Screwball

I don't remember the year, sometime in the late 70s. I bowled in a pro-am at Imperial Lanes in Toledo, Ohio. You bowled 3 games and a different pro would bowl against you each game. Earl was there, and probably **** too. The big tournament started like on Thursday and would be televised on Saturday. Big stuff. We were before that started. I was lucky, one guy I didn't know, and the other two were **** Ritger and Dave Davis. Davis was a tall lefty. He shot about 190 on the lane I was on. The next game he moved one pair to the right, made an adjustment, and tossed a 279. Dude had a big ball, and natural like most lefties did. Earl was a machine. So smooth. Made it look easy. It's not. Those guys bowled hundreds of game a week. Saturday afternoon was about watching the tournament that week. Great stuff. Now a dying and soon to be dead sport.

Silver is butt ugly. It has recovered a bit this afternoon, but what a sell-off (3 month chart by day); Today by minute;

The selling started last night. Today the entire market is down. I read a bunch of different takes on why, but they are all over the place. Option expiration might be as good of a reason as any, but these are the metals so there is the paper vs. physical thing, and the different exchanges they trade on. Also, the dollar index is up which trades inverse to gold & silver.

Warsh has been on the FOMC so an expected pick in a way. I would have bet on the other guy who's more of a dove and voted to lower rates. So this is kind of a surprise, but a pick just about any President could have made. Gold and Silver slammed today. Not sure why.

Disclosure; That article is behind a paywall for me. This is a "market" thing. When the value of the dollar (against another currency) goes down, the "purchasing power" of our money is less. Market 101. The dollar index they are talking about is the value of the US dollar against a basket of other currencies so it is going down against many. Depending on what flavor of economic/fiscal theory you buy into, this comes into play. In this case, a cheaper dollar is good for US exports. On the other hand, it is bad for "our" consumer because our money doesn't go as far. When TPTB decided globalization was a good thing and took advantage of environmental and wage arbitrage through slave labor and 3rd world countries to exploit and dump waste, our goose was cooked. We went though the industrialization era of mass produced automobiles and other products - the hey day of American workers - to shipping our jobs and production all over the world. The giant sucking sound as Ross Perot said. I lived it, I watched it. I even helped it happen, and I hate that. But I had to eat. It's too late. All the jobs we lost are not coming back, and on top of that, any that can be replaced by a robot, will be. Even if they tried, it would take years. That's assuming the ****wads running this place actually give one good ****. But they don't. I don't know if they are all actually this economically illiterate, or just play the role on TV.

Yes, there has been some updates that were not good. I redid a laptop to new drives and more memory recently and went to Win 11 at that time. Some of the updates killed settings I spent hours getting the way I wanted. Spit again!

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.