Investing

[Screwball]

1 hour ago, gehringer_2 said:

going to be interesting to see if the S&P closes below ~6800 tomorrow. Trend says yes, but that's been a support point for all of the dips in '26 so far.

The S&P is holding up pretty well considering what's going on. More concerned with the 6762 level that, if breeched, would take us back into the channel from the huge sell-off in October, which puts 6550 in play as the next stop.

Incoming chart porn warning.

Reminder, the yellow arrows were Fed rate cuts.

On to the story of the day - energy, and the price of crude. It was fun to watch today. Got as high as $82.16. Little under $80 as I type this. For perspective, a 6 month chart of crude and what it looks like in the last week.

This isn't new, when you look back in history - given the price of crude right now. There are some parallels. Look around Jan 15, and later what they call the 12 day war. Blowing **** up is directly proportional to the price of crude it appears. 

 

There is an old saying. This time is different. Seems like some **** is getting blown up. Next stop according to the charts is around 92. 

[gehringer_2]

13 hours ago, Screwball said:

More concerned with the 6762 level

Pre-open futures just fell through that.

[Screwball]

How about some mid-day chart porn. First today's action in WTI crude oil. Above I said the charts show the next stop in the 92ish range. Not there yet, but what a ride today. Up over 12%. Looking back it's around 93.5. 1 day by minute chart.

We have to go back to the first part of 2022 to find the next support/resistance level. Wonder what was going on then? Hint; blowing **** up. 3 year by week chart for clarity. the 93.46 is from Jan/Feb 22.

The S&P is just banging around the 6762 level after a big gap down at open, and can't seem to figure out which direction it wants to go. Given the price of oil and the February employment report, it's holding up quite well. 1 day 1 minute chart.

Today's employment report from the BLS; Employment Situation Summary - embargoed until  8:30 a.m. (ET) Friday, March 6, 2026

 

 

[Deleterious]

 

[Screwball]

Why do they always say "unexpected?"

We live in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever funded.

[gehringer_2]

51 minutes ago, Screwball said:

Why do they always say "unexpected?"

We live in the biggest Ponzi scheme ever funded.

I was half expecting to see a rush for the door at about 3:45 today but nothing really materialized - a little attempt at a rally actually but it fizzled. I guess it's good news if people aren't panicking.....so far.

[Screwball]

5 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

I was half expecting to see a rush for the door at about 3:45 today but nothing really materialized - a little attempt at a rally actually but it fizzled. I guess it's good news if people aren't panicking.....so far.

Crude is really overbought as they say in the market. Been a rocket. Crude was $55 bucks middle December 2025, but has went exponential lately. I expected a sell off late as well, due to some not wanting to be long over the weekend. It didn't sell off, but stayed in the low 90 range for the last few hours. That might tell us something.

As the charts show, crude has been this high before. Usually when we, or somebody, is blowing **** up. Some not all that long ago. The difference this time, is they are blowing up a bunch more important ****, and more of it, best I can tell. That kinda matters. 

Crude oil - energy - Texas Tea as Jed used to say. Bad things happen when the price of energy goes goofy.

[Deleterious]

1)  Not sure tax dollars should be spent this way.

2) It probably doesn't matter much though.  A tanker isn't something you can replace in the next week no matter how much money you receive for it going boom.  

It would be funny if they started running 40-year-old tankers through the straight while broadcasting GPS coordinates to the Iranians.  

 

[Deleterious]

Will BYD ever be allowed to sell their EVs in the states? I just read an article talking about their new battery that has a 600 mile range on a 5 minute charge time. That is basically on par with an ICE engine.

[gehringer_2]

33 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Will BYD ever be allowed to sell their EVs in the states? I just read an article talking about their new battery that has a 600 mile range on a 5 minute charge time. That is basically on par with an ICE engine.

when you start getting to very short charge times heat management becomes a constraint. It looks like they have made a very system with a very high surface/volume ratio so it can dump heat very fast. That also a minimum of ~1000 amps going through the charging cable!

Edited 18 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Deleterious]

Long construction equipment.  I can't imagine we have the unused capacity to even come close to meeting that number.

 

[gehringer_2]

27 minutes ago, Deleterious said:

Long construction equipment.  I can't imagine we have the unused capacity to even come close to meeting that number.

 

50% in 15 yrs is only 3%/yr, so it's not that big a lift - I'd guess the regulatory hurdles are worse than the construction constraints - especially on the transmission line end.  EVs are going to be a big draw on the up side. On the down side, the number of data centers that get built is likely to be less than forecast and the evolution of electronics tech in place by the time they are built will mean they consume less power than currently forecast.

[Screwball]

You can't have growth without energy. How you do that depends on EROEI. Energy returned on energy invested.

Out here in Cornhole years ago there were bunches of small oil derricks sprinkled in the countryside pumping away all day and night. Filled up a tank with some flavor of oil. Truck comes by every once in a while and empty's the tank. Then they didn't. Cost more money to drive the truck around that what they got from the oil.

No different now. Gotta pump oil (or gas). Just a bunch more expensive. Energy resources (and critical minerals) are what wars are fought over.

 

Edited 4 hours ago by Screwball

[gehringer_2]

35 minutes ago, Screwball said:

You can't have growth without energy

yup, standards of living correlate pretty closely  to how much energy an individual can afford to command.

But efficiency also play a role. We can get more output with a lot less input in a lot of what we do. Look at what is happening with cars. IC engines have a peak thermodynamic efficiency somewhere maybe in the 30% range, and the way we use them they are operating at maybe 15% of that most of the time, so as an energy consumer, you are only getting a few percent of the energy you put in as gasoline in useful transportation distance out. Compare that to the 'new thing', the EV, where you are running an electric motor at 80-90% efficiency, charging it at probably 90% efficiency. The overall yield to you getting moved around is much better than 50%, something like an order of magnitude better than a gasoline engine car in terms of motion out vs total energy in. And even after you add in the losses to make the electricity you are still way ahead. 

So even as economies apply more net energy as living standards go up, their rate of gross energy input can/should go up more slowly than GDP as tech improves.

Edited 4 hours ago by gehringer_2

[Deleterious]

That video is pretty crazy

 

[Screwball]

We are not going to engineer or bull**** our way out of energy deficiencies. When it becomes too expensive we have demand destruction. 

Which is related to efficiency, waste, and how they relate to each other.

[Screwball]

1 minute ago, Deleterious said:

That video is pretty crazy

 

And the oil markets aren't open. 

[gehringer_2]

5 minutes ago, Screwball said:

We are not going to engineer or bull**** our way out of energy deficiencies. 

 

nobody is saying that (well maybe Jimmy Carter did once - Drive 55!).

Stupid thing about destroying Iran's infrastructure is that when the shooting is all over, the loss of that production capacity from the world market just makes it easier for the other producers to get a higher price....