Screwball

I think our world lunatics are working on that.

Now that I've looked at this, it turns out to be a really neat setup. Depending on which way oil goes (and our derivative), and it goes up, there is a gap to fill. Over time "almost" all gaps will fill. See chart porn below; If this gap closes, which it will at some point IMO, the price will be $67.49. You could pull the ripcord right there and make about 450 bucks and be happy as a pig in the mud. Or, you get stopped out and take the 200 dollar beating.

Trade update. The trade is still in play, but I adjusted it a bit. I screwed up when I entered the sell order and it cancelled. Then, looking at the chart (another screw up because I missed this) I see an obvious support level just to the left so I entered another sell order at $63.15. This time "GTC" or "good till cancelled." But we now lose $201.21 if it trips. This is really a stupid trade, but fun to see what might happen. I can see a bunch of those Robinhood traders doing something like this, but they have been fleeced and many long gone. Along with a bunch more to come. This should be a short term trade to make money on potential disruption of energy logistics. Or maybe not... If the broader market is going the other direction, you are going against the trend. The "trend is your friend" as they say. I'm also watching (the price of crude obviously since this is a derivative of crude) RBOB gasoline and natty gas. They are trending with crude, as one would expect, but natty is up a couple percent tonight.

At 9:33 today I bought (not really - paper money account) 150 shares of USO at $64.49 for a total of $9673.50. Of course since then the market has turned over and this ETF is now trading at $64.15 and we are underwater. For a trade like this I'm only willing to lose a couple hundred bucks, or around 2 percent, so I set a sell stop at $63.20, which would lose us $193.47. The S&P peaked at 9:41 am at 3717, but has dropped to 3646 as of 12:10. A reversal of 71 points. We are liable to get stopped out of this trade.

There is an old saying in the market; don't try to catch a falling knife. That would be today for the oil trade. Everything down. No good entry. Down %2.5 as I type this. GBP/USD recovered about half of what it lost last night. World financial wizards are mostly silent.

To my point above about uncertainty. This guy is an old floor trader and has been in the business for a long time.

That isn't the only cause, and certainly not the entire cause. This is a boiling frog, and has been. CME Halts British Pound Futures After Flash Crash to New Record Low vs the Dollar **** The S&P futures are down about 22 as I type this. Crude is about $78 and has drifted down all night. I will wait and see where this goes as we get closer to the open, and probably wait and see what oil does (and USO) before pulling the trigger on the trade. IF the FOREX stuff rattles the markets it could drag crude along with it. I have to go so I will have to see what the action looks like when I get back home around 2. Since this is a "impulse" trade, I can't just set a buy order or limit order with a stop, you would need to watch what happens and pull the trigger when and if it presents itself.

Almost bedtime as I have a class tomorrow, so I'm looking at the futures before I go nappy. Crude is up slightly @ $78.90ish. S&P futures down 17. See what happens while we sleep, but there are some potential problems. From the FOREX world the GBP/USD had a flash crash. Twitter said the CME halted futures. The pair is down around 3% which is huge in the FOREX world. Read; the weather may not matter. We'll see what it looks like in the morning.

Let's have a little fun here. I admit up front I haven't done my homework on the potential disruption due to the hurricane - but is there a trade here (short term)? For reference, the latest crude print. Note the $78.04 low from Friday. Come Monday we are going to go long oil because we think it might jump given the hurricane. The easiest way for the retail trader to do so is using an ETF. In this case - USO. Closed Friday at $65.32 with a low of $64.65. So the plan in this paper trade is to buy some USO come Monday morning on open - depending on the current price of course. We're going to spend $10,000. The success of this trade will depend on the weather at the gulf coast. If it is bad, probably a good trade. If not, you can get smoked. The trend for crude is down (see chart). We are only looking for a few percent. Maybe 4-5 percent over a couple of weeks. I can see people making this trade so I'm curious how it might shake out.

Anyone who watches the hurricane season, please chime in here. Is there a threat to the gulf that could effect the oil/gas shipping in and out?

Sounds about right - the financilization of any and everything under the sun, and the more money you create, the better (for them). And when they blow the whole fucking world up we bail their criminal asses out. That's a feature, not a bug. Fuck banks.

I'm watching the 3636.87 level, which is the next support level. Might not see it today.

Nixon, Bretton Woods, and the gold standard changed all this. That was August 15, 1971. And before anyone jumps my shit - I'm not saying anything good or bad about this - just noting the date.

I used to build a bond ladders using 1 month T-Bills. They didn't pay much but over the course of a year I could get about 1.7 percent on a ladder by rotating 4 - $10,000 buys a week apart. So you had 4 bills, with one maturing each week (which I would re-purchase). This is slightly better than the return of .01 percent the bank was paying on money that just sat in the account. Yields went so low it wasn't worth doing it, and at one time I think they even stopped issuing them. You can do the same thing with a brokerage account. Both setup through Treasury Direct (comes straight out of my bank account). I checked today and they prices are back to where it is worth doing. You will make about 20 bucks a month on 10 grand. With 4 bills, that's 80 bucks a month, or 960 a year. Not much, but free money on cash sitting in a bank. You might not get quite that much as the rates fluctuate (bond auction), so the return might not be 2.4 as is the example I used. You can also find some decent paying corporate bonds that mature in short periods of time, that are not junk rated, if one's goal is less risky investments and the ability to become liquid in a short period of time in case a better return presents itself. Yes, the saver has been taken out to the yard, beaten, kicked, pissed on, and then ran over.

The date you seek is 1971.

Some banks announced a 75bps raises to their prime rate today. At least 3 of them but I can't remember which ones. JP Morgan was one I think. While checking our savings account rate, I see no change. Such a fucking deal.

Interesting question, in a couple of ways. Some are using the dot plot numbers to explain the sell off, which is viewed as a commitment from the FOMC to continue the hikes. That is only one narrative from the vineyard of choices and usual suspects. I think that makes sense if you believe in dot plot bullshit. We won't know the results of these moves for months. All we can do is watch the numbers going forward. Rising interest rates will create pain, we just don't know how much, or where - yet. As far as the market moves today, I might be crazy (I'm good with that), but I think it was Wall Street doing what Wall Street does. Separate people and their money. They are the smartest guys in the room. And they run the markets too. What a fuckin gig!!!

75 bps and the dot plot shows no let up. One minute chart of the S&P today. I'm guessing some people got their faces ripped off, especially the Robinhood tyro types. This is some pretty wild volatility given everyone was predicting 75.

I'm getting flashbacks from this corporate America stuff... I just have to say this. I've been retired for going on 4 years. I spent 25 years with 3 F500 companies. I only wanted to be a foot solder doing my job and going home and take care of my family. Unfortunately, my skill set pigeon holed me to the corporate clusterfuck known as the IT/CAD/Eng end of what William Edwards Deming would call the "state of chaos." If the day to day pressure of getting the trains to run on time (product design & manufacturing) wasn't enough, from the CAD world, you had a second job of rendering pie in the sky marketing wish lists of products that can never be built, or if they could, can't be profitable. Many times obvious. Doesn't matter. And I have so much time (salary FTR). But you had to come up with some dog and pony show presentation to sell all this bullshit to the big swinging dicks. Then you got to go mingle with them after the big gig. I would make buds with the bartenders and staff, while we laughed at these disgustingly phony china dolls get ate by the feeding frenzy of the next in line worthless corporate worms. I honestly don't know how the fuck they made anything.

More than a bit. Lot of history there, rather you liked it or not.

Understand. I did 25 years with 3 fortune 500 companies. We always wondered how they would game the system (numbers)to screw us out of bonus money, raises, etc. You are always being squeezed. Speaking of raises, I have to tell this one. We had a raise system where we could only get 4 percentages of a raise. 0, 1.7, 3.2, and 4. They told us nobody would get a 4, so it was going to be 0, 1.7, 3.2. You had to be a real slug to get a 0. My boss spent about 20 minutes telling me if my "people skills" were a little better I could have gotten the 3.2 instead of 1.7. He didn't come right out and say it, but that was his speech. It was a political hot house with backstabbing as the norm - anything to climb the ladder. I didn't play those games and didn't mince words with those who tried, so I had a bullseye on my back. After this little speech by my boss (a real dickwad), I said "so your telling me if I didn't piss off people I could have done better (or something like that), and he said "yes, you got it." I looked at him and said, "well, for a measly 1 1/2 percent I'll continue to be a prick." That was the end of my yearly review. I was getting 1.7 like everyone else as it was. Who do they think they were shitting. Fuck corporate America and all the corporate worms that inhabit their management.

There is another way to look at this, speaking of borrowing and paying interest on said debt. Company borrows a bunch of money. They buy back a bunch of shares (which happens often)which drives the price of their stock up, which makes the CEO, board, corporate executives, and stock holders wealthier. Then they write off as much of the interest as possible, so it doesn't contribute to the tax burden for the rest of us. So they get richer, and we suffer by paying more of the taxes. At the same time Wall Street gets more money from the interest paid, so they win too. The more debt created, the richer the rich get, while the rest of us get fucked. What's not to like? A feature, not a bug. So debt is good. It just depends on who you are.

Fuckin A! Right straight to Wall Street (the swine fucking bankers). In the phrase "Interest Expense" I always thought the word "expense" spoke for itself. But that's just me.

Good to hear. The market is a whore. Quote from an old documentary about the floor traders in Chicago. A must watch for anyone who likes the markets. This dude called the market a whore and nailed it. It was called "Floored."

I don't know what this is suppose to prove. I just linked to the exact same survey.