Screwball

Short sellers used to be the gumshoes of the markets. They sniffed out the fraud, waste, and BS. I'm guessing most are out of business or broke by now thanks to all the money printing and this current bubble of all bubbles.

Jim Chanos Tweet; Stock is up almost 4% as I type this. For those who don't know who Jim Chanos is;

Nvidia plans to invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI as part of data center buildout - CNBC We will love our future electric rates.

I wish I could read this, but I can't get around the block. Depending on your plan, money market stuff hasn't been a bad play. I'm not going to look it up, but even Buffett was doing this more than usual from what I read. I can say, after playing this kind of stuff myself, short term too, has been pretty good. No risk. I'm old. No complaints. That said, like others mentioned, you could have made an absolute killing over the last... I don't know - since 2008/2009 the last time they blew up the financial system. March 6th, 2009 the S&P 500 hit an intra-day low of 666. Ain't that wild? If I remember right. This was 9 years after the dot-com bubble that blew up. And now, if you look at a chart, this puppy looks like Mt. Everest. The everything bubble. Over the last 14-15 years since the great financial crisis of 08/09 they have pumped and dumped "everything" with this AI stuff being the latest flavor. I remember the old guy Art Cashin of CNBC who spent 50 years on the floor of the NYSE say in an interview one time "we came in here every day thinking today is the day it's all going to pop. It took 3 years." Like the old saying; the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. So very very true. At the same time, we are flooded with money. And they keep making more. The market is no reflection of things on the ground in America, or the world. This is a debt fueled bubble of all bubbles. All it needs is a pin. For fun, I searched the 2009 low to see how close I was. I thought it was the 9th, but it was the 6th. I got a kick out of the google search result though (bold mine); Bear market my ass, it was a ****ing crash! While I'm on with searches and quotes, no matter what monetary theory you follow and believe in, I always thought the one below made sense. The Fed target is 2%. Doesn't sound like much. We've ran hotter than that for a long time because they do a piss poor job of measuring it. We continue to get less for the money we have. To fix problems they create more money via debt. Cheaper, easier money. It works till it don't. Then of course there is this little thing called interest. I've heard that will bite you in the ass. It's all about the math. Exponents are a bitch. This won't end well once again. And the banksters will get bailed out.

If I were Kimmel, I would tell them to stick it and go start a new show. Maybe women jumping on trampolines could be a part of it.

Suicide always an option.

That adds so much, congrats.

You asked, I told you. If you don't like it, FO.

No ****.

Hold hard assets like land. Start a garden. Reduce or eliminate debt. Limit your lifestyle. Learn to cook, fix things at home, your car if possible. Find a place in the county who sells food for when it becomes unavailable in the big stores, like farm markets. Get to know your neighbors. Install security cameras (have 4). Just a few things. If you have a job, STFU so they don't have an excuse to eliminate you. Robots and AI will take every job they think they can do - and you may be next - so don't piss them off. If you are just getting out of high school, you are ****ed. In 1984 (ironically, thinking of the book) you could feed a family of 6 for an annual salary of 14k. You didn't live like like kings, but you ate and had heat. A search will tell you today it's around 44k for a family of 6. Exponents are a bitch. It's already starting. I see it in Cornhole. We now have an official soup kitchen. In the last year I have noticed more homeless sitting along the streets asking for help. And entire family was sitting at Kroger begging for food. Don't see them know, probably got run off. Today is as good as it's going to get. Plan accordingly.

The financial guys have it figured out now, as they always have. Is anyone naive enough to think all these pukes give one good **** about us? The finance guys "are" the smartest guys in the room, and it ain't even close. But sure as hell not for us. Anyone remember Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I went to a a presentation from the Enron whistleblower lady at a local college. Amazing stuff. The banksters are the smartest guys in the room, and it ain't even close (go watch them vs. congress people). They are here to take our money. This is nothing new to anyone who's ever followed the markets and paid attention. What the Fed did today will only make the rich richer, and the poor more poor. It's what they do, and have been doing it for as long as I can remember. Like Carlin said; they don't give a **** about you. They also know, eventually this entire facade of an economy will all come tumbling down. They will run off with their riches to their gated communities, yachts, and private islands while millions more of Americans will end up in the streets. Many more will teeter on the edge while they fight for food where they live. The second great depression (my parents lived through the first one) will evolve. When **** gets real - you need a scapegoat - enter Donald Trump. He will take the blame, and he won't care. He might be too stupid to know he was the "mark" or if he does, he doesn't care. None of them do. They have no conscious, none of them. Like G. Gordon Liddy said in his book "tell me what corner to stand on." Total loyalty to the party. Right out of 1984. That's what they all do. They got a real winner with Trump. He's like the Rodney Dangerfield character in Caddy Shack. He keeps everyone distracted while the smartest guys in the room run off with all the money. What's not to like? And when they finally blow up the whole ****house, he gets blamed. It will be a spectacular blow up, one of the best ever! LOL! What a ****ing world we live in.

Well done FOMC

Adding a day later. Everyone expects a 25bp cut. They are going to cut with the bubbles of all bubbles, otherwise known as our stock market, within a couple percent of all time highs. As pointed out in the financial media, this has happened a couple of times before, and for the next year the market went up and you made money. Let's jump on board, right? I guess that depends on who "you" is. What happens next will be interesting. I'm pretty happy right now. My retirement accounts went to cash yesterday. We will see what to do next. As the old saying goes; they don't ring a bell at the top. I don't know how much more they can squeeze out of this. Ding, ding, ding.

This is the event. What happens after is what matters. The dual mandates of the Fed are at odds with each other. They have no escape, other than more BS Fedspeak. Jobs vs. inflation. Can't fix both at the same time. What helps one ****s the other. To combat the problem, they need to raise and lower rates at the same time. They can't.

I think the 25 is baked in too They all want cheap money.

Just a report from the ground in farm county not far from Michigan. We haven't had rain since Moby **** was a minnow, and I'm sure lots will get rotted on the vine and will vever find its way to Toledo and southern Michigan. On top of everything else.

I don't doubt that one bit. Funny story, ironic too... 2018 I went to Oregon and spent a week with my oldest boy who lived in a town called Scappoose, maybe a half hour or so North of Portland. We are originally from NW Ohio (no Buckeye fans) and never been to the Great Northwest. It was kind of a bucket list thing for me. 10 of us. We went all over the place. Great trip. We landed Sunday afternoon. Soon as we got settled in at my sons house he took me downtown. About 5 minutes away. I see a green cross. What is this? They were everywhere. Too funny. I have never seen anything like a real life pot store. They let me take pictures, it was so cool. So once the euphoria wore off (remember, I'm from Ohio and the black market is tough and expensive), the "budtender" gave me a menu, for lack of a better word. So....I like this one, how much? That would be 170. What? I'm used to paying 300 for an OZ here in Cornhole where it isn't legal. I'm thinking that's the deal of the century but I'm only here for a week. Luckily, my son figures out I am confused. Dad - that's for a pre-roll joint. REALLY? Yea. A buck 70 for a pre-roll!!! The next thing I said was "how many ya got?" It was great to see the that part of the country. Me and my girlfriend spent a couple of days in Portland. We bought a deal to ride the busses all over town. That was a ball. Sure wouldn't want to drive.

I agree. I think it would save them money. Like it said in the tweet, they spend a bunch of money for the quarterly report. It cost money on all sides. How many Wall Street analysis cover the stock (for big companies quite a few). The most important thing IMO, as far as investors go, was this part, which I believe to be true; The bedrock of how a market and investing should work.

Long thread discussing this. Pros vs. Cons.

Reminds me of a funny story. The dive bar I go to in has a bunch of dedicated music people, many are musicians and played in bands. They are primarily classic rock to some hair band stuff. Hardly any country. From time to time people drift in and play some country stuff (we are in the sticks) but they don't mind. But there is one guy...He is in love with one of the bartenders so he comes at least once a week. He's around 75ish, she's about 60. Never gonna happen. Giggle. He plays these awful sappy country songs - about 7 - over and over and over. We counted one day, 7 songs, 3 played two times, another 3. Their jukebox can be accessed via app on our phones. You can play a song from across town if you want. We decided that once we heard one song twice - it was game over. It cost extra, but you can fast pass it to the top. Between the two of us fast passing his stuff with our Santana, Molley Hatchet, Gun's & Roses to start (message sent - he's looking at the queue on is phone as are we) - and we follow with Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida long version and then Frampton Do you Feel Like We Do. That's over a half hour. Not a happy camper, left with songs in the queue. The next week as we understand it, he came early, punished those people and went out the door when me and the other guy came in. We think he's on to us. Giggle. I guess he's filthy rich, big time electrician and farmer. He can probably break us, but we won round one. The one bartender was pissed because he gives her 20 bucks. Speaking of coffee. I had a picture of both, but I lost one. This one is from a little grocery store in NW Ohio in a town of maybe 7k people. I'm about 20 minutes away in another little burg of 18k and you can buy the exact same thing for $15.99 or $12.99 with a Kroger card. Unreal. WTF?

The ORCL thing kinda reminds me of the Enron (ticker ENE) and Worldcom, mark-to-market accounting, circa 2000 thing. Part of the dot-com bubble even though ENE was an energy company for the most part (IIRR, they got into internet too). Part of the theme; what's not to like about printing future (years) unrealized profits to the current bottom line. ORCL just played those cards. The stock goes ape **** nuts (in this case ~35% in a day). WTF? If I held any of it, I would have pulled the rip cord that day. There is an old saying; they don't ring a bell at the top. This AI thing will prove to be a spectacular ****-up. While investors love the thought of all these new data centers and all the money to be made... Reality will take over. The insiders and the early will get rich, once it blows up, the losses will be passed down to our 401ks - as it always is. AI data centers need a bunch of energy, water too. It will take years to build what they need. It will never happen. The push is sold as a great thing for us as a people, making our lives better and easier, but behind the scenes it's all about replacing our jobs. NO! Tell me it ain't so. It is so. I just spent the last 40 years watching it develop and happen. Technology is a great and wonderful thing, it can also be a real bitch. Two screws are three jobs. Robots, machines, and AI don't take breaks, vacations, call in sick, get pregnant, lip off, smoke, or need an HR department. If you can be replaced, you will be. And to make it even better, as the company announces thousands got laid off because of this, the stock price rockets another 5 percent higher. They get the gold mine, we get the shaft. Hat tip Jerry Reed.

It doesn't matter. None of these worthless pukes (The Fed or .gov) have a clue what the **** they are doing anyway (to include both fiscal and monetary side). Or, they are just doing what their owners tell them to do. 37 trillion in debt, which costs around 800 billion annually (going up) in interest (wonder what that would pay for? more war, probably) gets us the largest stock market bubble in history and record breaking homeless and starvation. Only in America. Thanks you bunch of clueless assholes.

I honestly don't know what to think about all these employment revisions. I haven't believed the numbers for a long time (and not alone). But given what I do read, I don't think they are good, and the economy is in good shape. There is probably enough in these numbers for the Fed to justify a cut (how much????) since it's one of their mandates. On the other hand, there is the stable price part of the deal. What's that exactly? Cutting rates with the market at, or near, all time highs and under reported and poorly measured CPI numbers that contain no good news. Only to go up. But they have cut rates in environments like this before. I think they will next week. It will be fun to watch the tape that day to see if Blue Horseshoe knows anything early. 🙂 I also agree it will be like throwing gas on the fire. I've been playing the bond market for the last few years but what I see with the indexes is off the charts wild. Today - ORCL! WTF and that ain't a ticker symbol. I think Jeff Skilling would be proud. Wait till this Hindenburg pops.

Most of our major reports are piss poor ways to report the state of the economy. There are many faults with them all. CPI for example, and what they call "owners equivalent rent" and how it is weighted as far as the "headline" number. This holds true for all these reports - not counting the revisions. Giggle. This is what we, the people via the news, and retail investors get. The pigmen of Wall Street are not fooled. Remember, a mid level Wall Street bankster makes more money than the CEO of the company you work for, and by a lot. That's why he's there. He knows more about your company/industry/sector than the people running the company. The rest of it is theater. I'm not so sure Orange Hitler isn't getting setup to take the blame for the biggest economic meltdown since the Great depression of 1929. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it. He don't give a **** - he's a showman. They all are. We should have listened to George Carlin circa 1991. They don't give a **** about you.

Yea, I'm sure they do. That's some funny stuff right there. Inflation is created by printing money - and finding other ways to create more - aka credit (see M2). The bigger the pie, the bigger the piece. Since they are the swine banksters, they get it first. Cha-ching. They don't lose, they run the world. And when they **** it up they get bailed out. And will again.