fell out of bed” Thursday, but trust me: it wasn’t all bad. The market was painfully bloated and over-priced. Use case for financial Ozempic.
The good news – and bad – is that the two after-closing reports weren’t bad. Although Apple beat in many accounting categories, there’s that little hole in net earnings from a $10-billion fine being paid to the (megalomaniacs) of the Ure-a-pee-in Union.
The Candidates (we’re not happy with either) are playing swing-state shuffle over the weekend and we have the Psychic’s Choir singing a soulful lament about November 3rd. So really now, what could go wrong?
Let’s do the List
First up is the overall condition of the market. Early today – in the pre-open – there was a 20 point rally in the S&P looming. Except, that when the day before that index fell 108 points, it doesn’t strike us as that big a bounce. Neither does the looming 140-point Dow rally when it lost 378 the day before. Our Aggregate Index, meanwhile, is going off with a stick-shaker and stall-warning that since we crashed through the bottom of significant trends, the way forward is….(seat backs and tray tables in the upright and locked position?)…not too encouraging.
If you really, really squint (and are really, really too cheap to subscribe to Peoplenomics) then it may be discomforting to know the tiny squiggly trend line we are halfway down to is the 85-day moving average in this view:
The use of trend lines is important stuff among the professional (Hamptons-class) money shills. There are some funds that must make certain investments at the 50, 100, or 200-day moving averages.
And then there’s the little matter of which Wall St, firms were participating in the Thursday beat down in order not to pay HUMONGOUS bonuses for the year. The actual “lock date” for a few was end of October, but there are others that will be end of November…so it just depends. (Feel any better about Thursday?)
Where we think it will be interesting – and refer to the table at the right – is when we go back in a couple of months and compare the outcome of financial markets – not only in the U.S. but as a global aggregate as well – and how everyone reacts to the American elections next week. I’ve made no secret of my belief that Big News generally plays out in financial markets as a “buy the rumor” (then sell the news) OR as a “sell the rumor” (then buy the news).
Just based on the (irrational levels of partisanship) craziness around the country, not to mention this is coming down to a seven-state election among the swing states (we may not even vote), we have to consider the world COULD be shocked next week.
We already can envision a scenario to where not only is the vote not known Tuesday night, but it may not be clear until and entire week (or longer) from now!
And if that comes about, then the real insanity (riotous partisans) might not come until the weekend of the 19th. That’s because “Veterans Day this year falls on November 11th; however, since November 11th lands on a Saturday, most federal government offices and services will observe the holiday on the previous day, Friday, November 10th. This means many non-essential government services will be closed, and some schools and businesses may also choose to close on Friday in observance of the holiday.”
So I asked my little A.I. pocket pal: IF the election is not clear by close of business next Thursday (I’m thinking counts won’t be done, and certainly not recounts…) would any Supreme Court decision be pushed out to Monday the 11th of November???
Yes, the U.S. Supreme Court will be closed on November 10 because it is closed on federal holidays. The Supreme Court is typically in recess from late June or early July until the first Monday in October, when the new term begins.
And if the Just-Us’s take a couple of days to go through paperwork, procedurals (and maybe a hearing on some critical point?) Well, yes that could push the actual naming out to what? Not sure, but the Psychic Choir has November 19th as a “hot date.”
Our point in here is this is (while highly unlikely) the kind of worst-case nightmare which them, in turn, could be “a little tough on markets…”
Now, we don’t mean to go “all trippy on you” but we know from polls it could be close and both sides are getting pretty good at this law-faring business. And the arbiter of that is the Supreme’s (nods to Barry Gordy on the way by) and so, yeah, could be a piece of work.
The totally useless ponder for the weekend is therefore: “Does the Surpreme Court Work holiday weekends?”
(sheesh…duchy please?)
Jobs Report
Well, that’s close, I guess:
“Total non farm payroll employment was essentially unchanged in October (+12,000), and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment continued to trend up in health care and government. Temporary help services lost jobs. Employment declined in manufacturing due to strike activity.”
As always, we will now give you the unvarnished – what’s in the federal database – about the actual total body-count of working peeps in ‘Merica:
Making our Fib du jour that jobs held steady: Any damn fool (or you and I) can see there were 368,000 fewer people working – right there in the BLS database.
ISM Manufacturing and Construction Spending will be along shortly, but seriously? You think anyone is paying attention to any of this with the partisans all planning ahead?
Election Silliness
After the “disappearing laptop” and the “Russia hoax” in 2020, we are really not too surprised to see Slow caught lying: Transcript of Biden’s ‘garbage’ remarks altered by White House: AP. Such actions are deplorable fo sho, but put it on the list and leave it for Santa.
And for the betting pool: Who do Europeans want to win the 2024 US presidential election? (The correct answers are a) someone and b) Harris because Europe’s demographics went tango-uniform with the Diaspora…
And can you trust the (left-swayed) media to be honest in anything going on? Um… Trump sues CBS over Kamala Harris 60 Minutes interview. If America had a Federal Trade Commission and would go after politicians for campaign claims (*lies) and “bait and switching positions once in office” we wouldn’t have these kinds of stories. Leave that one on the wish-list for Santa, too, then…
War Distractions
(sick of there, let’s hold this for the weekend)
Actual, for-real, News Items
So, how’s all that climate engineering working out for the climate change crowd which is linked to weather manipulation efforts? Spanish residents appeal for help after historic floods left at least 158 dead.
More and more we’re thinking the price of gold could go north of $100K per ounce. (OK, we won’t be poor if that happens…). But we are asking “What does it mean when US Bitcoin ETFs Amass Over Half of Gold’s Holdings in First Year?”
Smoke this in the “Well, duh!” pipe this weekend: “Shakespeare: Why monkeys will never be able to type complete works of playwright, according to new study” Come on (you dog-faced pony soldiers) are we the the only ones who understand how statistics work???
Need more for the Duh pile? Sleep Apnea May Raise Risk for Dementia.
And if you “need to sleep on that” might we suggest a (high sensitivity) troponin stick? Heart attack triggers sleep increase to aid recovery. [If you flunked out of med shool, Higher than normal levels of troponin can indicate heart damage, such as from a heart attack, unstable angina, heart failure, or other conditions and the “stick” is how medical staff determines if you lived through Halloween last night…]
ATR: “Dishonest America” Weekend
(ATR= At the Ranch)
The sun was just trying to come up as I was writing this and it occurred to me that one reason America hasn’t been the same since 1918 is that’s when the Fraud of Daylight Savings Time was adopted. So, in addition to the usurpation of Constitutionally honest money by the Bankster Coup (Federal Reserve, 1913) we started lying about what time is was just 5-years later.
In fairness to the Fed, their theft of underlying value (convertibility to gold wasn’t ended completely until the Nixon era) so that was at least gradual. Not so with Daylight Time.
Despite their problems (lately with open borders and politics for AZ) I’d held that Arizona and Hawaii were the only two states where utterly honest people could live.
See, there’s this thing in live called congruence. If you believe in something, then failure to act (at all times) in concert with your beliefs, leads to a kind of deadening of the soul; sets up a predisposition to a kind of cognitive dissonance you can’t put your finger on.
The old Ure family story here goes back to the early Depression years, when Pappy Ure was riding his Indian from Seattle to Spokane with his brother for pancakes.
Out in the middle of nowhere (hinterlands outside Ephrata, WA) there was a stop sign. You could see the light of a car’s headlights for 20-miles it was so clear and dark.
At the stop sign, Pappy came to a complete stop, put his foot down and proceeded on. His brother blew through the stop sign like it wasn’t even there.
Over pancakes at the famous truck stop in Spokane, the brother brought it up.
“What the hell, Georgie? You could see for miles and you still came to a full stop…are you that crazy???”
“No. A person is either honest ALL the time, or they are not.”
And the deal point in my upbringing is that Honesty isn’t “just when someone’s watching.”
Daylight Time is a lie we tell ourselves because we don’t want to set our own alarm clocks. Piss-poor excuse and laziness.
But it explains why people run stop signs and lie about what time it it.
Write when you get rich,
Read the full article here
