Screwball

I could probably put this in the investing thread because it is about money, but it's only pennies... I'm sure the penny thing will become a hot topic in the coming days and it got me to thinking. As I understand it, the idea is to quit making pennies. What do we know about pennies? 1/100 of a dollar. Since I'm a retired engineer and have been brainwashed to think process/price/savings first or I get sent to corporate Siberia, my first thought was to look into the numbers. United States Mint does a nice job giving us just that. This link is really cool as it shows us how coins are blanked from sheets into pretty coins down the road. Links to specifications from weight, content, and size. A penny is suppose to be .750 diameter, which you can find a link to in the first link below. Coin Production - US Mint This is a link to how many pennies are produced by year. Circulating Coins Production In 2024 there were two different pennies minted from two different mints (Denver/Philly). Grand total of 3,338,000,000. As far as diameter;

The smart answer is to take the money, but to each his own. I would think about it a bit, then roll the dice. And no doubt lose. That's gambling. If not, what would you do with a billion? I'd make a few phone calls and set up a plan on how to spend a billion to help the most people possible in the shortest amount of time. The interesting part would be how to balance necessary costs to results. Once the money is gone, game over. In today's world a billion isn't a lot of money. Or, you could be the guy that said he spent half his money on booze, drugs, and fast women, and the other half he wasted. 🙂

I wonder how the crypto stuff is collaterialized (with leverage). Sure is a bunch of money. If **** happens, who gets blown up? That might be fun. According to the futures the S&P and NASDAQ will open gap down 2-3 percent tomorrow morning as it looks right now. They don't appear to be too spooked as they have stabilized since open. Unless you consider that spooked.

Interesting day, and Cramer is still in front of a TV camera. Wild how the Dow ends up almost 290 points while the S&P and the tech heavy NASDAQ got whacked. As stated above, AAPL held up, NVDA not so much. Dow 30 heatmap; Looking at chart of the same, what a huge move during the day. Gap down open, takes a huge **** to 44026, then decides to go up all day to close at 44713, hitting 44727 just a minute before. That's a 687 point swing. Cha-ching!!!! And the NVDA chart. This is a one year chart. I would we watching the 97.4 if it keeps going the wrong way.

Pretty good and free article from IBD on NVDA; DeepSeek-Driven Crash Makes Nvidia Investors Face 8 'Secrets' Of Selling. No. 2 Is Key.

Willie Mosconi the great player was the billiard/pool consultant, and also had a cameo roll. The boxer (middleweight champion) Jake LaMotta was the bartender. I have read Gleason did many of his own shots as he was a very accomplished player. You can tell he spent quite a bit of time on the table by the way he held the cue stick.

NVDA is down almost 17% as I type this and has went from $140+ last week to $118 right now. Ouch! There is a little resistance around 114, but if it goes through that looking around 101. The next hard resistance is around $97.4 where a gap filled back in August. Gap was from May.

What freaks me out is all this power in the hands of idiots, and we have no shortage of educated idiots.

I want to know who bought tech and MAGS puts last Friday. Someone always knows. Guessing the Deepseek guys were short.

The Color of Money is actually a sequel to the 1961 movie The Hustler with Newman and Jackie Gleason who played Minnasota Fats. Newman played "Fast" Eddie Felson in that movie too. It was a good flick too.

Tech is getting hammered. NVDA down over 12%, MAGS down 2.7%, and the NASDAQ almost 2.5. They are all working their way back up so this doesn't look too serious at this time. Bonds were bid but they are now coming back some as well. Good, I have some bills to buy tomorrow.

I suppose I watched that at some point. Was never a Arnold fan, but I get the point. 1984 fits too. Giggle... They have been working on robot people, dogs, whatever, for quite some time. They are a machine and they are trying to now teach them to think. Once they get good enough, the possibilities are endless. Then all you need is to fit'em up with killing devices. Probably great a crowd control device. Where does it all end. Not 1984 or the terminator, but another warning from a smart dude back in 2000. Bill Gay, founder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems wrote an article for Wired magazine called Why the Future Doesn't Need Us Very long and interesting read. I was in IT around then and used a Unix Sun station. Even talks about crazy Teddy K the Uni b o m b e r guy. <-- Waves to the spooks. 🙂

I'm old enough to remember the days before computers. I was in IT, engineering, CAD, etc. at a high level through the entire transformation. This AI stuff scares the **** out of me.

Entertainment is the proper word. Trump can jawbone at Powell all he wants and Powell and the FOMC will do whatever the **** they want, like they have done since forever. Including puking out a bunch of BS to keep the keyboard Paul Volcker's busy trying to sound smart, and politicians in general look stupid. Bankers are the smartest people in the room. Someone even wrote a book about it. 🙂 Powell is there until June of 2026 I think. There is no here, here.

**** the banks. **** On the inflation thing. The Fed can't control it, and the government doesn't measure it correctly. The rest is BS.

On the contrary. Dimon the pig (no argument there) worries big time about inflation. Why? Because his bank makes a killing on it. From a week ago from CNBC; He is probably the most powerful banker in the world, and has been for quite some time. He was buds with Barry O. Did Obama give Jamie Dimon presidential cufflinks? JPMorgan Chase boss shows off inscribed set at senate banking committee His bank and the other criminal banks that blew up the financial system in 2008 got bailed out to the tune of trillions (with a T (front door and back door)). Imagine that! These people (Wall Street banks) own DC, including Trump and every President before him, including St. Obama, the biggest bank whore in the history of bank whores.

I've been doing short term stuff with everything. Just did some things the other day. I found some really good corporate bonds, but their ratings were at the bottom end of the safe zone. I'm pretty chicken ****. ON EDIT: I bought the safe stuff.

There are tons of examples of going public with bad business plans. It's part of the game and makes Wall Street rich. The buybacks make the big wheels a bunch more money than the people holding the same stock. More money, and in options (leverage). A giant scam of trickle up. NFLX is a stock near and dear to my heart. True story. March 6th, 2009 (not looking it up but I'll bet I'm close) when the S&P hit 666, which turned out to be the bottom of the market after the bankers blew up the financial system. The next trading day I bought NFLX and BIDU. I rode them for some nice gains and pulled the rip cord. If I would have left the NFLX trade on the table it might be worth millions today. The market is a whore. ON EDIT: I checked this. Yep, millionaire. A two grand grand investment gets you 1.25 million, and that only the last 30 years. Spit

And a $15 billion stock buyback. Holy give the CEO a raise Batman.

NFLX reported earning after close today and killed it. Up over 10% AH. And of course shortly after:

I haven't been at a multi-national for over 7 years and I can only imagine how f'ed up it is now. It was an utter circus back then. Office Space (the movie) and Dilbert (the cartoon) didn't do it justice. We had a saying; the only way this place could get anymore ****ed up is if it got bigger.

How things have changed over the years is nothing less than amazing. When I grew up people made a living making things with their hands. The old world was much more labor intensive and more people needed. Things changed with technology. First the computers which could do math thousands of times faster than we could, which later brought on the internet and the ability to globalize that labor. It started with the blue collar jobs (I lived though NAFTA) and eventually got the white collar jobs too. You mention CAD. I remember the days things were made by paper drawings, drawn by talented engineers and draftsmen. They used a table, mechanical arm, and a calculator (or slide rule). We had cars, appliances, bridges, buildings back then - using paper. Then computers came along and many of those jobs were gone. CAD systems changed the game big time. Where will it go next? I don't know. Where does the human factor get replaced by technology? Maybe the same place the computer people had trouble, and still do - junk in, junk out. AI can (maybe) design a really cool part/assembly/machine - but can it be made - and at what cost? Then again, after 35 years in corporate America, I never understood how they made anything to begin with.

There is no good task for the AI guys to work on.

Yep, that's the place. Tony Stewart has made quite the name for himself.

Isn't the tariff thing about bringing jobs back here? Tariffs are are inflationary for the American people, bottom line. It's about the message. They use Tariffs as an issue to help sell bringing manufacturing back here. Easy sale. I watched (and helped) it go global since 1994 and it will take many years to bring it back, even if that is possible at all. Add robotics and AI to take more jobs and WTF are we going to do?