Screwball

I went through the digital transition from the beginning. At first, I thought, wow, this is pretty cool - tech guy an all. Then spent years in IT, or IT adjacent, and learned first hand how ugly it can get. I tried to be the most safe, protected, unknown person in the digital world. I have now thrown in the towel. They know more about us than we do. Spit! You can't beat it.

The tech in these cars is off the charts cool and amazing. I hope people realize this also helps us mortals. Like the things we learned from space travel but these machines don't get off the ground. 🙂

I worked in a bowling alley back when Earl was king of bowling. The guy was a fricken machine. He had 25 300 games and this was back when the lanes were not as easy as they are now. Incredible. But I was curious. From his Wiki page; Dude had game in multiple sports.

Something happened around 8:20 this morning. Both gold and silver took a ****. Silver went from $121.785 to $106.61. It has now recovered some and its back to 112 ish. That was a big move in about an hour and 10 minutes. In other news, MSFT is getting smoked to the tune of 12%. META is up around 7. Also of note, crude oil has been up the last three days and is now $65+ a barrel (WTI). It's been around 60 or lower for quite some time. Probably due to weakened dollar.

Weird, when we turn the scope into us little people - I'm old. I bought my first house in 83. My second in 2000. The first one I paid almost 8 percent interest and had to have like 20 percent down. In 2000 my rate was %6.875, and much less of a percentage down. Don't remember the exact details. Kinda weird too, even given those rates at the time, both were 30 year loans to keep the monthly payment as small as possible, so that mattered (they offered 15 year too). It was cheaper to buy than rent. If you could save up enough money for the down payment, you might as well give that X amount a month toward the property and eventually own it. Even at that time is was cheaper than the equivalent rent. I don't know about elsewhere, but I'm guessing almost everywhere, it's even worse now, and has been getting this way for a long time. I had a 350 dollar a month house payment in 2000 (small house, kids flew, didn't need much, frugal). This place could easily rent for more than a grand today. That's nuts.

Target isn't the same as what the numbers tell us, but I get your point. This is the deal with interest rates. What is the price of debt/credit? Some think interest rates should be punitive as a throttle of credit creation. Others think they should create all they want. Why not, the more money, the more there is to go around, right? What's not to like? Again, library's full of this debate.

What 1% rates would those be?

If they don't, they damn well should, or they shouldn't be in it to begin with. They are for day traders and stupid people. Maybe that's the same guy. 🙂 Daily Rebalancing & Compounding: Impact on Leveraged ETFs

On the Silver trade; Not shown in the image; To the bold; those playing this leveraged ETF are playing a very dangerous game and a good way to get their face ripped off. That ETF trades at twice the percentage of the underlying asset, in this case Silver Futures. That also means you can lose 2X faster. Beware...

What's wrong with the Dow today you ask? UNH - United Heath care is taking a ****, and apparently their guidance wasn't good either. Down %20 as we speak; Let's take a look at the yearly chart. This has been all over the place in the last year. There is a gap around August of 25 at the 273.85 level that needs to fill. This was $606.36 on April 11, 2025. Ouch!!!!

Fun stuff; Some think it's a blowoff top and others think it's going to keep going. Back up to $110.45 as I type this at 9:47pm. I'm not sure his math is right, but still wild.

Everything is funny money. That's why we are seeing what we are seeing. We live in a world of fiat currency where the value is diluted over the course of time. What is "real" money, currency, specie? Library's full of this topic. I'm guessing not too many bought on Friday. You never want to go into a weekend with a new trade not knowing what will happen over the next two days.

I wouldn't complain about a 10 foot 3 putt right now.

Great question, and my quick answer is I have no idea. Here's what it looked like today. Daily 1 minute chart. It took a **** at 12:04 just after hitting the daily high of $117.7. Went down to 101.7 and has recovered some since. Still trading as I type this. I don't follow the metal trading much, but it's different. Physical price vs. paper price and all that. Seems the gold people follow the Comex exchange. I will bet you one thing though, some make a **** load of money, and others got their ass handed to them. It moved 10-12 percent in about 3 1/2 hours - to the downside. That's a huge swing in a short period of time. Then again, as a trader you are looking at this hockey stick and know damn well it won't last forever - what is your plan to pull the rip-cord? That's on you. Some of the day/swing/metal traders today might have took a beating, especially with leverage/margin.

I saw that too. Still don't know how that idiot can still be in front of a TV camera. Well, yea, I do.

Recent bond and T-Bill auctions from Tresury Direct - T-bills first;

This is all true. Really ticks me off that yields are so low. I'm old, I don't want the risk of the market, especially as bloated as it is now, so bonds are the way to go. Short term bonds were a great play. Yields were good and you could get liquid in a short time and go into something else if you wanted. Has been getting less profitable for some time now. Spit! Here is Silver today once the market opened. A longer range chart to see the hockey stick. 10 year by month chart.

I go by charts. It's hard to explain in a short paragraph what they mean. Using charts, known as technical analysis, is a long time science that started over in Japan many years ago. Charts are a visual history of how "things" trade - price. One of the main things they do is give the people in the market entry/exit points to trades. They talk about this every day on the business channels. It helps both institutional and retail investors. The best computer geeks on the planet who work for the pigmen of Wall Street write their HAL 9000 trading algorithms on this stuff. My point, some charts look normal, and then there are some that don't. Gold and Silver look like hockey sticks right now - that isn't how it works. They are going up way to fast way too quick. It kind of reminds me of back in...2007 ish... crude oil did the same thing. Went from..don't remember, around a hundred maybe to $147. It looked like a hockey stick on the chart. It became exponential. Then it was 2008 and we know what happened. Some economists think the oil shock started the credit/housing mess. I think they are right. The gold/silver thing is different. American's sucks up 20% of the worlds crude, which is our lifeblood of growth. Gold and silver isn't near as important of commodity. But a message? The gold/silver (they usually trade about the same way even though silver has industrial value) thing is about our currency. The value of the dollar trades on the world markets each and every day. Like going to Canada and the exchange rate you get. So many dollars buys so many CAD. One might say (well, many) going long Gold is shorting the currency of the United States. This topic has been argued forever in the political realm between the Keynesian's and Von Mises wings of monetary policy. The "gold bugs." Some say this is all retail moving the price. I don't know. The old intrinsic value of an asset or "specie" as they said before that kind of thing. What I do know, this ain't normal.

As I type this at 9:03, Gold is $5072 and some change, and Silver is $107 and change. This is nuckingfuts.

Ha! That's a great story. Thanks for sharing. It's also a blast from the past. I guess we are dating ourselves, but "chains" and "Pinto's" are a blast from the past. I almost mentioned chains in my post above but I didn't think too many would know what they are. There were studs too. In 74 the car shop I worked at used to put studs in tires for the winter, and sold chains. The Pinto. I'm sorry, and this is coming from a guy who worked on them - were a piece of **** - not to mention the gas tank thing... Sorry. But I will make up for it. When I go to my little ****hole bar I pass a house that has a Pinto sitting in the driveway. It hasn't moved for years. Faded blue paint and the back end of the car facing the street. I laugh every time I see it and say "piece of ****." Next time I go by, and I'm itching to do so since stormageddon has set in and I've been stuck in the house - I will get a picture for you. It's butt ugly. 🙂

We had many people on snowmobiles, 4 wheel drive things, whatever could get through, get people to work and back so they could provide groceries and medial care for those who needed it. It was really scary.

As someone who is scared ****less of heights - this is nuts. If you have a Netflix account you can watch it.

Of note on this day in history. I dispute the date by a day, but doesn't matter. Anniversary of the Blizzard of 1978. The link is from 2022 but that's not important. Funny, we are getting our butts kicked right now if you live in Ohio or Michigan. I remember the one in 78. It was wild.

I understand. It all depends on the person. From the money/investment standpoint, is the coin worth more for the value of the coin vs. the amount by weight. For example, I have a penny worth 100 bucks. Not enough metal to get to that price, so it's the coin, or what someone will give you for it. On the other hand, I have a bunch of silver coins I inherited in the same collection that are only worth the silver value. Since the prices have went nuts on silver, I gave my collection to a couple of coin collectors to see what it might be worth. One guy doesn't want them, but he knows coins, and good with Canadian money, which I have quite a bit of. The other guy is young and has a bunch of money and wants to save them for his kids. He is really into this stuff. Both great guys who I trust. I'm about at the end of the line here, so one less thing for my kids to **** with if I belly up some day in the chair, so why not liquidate. Goes to them anyway. Depends on the person, nothing wrong with that. I was talking to both of them at the ****hole bar the day silver went over $100. They both use coin brokers, and the young guy talks to them frequently. That is what our old dear friend Rhino that posted here did I believe. Since silver has traded in a range for many years, that we are now way out of, how do these brokers price the metal. Do you want to pay spot at 100 bucks knowing it has traded between 10 and 50 bucks for the last 20 years? Other than between 2010 and 2013, it was under 30. He said they just lower the price to you under spot. Instead of 3 bucks below spot, they offer you 6. I wouldn't want to be holding the bag at these levels. But that's just me. Then again, between some things China did with silver, and the AI/data center thing (read electronic parts), who knows? Silver is an industrial metal, and unlike gold, some gets thrown away.

Chart porn of the day. Silver - one year chart by day. The $27 dollar low bubble was April 7, 2025. 103 - giddy up. Natty gas mentioned above, should have jumped on this - dumbass. This is a 3 month chart I narrowed down to the last month. The last week has been quite profitable if you got in on the action - which should have been obvious. Could have got in a bit over 3, and now it prints around 5 and a quarter, in 7 trading days. That's a quick...well you can math. Natty doesn't usually trade like this, so only those who trade the short term stuff got a piece of this, and no doubt the pigmen of Wall Street. This is one of the in your faces trades that is so obvious - and you missed it. $10k gets you $5k in a week - or more...