Feb

11

Game theory

February 11, 2024 | Leave a Comment

the memory of old men staring disapprovingly out the winder at the University Club at the women on fifth avenue wearing miniskirts must be how the governors at the fed feel about the unprecedented decline in their boy's chances today [9 Feb].

what must they do to make sure they can remedy the situation. 30-year bonds now at a 60-day low at 119.75. the Governors must arrest the decline vigorously and soon.

i listen to Sherlock Holmes every nite and was surprised to come across this reference to Von Neumann and Morgenstern:

Sherlock Holmes and Game Theory

This essay reanalyzes the game theory interpretation by John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern of Arthur Conan Doyle’s “The Final Problem.”

Feb

2

The most bull thing of the month is that a certain chair would not be reappointed if there were a change in admins. Thus, the certain chair like anybody else will be extra vigilant to save his job by creating an ebullient picture in next 10 months.

How Price Control Leads to…Socialism, by Ludwig von Mises:

The government believes that the price of a definite commodity, e.g., milk, is too high. It wants to make it possible for the poor to give their children more milk. Thus it resorts to a price ceiling and fixes the price of milk at a lower rate than that prevailing on the free market. The result is that the marginal producers of milk, those producing at the high­est cost, now incur losses. As no individual farmer or businessman can go on producing at a loss, these marginal producers stop pro­ducing and selling milk on the market. They will use their cows and their skill for other more profitable purposes. They will, for example, produce butter, cheese, or meat. There will be less milk available for the consumers, not more.

Full treatise: The Middle of the Road Leads to Socialism

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

31

in book 1 of Les Miserables there is a resonant section as to how Jean Valjean, now Mssr. Madeleine, has invented a new way of making "English jet and the black glass trinkets", and his factories have uplifted all in the Town. it is the story I have seen with hundreds of small companies that have invented a new product or manufacturing technique and have created jobs and prosperity for their workers and town. It is strangely omitted from all the summaries of the book and could have been applied to Musk, Bezos and the Fad 5 in our current generation. every kid should read the chapter and reflect on what good business does.

I take my hat off to Norman Tyler of Tyco, and Harvey Sellers of Hi-Flier Kites, and Arthur Bernard of Bernard Welding, and Baron Coleman or Hospital Affiliates - the first 3 companies (out of eventually 100's) that I sold in my merger bus and I shall revere their memory.

"Unlike this judge, Elon Musk has actually contributed to the American People in the form of thousands of good paying jobs, innovative products and less expensive access to space." out of Les Miserables. Including significant ROI for those that supported Tesla.

Toward the close of 1815, a man, a stranger, had settled in the town, and had the idea of substituting in this trade gum lac for rosin, and in bracelets particularly, scraps of bent plate for welded plate. This slight change was a revolution: it prodigiously reduced the cost of the material, which, in the first place, allowed the wages to be raised, a benefit for the town; secondly, improved the manufacture, an advantage for the consumer; and, thirdly, allowed the goods to be sold cheap, while tripling them the profit, an advantage for the manufacturer.

- from book 5 chapter 1 of Les Miserables (a la Musk).

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

27

An inspiring passage from In the Kingdom of Ice: The Grand and Terrible Polar Voyage of the USS Jeannette: "The polar regions were far safer than the Dark Continent. For decades our explorers, one after the other, have let themselves be slaughtered in the interiors of the most dangerous continents, especially Africa, perhaps by fanatical inhabitants, perhaps by the deadly climate, while such dangers and sacrifice occur with Arctic expeditions, at the most, only as rare exceptions.

The Hampton Sides story of De Long and Bennett inspires one to reach for the 5000 level in the S&P and further.

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

26

two excellent books with direct applications to markets:

Regression: Linear Models in Statistics, by Bingham and Fry.

Event History Analysis: Statistical theory and Application in the Social Sciences, by Blossfeld, Hamerle, and Mayer.

both highlly recommended

Zubin Al Genubi adds:

Previously recommended by Vic:

Event History and Survival Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal Event Data

I've used survival statistics for studying survival time between crashes, x-day highs/lows, ATH, bear markets. Poisson distributions are the distribution for time occurrences as well.

Big Al offers:

Free online book using R language:

Statistical Modeling: Regression, Survival Analysis, and Time Series Analysis, by Lawrence Leemis, William & Mary.

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

21

great book: Wall Street And The Wilds (Internet Archive version), by Anthony Weston Dimock. 1915. invented a very good gold system. competed with the Commodore in steam ship lines and railroads. touched every area of gilded age business. was great naturalist and photographer.

Also: Dick In the Everglades

Other books by A. W. Dimock

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

20

Useful bears

January 20, 2024 | Leave a Comment

El-Erian Says Markets Have Overpriced Speed, Depth of Fed Cuts

• I wouldn’t be surprised if cuts only start in summer: El-Erian
• Markets are underestimating stubborn service-sector inflation

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

17

The sin-eater

January 17, 2024 | Leave a Comment

the joy of set pieces in O'Brian and Conan Doyle. the Hoodoo.

 'I have a curious case in the sick-bay,' he said to James, as they sat digesting figgy-dowdy with the help of a glass of port. 'He is dying of inanition; or will, unless I can stir his torpor.'
 'What is his name?'
 'Cheslin: he has a hare lip.'
 'I know him. A waister—starboard watch—no good to man or beast.'
 'Ah? Yet he has been of singular service to men and women, in his time.'
 'In what way?'
 'He was a sin-eater.'
 'Christ.'
 'You have spilt your port.'
 'Will you tell me about him?' asked James, mopping at the stream of wine.
 'Why, it was much the same as with us. When a man died Cheslin would be sent for; there would be a piece of bread on the dead man's breast; he would eat it, taking the sins upon himself. Then they would push a silver piece into his hand and thrust him out of the house, spitting on him and throwing stones as he ran away.'
 'I thought it was only a tale, nowadays,' said James.

[More on sin-eaters.]

Vic's twitter feed

Jan

9

Art for sale

January 9, 2024 | Leave a Comment

art for sale I own. any ideas as to best way to sell it?

Niederhoffer art 12.2023

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

29

looks good for last two market days of the year and first 10 days of jan. then it's very iffy until feb. friday should be very good for the S&P.

the sign of the four. all 4 observations from 1996 to present with S&P way up in the previous 30 days - 1998, 2017, 2019, 2020 - were extraordinarily bullish. average up 2% by 3 weeks forward.

nature as guideline for building. the r and k factors in buildings. the importance of novelty. all sorts of guidelines for building. many market analogies:

Construction Ecology: Nature as a Basis for Green Buildings

Industrial ecology provides a sound means of systematising the various ideas which come under the banner of sustainable construction and provides a model for the design, operation and ultimate disposal of buildings.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

28

Context

December 28, 2023 | Leave a Comment

back to the old days. a certain university indicated pleasure with their 2.2% return in yr ending june 23 in the Context of the S&P and Nasdaq returning 20%+ each during the period. they praised the fund managers.

too terrible to be true. were mainly invested in venture capital and private equity. apparently they never heard of the Context of ever changing cycles. Dare I suggest Bacon professional turf handicapping or edspec to them.

a loss of 20%+ on 50 billion endowment versus their bogey could pay for much DEI research. The arrogance of their slapping themselves on the back for the Context of this performance is too horrible to believe.

A reader writes:

Imagine the fees they are paying for that pittance of a return.

Vic continues:

that goes without saying. they are past masters at paying their fund managers fantastic salaries and bonuses based on their sector comparison.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

26

Happy new year?

December 26, 2023 | Leave a Comment

one big question is where is sp going to end of year and first days of new year. the years 2921, 2020, 2019, 2010, and 1998 appear most similar. nothing special to end of year. then big up starting near the end of Jan.

too small a sample size - too many changes. but it looks like 4 of 5 up to end of year, up big 58. up big 44. and the previous 3 unchanged.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

20

Still December

December 20, 2023 | Leave a Comment

is there a tendency for the S&P to rise in last 7 days of dec? i looked at this when the previous month was way up since 1996, the answer is yes. about 3/4 up to end of month.

the sp has gone up 11 days in a row. never before in dec. what does it portend? meager rise with not much vol until end of year. slightly bullish for jan.

[After the close…]

always the unexpected: the decline of 42 big S&P points from 2pm to 2:30 et was the 3rd biggest ever. and yet 5 days later the market on the 5 occasions it dropped 40 big or more, the sp was up 97 big with a s.d. of 100.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

12

what will S&P move to end of year? since 1996 when as of dec 12 the sp was up over the preceding 30 days, the expectation for the next 15 days is up 20 big points - 9 of 12 since 1996 up. s.d. 20 big.

guaranteed to be found too late: the 30 days from nov 1 to dec 12 been up 15 times and down 3 times since 1996.

Henty explains why France lost so many wars. General Kutosov main practicioner of snoring as fine art:

Through Russian Snows, by G. A. Henty

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

11

good lesson for followers of drift in S&P:

Snoring as a Fine Art, and Twelve Other Essays by Albert Jay Nock

Consequently one might with reason think that there is too little snoring done—snoring with a purpose to guide it, snoring deliberately directed towards a salutary end which is otherwise unattainable—and that our society would doubtless be better off if the value of the practice were more fully recognized. In our public affairs, for instance, I have of late been much struck by the number of persons who professedly had something. The starry-eyed energumens of the New Deal were perhaps the most conspicuous examples; each and all, they were quite sure they had something. They had a clear premonition of the More Abundant Life into which we were all immediately to enter by the way of a Planned Economy. It now seems, however, that the New Deal is rapidly sinking in the same Slough of Despond which closed over poor Mr. Hoover's head, and that the More Abundant Life is, if anything, a little more remote than ever before.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

5

Pix from Vic's 80th birthday party:

The cake

Aubrey, Susan, Vic, and Roy

Vic with guests

More party guests

one of the most unfair things is the lack of attention by western writers and others to the greatness and heart-rending competence of Monte Walsh.

now they are bullish. as Art Bisguier would say when he got you in a bind and you'd take a few minutes to play: "now you're thinking."

the gentlemen persist in their bearish hope. the old gray mare increases his chances.

Vic's twitter feed

Nov

19

after 4 out of 5 consecutive 20-day highs in S&P, the gentlemen still don't like it enuf to have strong a close [on Friday].

one of the most recurring principles of life and investing is that there is a balance between reward and punishment. recently the Fed coming to their senses about not raising yields (perhaps related to the old grays odds have reduced the likely punishments). reason for 10% rise.

the dangers of anti-business:

The Mainspring of Human Progress, a book by Henry Grady Weaver.

The author, Henry Grady Weaver, served as director of customer research for GM. Blind in one eye, he nevertheless spent much of his life peering over data. He was a number-cruncher, not a philosopher or polemicist. His writing experience had consisted mainly of penning articles on psychological research. But The Mainspring of Human Progress, an amateur’s paean to freedom and individual ingenuity, remains one of the finest discussions of the impact of business on society that has ever been written.

Vic's twitter feed

Nov

14

Gilbert and Sullivan: A Biography by Hesketh Pearson is an excellent short bio about the lives. some curious facts: 1. Gilbert made scale models of every scene of his opus and insisted that every performer did exactly what he wanted. 2. Gilbert had three Lemurs as pets. 3. Gilbert loved to play tennis. he elongated the court so his shots would go in.

4. Gilbert rode in a Cadillac in 1901. 5. Sullivan was a confirmed gambler and frequently had to borrow money from friends even though his 12 plays with Gilbert made him 450,000. 6. Gilbert was most litigious writer ever.

The Tolstoy book about O'Brian is very informative about Patrick's work habits, hobbies, and lack of wealth until 15th book in series. also completely exonerates Patrick from King's gratuitous critique. book is 700 pages well worth reading:

Patrick O’Brian: A Very Private Life, by Nikolai Tolstoy.

gilbert liked to play tennis and croquet every day, had to lengthen his tennis court because he hit too long. loved his wife who was like Susan, as did O'Brian.

Scranton was once hub of iron and discount retailers:

The Scranton Story

revelations about the Quakers, cavaliers, Roman and Greek times - highly recommended for kids also:

Mises Library

herd mentality across frontiers and markets:

Gregariousness in Cattle and Men, by Francis Galton.

highest move on cpi announcement ever. since 10-26-2023 a bull market of 9% since 4137. perhaps we will see the professor today but the two times cpi has been this much, the ppi has been bearish. strangely, only 1 cpi did better than this one since 1996: it was November 10, 2022, when S&P went up 207 big points.

Vic's twitter feed

Nov

8

a surprising and unique use of random numbers. to fix how much customer money was missing. a number on the balance sheet relating to customer deposits was multiplied by a random number. see Patrick Boyle for the exact.

as I have mentioned before family frauds are the most insidious and difficult to unravel. i have been victimized by many.

biggest drop in old gray mares odds over a weekend ever. regulatory capture chances recede [ but back up today: https://electionbettingodds.com/. ]

a great book showing the power of regeneration for NY:

New York: An Illustrated History

an excellent book with many applications to markets:

Producers and Scroungers: Strategies of Exploitation and Parasitism

who are the producers and scroungers? the book was written before everything became completely mathematical in biology and is quite understandable only using first order differential equations to show erudition and even to make points.

i am looking for a counterpart with a large following to partner with me on a new vlog. any suggestions or takers or leads would be appreciated. it would give me something productive at age 80.

the professor has been playing footsie with the 4000 level but the big rise in the old mare's odds should help. S&P now up 8 days in row.

does the market tend to an inordinate degree to hit vivid goals like gold at 2000 and S&P at 4000? does it inordinately hit 20 day highs? that would be 4417 on oct 11 for S&P.

Vic's twitter feed

Nov

1

[28 Oct] is buy and hold investing dead? after 64 days since the last 20 day max on 7-31-2023 and three twenty day minima in a row, time to throw in towel. but in situations like this, its 97% bullish for 13 days later with a 130 big S&P expectation, so don't. and presidential odds increasing - also bullish.

yes i've lately been wrong. should i give up ship about 5 occasions a year like this - all with expectation of 13 days to next 20-day max and big positive expectation? one recall 1998 when Dow stood at 800 and one started buy and hold.

Steve Ellison responds:

There have been many bear markets (which can only be identified retrospectively) that lasted a year or more, with one as recently as 2009. I usually interpret buy and hold to pertain to a period much longer than 3 months.

[1 Nov] well that's 118 pts of the 130-pt expectation i noted. but it took 3 days not 17.

Vic's twitter feed

Oct

30

Reading

October 30, 2023 | Leave a Comment

one of the most valuable and informative books i have read recently is Morse's Behavioral Mechanisms in Ecology. some of my favorite chapters are competition between species - variability in foraging patterns - avoiding predation - territoriality. an estimable researcher who started his publishing career in 1956 on the night time activity of the snow bunting.

a valuable book about an estimable person i would recommend to my 13 grandchildren and especially Aubrey is Be Useful, by Arnold Shwarzenegger.

Vic's twitter feed

Oct

16

reading The Art of War, i came across the 19th-century view that one climactic engagement was the key compared to the modern view that indirection is the key. it leads me to a test of gold.

gold up 63 on friday, only happened 5 times since 1996, highest was 3-24-2020 when up $109 big to an adjusted $1897. strangely close to friday's close of $1945. friday was a unique day with crude up $6 and dax down $2 to a 6-month low of 15250.

last 7 times gold up more than $50 in a day. sp 2 days later:

03-17-23 +89
11-04-22 +53
03-08-22 +102
04-09-20 +63
04-06-20 +93
03-24-20 +174
03-23-20 +243
mean: 116.7
sd: 68

mean 2 days later: 116.7
mean 5 days later: 161.7
sd: 107.2
prob of rise 5 days later: 100%

thus we see that friday's $64 rise in gold was a startling attack that set up total annihilation of enemy in the past for S&P.

reading bio of Robert Hooke - inventor of Hooke's Law and sec and curator of the Royal Society from 1625 to 1700. claimed he invented inverse square law of gravitation. gifted architect partner of Christopher Wren and very good friend of Robert Boyle (in honor of Patrick Boyle).

Hooke was very good lifetime friend of Robert Boyle, ancestor of my good friend and talented raconteur Patrick Boyle.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

28

Great American Panics

September 28, 2023 | Leave a Comment

great American panics 1812 to date:

1. Panic of 1819 - slowed expansion after the war of 1812.

2. Panic of 1837 - troubles of US banks and pres. Jackson's hostility, wide speculation in land.

3. Panic of 1857 - far worse than 1837, over-extension of railway building, failure of ohio life, banks everywhere suspended payments.

4. march 1861 - war crisis.

5. Gold panic of Sept 1969 - Black Friday stock exchange forced to close.

6. Panic of 1873 - failure of numerous brokerage firms, crowd of sightseers besieged wall street, stock exchange closed for 10 days. on sep 19 the stock exchange members suspended payment. union trust company forced to close.

7. Panic of 1890 - failure of baring brothers.

8. Panic of 1893 - 15,000 bankruptcies across the country.

9. Panic of 1907 - overnite call loans at 100%, stock market declined by 50%. boy wonder begged not to short any more.

PANIC continued:

i defined as the first time a 10% decline occurred. one striking result is that the panics after 1900 were much more bullish the those before 1900.

10-10-2008
12-24-2008
4-19-2020
2-23-2022
5-17-2022
6-14-2022
9-22-2022
10-6-2022

And from Education of a Speculator, page 42 and page 43, listing data on panics from 1890 to 1990.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

21

the old gray mare manages to go against the news and victory laps of his opponents by increasing his odds of winning. the poles are not 1/10 as good as the odds for predicting.

Greatness by Dean K. Simonton is an interesting book deeply flawed by its failure to consider multiple comparisons and its desire to virtue signal. however, it contains 1000 intriguing relations such as height-intelligence correlation and marriage achievement.

Toscanini remembering every score he has ever played and 10,000 songs needed for mastery (examples of unusual correlations).

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

14

the prospects of reg capture to fellow travelers has decreased. the money at the wire is particularly distressed.

appox 70% of wagers against old gray mare since odds went from 37% to 32% in a week.

suppose the expectation for the next hour is very positive (say +50) but the chance that it will decline is 80%. what's the right decision?

an old times lament: so many good people I have known have passed away - all the owners of closely-held companies I have sold: Norman Tyler, Harvey Sellers, Richard Bernard, Barron Coleman, Charlie Turner, Herb Everts, Hal Gaines, Philo Biane, John Dore.

and my Mentor Jim Lorie, and collaborators MFM Osborne, Harry Roberts - they were all so good to me and I miss them greatly and think about them every evening and have to listen to audible to ease my pain. Irving Redel - so great and so good to me.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

12

Battle for Investment Survival by Gerald Loeb - an excellent book with dozens of useful working hypotheses and a beautiful depiction of an honest and effective life.

1. How to make a killing - don't try to do it: "to make a killing these days one must buy the most volatile stocks with the most leverage. if he is wrong he will lose with the same supercharged speed as he had hoped to gain."

2. ever-changing cycles: "there is no rule for the market except one. that rule is that the key to market bottoms and peaks will never work more than once."

James Sogi writes:

G Loeb: "One should strive for a long profit on a small commitment; there is much more logic in trying for ten points profit on 100 shares of a particular stock than for one point on 1,000 shares of the same stock." This is very similar to Ralph Vince's risk metric.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

5

Foundational ideas

September 5, 2023 | Leave a Comment

as long as the old gray mare can keep ahead of the rivals, the S&P is bullish. the reg capture is supreme and is much more important to the damage of agrarianism.

one is interviewing some interns and as foundation i told them to remember 3 things: (1) eveything is deceptive. (2) there is a general uptrend of 50,000 a century. (3) all is geared for the house to always win in short term and long term.

what would you add to that of a foundational nature? be sure not to let the volatile moves force you into oblivion? Perhaps my punctuation and spelling will improve and i will be able to post a picture like the old gray mare with his shirt off on the beach.

Steve Ellison responds:

Beware the vig … "always copper the public play" … "the form always moves away from public knowledge" (Bacon) … "Borrowed money is the lifeblood of speculation" (Carret).

Vic replies:

good lessons to follow.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

4

Andrew Carnegie

September 4, 2023 | Leave a Comment

great book: Little Boss, Andrew Carnegie, photographic memory great philanthropist.

some reasons Andrew Carnegie became the richest man in world: (1) he learned how to translate the sounds of a telegraph to words. (2) he invested in the Pullman luxury trains. (3) he formed a partnership with Frick, supplier of coke. (4) he paid minute attention to technology.

(5) He appointed very competent men to run his business - Frick and Schwab. he was on a trouble-shooting trip for Penn Railroad and met his father begging for a few dollars to sell his home and textiles. (6) He never guaranteed others loans.

(7) He sold Carnegie for 500 million to Morgan but earnings of his steel company at the time were 80 million. so he got only 7 times earnings. (8) He was jealous of Frick especially and tried to squeeze him out even though Frick was responsible for all the growth of the company.

in addition to his other philanthropies he is responsible for, he founded the pensions for professors by starting TIAA.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

19

S&P and gold at 20-day minimum 3 days in a row - bonds in 6-day downstreak. too much bearishness. [17 August]

every futures with exception of crude is down near the low of the month.

the yankees and the stock market have concurrently gone though terible losses the last month and big gains the previous several months. is there a causal relation and is the daily correlation non-random?

The New York Yankees just keep losing

are there any like me who don't listen to yankees radio any more because of their concentrated and promotional advertising in 2 hrs and their tired and useless albeit well meaning announcers?

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

15

James Burke's Connections: the major innovations that have led to change and how they are all related starting with the plough. Highly recommended and relevant to bonds and stocks now within a gnat's eyelash of 20 day lows [13 Aug.].

beautifully illustrated and highly recommended and relevant for markets now:

James Burke - Connections

a million articles about how every media is now angry about the corruption of perfect father for first time but odds of winning go up.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

6

Hayek's grand summary of his main insight of his life's work: "The whole economic order [rests] on the fact that by using prices as a guide, or as signals, we were led to serve the demands and enlist the powers and capacities of people of whom we knew nothing."

"Basically the insight that prices were signals bringing about the coordination of efforts became the leading idea behind my work."

"Evolution of human activities, profitability works as a signal that guides selection toward what makes man more fruitful " - "Prices and profits are the invisible hands."

i would add to that that Hayek found that centralized control of choice led to total control of what consumers choose - gas stoves, incandescent lights, electronic vehicles only the beginning.

Vic's twitter feed

Aug

5

Trees, mostly

August 5, 2023 | Leave a Comment

old gray mare prob at 3-month hi at 35%.

Lott/Stossel: Election Betting Odds

books read this weekend:

The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate - Discoveries from a Secret World

The Battle for Investment Survival

The Tree in My Garden

Trees: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Structure.

i find the study of trees - especially how high they grow, and how they develop buttresses, and how they branch out and compete with other trees for light - immensely revealing for the various moves.

Big Al suggests:

The Age of Wood: Our Most Useful Material and the Construction of Civilization

Nils Poertner comments:

In many parts of central Europe, the Beech tree used to dominate the landscape thousands of yrs ago. Used to be well over 2/3 - and even today it is like 1/3 in Germany. Why? They tend to grow super and sort of take away all the light from slower growing trees. An oak tree would not stand a chance.

Gyve Bones suggests:

Long term strategy: planting a grove of oaks in a forest in France to be ready in 150 years to replace the roof of Notre Dame de Paris when it burns down.

Peter Saint-Andre offers:

Oxford's Oak Beams, and Other Tales of Humans and Trees in Long-Term Partnership

Peter Ringel writes:

For the last two years I am involved in a project for a German horticulture company. They mainly produce young plants of ornamental plants aka flowers. As a little side project (in early stages) they also produce Paulownia trees (as young plants).

Paulownia is the fastest growing tree in Europe. They originate from Asia. (Some criticize them as invasive species.) Typical commercial applications are wood for instrument manufacturing, wood pellets for energy production or particle boards. The wood is very light (caused by very fast-growing).

See a Paulownia grove.

Propagation is a little challenging. Usually it is done in-vitro via Biotec-lab, which we have. It is not the easiest variety for in-vitro. We also had some success to propagate via cuttings from mother plants.

Laurel Kenner comments:

Terrible idea to grow these, down there with tree of heaven, kudzu and bamboo. Yes, they are quick to grow, but also impossible to eradicate or even to contain. I am not an eco-hippie, just a gardener.

Zubin Al Genubi adds:

A friend planted a tree farm about 25 years ago with rare exotic hardwoods such as Koa, Bubinga, Cedar, rosewood, mahogany, ebony. It is a multigenerational project but some early woods are being harvested. Some of the rare woods will be very valuable as they are disappearing in their disappearing native habitat. There are numerous governmental grants benefiting the project as well.

Laurel Kenner responds:

I like the project. The idea is not to grow "trees" that are in effect big weeds. Pawlonia is illegal in my state, CT, as is Norwegisn maple, another nasty weed-tree planted in a less enlightened day because it grew fast. They often come down in storms because they're weak. One memorably crashed over my driveway in a big blow and its eldritch too brach rang ny side doorbell.

Peter Ringel replies:

Yes, storms are an issue, especially during the first years. My big mouth was referring to the EU government as hippies, because subsidies and grant policies are highly ideological here. Not referring to anyone else.

The church of Greens has Europe tight in their grip and currently they like Paulownia. There is a trend / hype growing. Other psalms the church likes are "renewable raw materials" or "CO2 neutrality". Paulownia fit these mantras. (plants eat and need CO2 to confuse the church)

Paulownia are not really new to Europe. Introduced to Europe 100 years ago or so. So far they were unable to survive in the European wild in size. Maybe because of frequent stronger winds? On a farm, as industrial product it makes a lot of sense to me. I am obviously biased here, because this would be our customers. It is a nice economic product. E.g. after about the first 2 years of growth, farmers cut them back near the ground level. This timber can be sold. They rapidly grow back and faster than without cutting. A case of eat your cake and have it too. One argument is, to use this locally produced timber instead of importing from South America, Asia, Finland or Russia.

forgot: Paulownia on farms are usually all clones of hybrids. Like a mule, they can not reproduce themselves into surrounding areas.

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

25

there are about 50 market-moving announcements a month. 45 of them have no meaning on prices. but the reactions are designed like the 3-zero roulette wheel to create wrong moves and many transactions and vig.

the blistering reactions are submerged by the increase in prob of winning of the old gray mare. i would like to post a picture of me without shirt on beach chair with Ray-Bans, but i need Aubrey to do it. i have 2-digit grandchildren and I would augment the picture by holding hands with some of them.

McCarthy: Biden case will 'rise to impeachment' as 16 Romanian payments allegedly went to 'shell companies'

when a player or team is behind during the late stages of a match, they try increasingly risky and non-percentage shots. but old gray mare keeps increasing and no need to cure cancer and old age.

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

22

the gentlemen don't like the old gray mare's resilience but it is bullish:

Election Betting Odds

you have to hand it to the old gray mare and the market. July seems to be what Martie Riesmann would call a key month. it's been up 12 times since 1996 and down 12 times. of the 12 times it was up, 11 of 12 advanced to end of year. approximate rise 150 big S&P points.

on qualitative basis, consider July's move extraordinarily bullish. the old gray mare was subject to the most withering evidence of corruption imaginable. but he maintained his win prob of 33%. reg capture joy from the powers that be is at a max. the three letter agencies, etc.

Let’s Not Forget George Stigler’s Lessons about Regulatory Capture

George Stigler’s theory of economic regulation opened our eyes to the rent-seeking that undermines the public interest. Yet many in positions to influence policy today do not appreciate the beneficial innovation and increased consumer choice that economic deregulation and competition brought.

as evidence of the lackadaisical response to the corruption news, Fox leads off with an article on backlash against NYC congestion pricing.

sign of our times: the old grey lady has not one single article or mention of the revelations and developments of the old grey mare in its Saturday July 26 edition. how bullish can you get?

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

12

you keep hitting it to the opponent's weak backhand, but despite the good strategy, the opponent is near match point. the zeal with which the opposition is gloating over the fissures in the opponent is belied by the score.

despite the best efforts of truly knowledgable bettors like mad dog, they can't surmount the 52% hurdle.

Steve Ellison adds:

Most casinos in Vegas have now added triple zero to their roulette wheels, so even more gamblers will lose more than they have a right to. 7.7% house edge??

Vic continues:

in line with the roulette wheels with 3 zeros, on my platform is a prominent command: 'flatten everything'. one is waiting for a command flatten and reverse everything.

One hasn't heard from the chronic bears lately making fun of me as to when the S&P will make an all-time high. it appears that in Nov 2021, the S&P index was in the 4600-4700 handle and futures were in 4700 handle.

Steve Ellison comments:

The S&P 500 looks very much like it is making a Lobagola along its 2021 price trajectory (orange line). If this pattern continues, the new all time high should arrive by December. I don't know how to test this hypothesis, so for the moment it remains a conjecture.

Vic continues:

thus we are about 5% away form ATH at 4700. if the devoted father increases his prob of winning to old, we should surmount. let all S&P bulls hope for more news of cog decline and hand in till.

Mr. Wonderful's utterances are the perfect example of a distraction display used by so many animals in nature.

at 4500 S&P, we are 5% away from ATH. where are we going? europeans have finally caught up with July, up a few months in a row. S&P should close at ATH. also depends on reg capture.

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

9

Markets and books

July 9, 2023 | 1 Comment

a passage in Ed Spec points out that my dad learned to make friends with the referee. he bought Sam Silver some moo goo gai pan. several successful traders indeed apparently the most successful ones are at one with the exchanges.

is is a shibboleth that it pays to bet against the team that was able to squeak out a win or benefited form an error of the other side or won by corruption of some kind. we should realize the same thing applies to politics viz a viz the perfect father - incredible that he leads.

nice improvement

nice drop of S&P of 40 pts on unemployment from 1:30 to close — greatest drop on unemployment ever.

some books read over weekend: The Smiling Country, by Elmer Kelton; Wealth, War, and Wisdom, by Barton Biggs; The Hidden Life of Trees, Peter Wohlleben; Bird Life, by by Frank Michler Chapman and Julie Zickefoose.

and always the first 80 pages of Fifty Years in Wall Street. where are the greats of the 19th century and why did they succumb? the reason that oak trees are crowded out by beech trees, the beech trees shade out the oak trees to cause the oak trees death:

Root competition between beech and oak: A hypothesis

with bonds in the 123 handle lowest in 10 years, agrarians galore should be on guard that further declines don't hurt their man.

Vic's twitter feed

Jul

6

how has the evolution of regularities in markets made it much harder to beat the 52% accuracy that no sports better can achieve to break even? one way is the ever changing relation between bonds and stocks between years. what else?

Larry Williams writes:

Crude's influence on stocks [has changed over time]

Alex Castaldo offers:

The Great Financial Crisis of 2007 and 2008 revealed a number of regularities that (I believed) would be very profitable in the future, but careful monitoring of them after their discovery proved very disappointing to me. For example, trend following that would have gotten you out of stocks and back in during that decade did not work well in the Covid crisis with a faster decline and faster recovery.

Nils Poertner comments:

a mystery indeed - some folks have lousy accuracies (say sub 25pc) and still do well - since a few things they do on top turn out great, eg, the lousy equity trader who got into ethereum early enough (and out when others got into it).

Kim Zussman adds:

Yield curve inversion from 3 months and 500 points ago:

Hernan Avella comments:

Like sports, the evolution of markets is guided by the fitness of the players. We are not competing against prospective cab drivers trading in the pits anymore. But armies of highly talented people that invest thoughtfully and systematically in every step of the process: Infrastructure, trading business practices, research, execution, recruiting. I have a friend working in one of these highly capable groups. Around 70 people. All markets 24 hours, every single approach possible.

Very few of us from the old days survive. The Chair might be the oldest and longest lasting point and click trader. Such a great competitor!!! Ray Cahnman, founder of Transmarket Group is up there as well.

Vic replies:

the point-and-click survivor owes it all to Lorie and Dimson who taught there is a drift. also one learned not to succumb to conspiracies to margin one out.

Jared Albert writes:

Modern technology, particularly around real time customer segmentation and portfolio correlation, squeezed more value from the 'customer as the product' than before.

Jul

4

how now the S&P in next periods given a big rise until 30 June? a dipsy doodle with 12 of 14 up next two months, then a decline in September with a fine bull close to end of year.

bribery during 1865-1870. nothing has changed.

the evolution of athletic excellence continues apace. and one can predict that pickle ball will soon advance the way handball did so that all good players have a natural left and hit ambidextrous. i can hit my left as well as my right. what other sports have evolved to excel?

James Sogi replies:

Downwind foil surfing was only invented a few years ago. Now people foil 200 kilometers flying over ocean waves.

Vic continues:

in the 1950's only one handball player Vic Herskowitz had a natural left. now every player hits from both sides with power and natural swing. the same in baseball pitching where 100 mph is de rigueur. what other sports have evolved to greatness?

the monstrous plastic pickle ball makes it much easier than paddle tennis to switch hand with alacrity and effectiveness.

A twitter asks:

Is that good or bad?

Vic replies:

as Sholem Aleichem would say, "it's both good and bad", but regardless we will soon see ambidextrous pickle players winning all tourneys. i would be such if I didn't have stroke.

notice how weak the backhand of best player Ben Johns is:

Ben Johns Backhand Pickleball Highlight

how has the evolution of regularities in markets made it much harder to beat the 52% accuracy that no sports better can achieve to break even? one way is the ever changing relation between bonds and stocks between years. what else?

one sport that has shown no improvement over the years is handball. the players of 100 years ago would beat the present crop with their baby overhand serves 21-5. why?

Athletic performance has been improving steadily for decades - the evolution of sports shows how it keeps getting more difficult to win. how have markets become more difficult?

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

27

i grew up playing paddle tennis and beat Bobby Riggs in a money match. Paddle tennis is 99% identical to pickleball except that it used a good punctured tennis ball instead of the monstrosity they use in the promoted game of pickleball.

In honor of Alfred Cowles who started the Cowles Commission at Yale and whose articles in Econometrica and the Monthly Weather Review sparked my interest in stock market behavior 60 years ago: after stock market down prev day, expectation 3 days later is 2.5, but after stock market up prev day, expectation 3 days later is 0.7. based on last 7000 obs from 1996.

the grandfather holding the hand of the 4-yr-old as she climbs up the stairs of plane is the kind of thing that most people would be turned off by as it's so obvious.

the old gray mare: Lott-Stossel: Election Betting Odds

Hayek Was Right: The Worst Do Get to the Top

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

24

Interesting and poignant articles in The Austrian point out that the Fed now owns 2.6. trillion of mortgage securities. it built this up since 2008 and caused distortion in the real estate markets. The fed has a 408 billion mark to market loss on these securities - 10 times the Fed's capital of 42 billion.

The Fed Is Overindebted, Isn’t It?

Wall Street to the Fed: Inflation Is Over. Give Us More Easy Money!

An excellent and inspiring book:

Capitalism in America: A History, by Alan Greenspan and Adrian Woolridge

Chapter 3 of Greenspan's book is inspiring: "In 1914, Americans were able to shave with Gillette, gab on phones, drive a Model T…before that there were more animals that people in cities."

Hany Saad is surprised:

Victor Niederhoffer praising “anything” Greenspan!!!!! Now I know I am in Kansas.

Vic clarifies:

the last part of the book is typical Greenspan propaganda for the progressives.

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

18

tale of two opposite sons: Cornelius Vanderbilt ("the Commodore") had two sons. one, William, attended to every detail of the business, including signing all checks. the other, Cornelius Jeremiah ("Corneel"), was hooked on faro and borrowed heavily.

the Commodore had an eye for pretty women. when Corneel's prospective father-in-law asked the Commodore about the marriage, he asked, "does she have many silk dresses and expensive jewelry? if she does, Corneel will pawn them when he loses in gambling."

William went on to become the richest man in the world. Corneel was limited to $200 a month which inevitably he lost and borrowed heavily form Horace Greeley to tide him over.

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

17

in my response to critique of my methods I refer to the reason that certain famous investors have succeeded so well. It's due imho to being one with idea that has world in its grip - how this and long life enables compounding to grow apace without concern about service beating you down.

there have been so many nice testimonials to me and my style,- some way over the top that I am becoming convinced that some thing I am close to 7 feet under or at least very close to the Bad One. i am still alive.

much attention has been focused on heightened scrutiny of those who don't believe in agrarianism, but little attention has been focused on the opposite, i.e., the free pass for those who hate enterprise and how this increases compounding exponentially the law of ever increasing vig. in 1940 there used to be 1 minute of advertising for 60 minutes of content. on Yankees game nowadays its 50-50. where else do you find much increased vig. the advertisement for the radio broadcasts for the Yankees are so unpleasant and so frequent that one wishes bad luck to them and can't wait to turn them off. the advertisements themselves all encourage ever-increasing vig thru emphasis on lotteries, parleys and service deals for Kids.

I've Got a Little List (with lyrics) / The Mikado / Gilbert and Sullivan

Lois in on my list and her fellow travelers who don't find anything amiss.

one comes back from dinner and hears a recap of New Deal Economics - increased service rates, replacement of private sector by gov - but it isn't from 1934 but is our most agrarian treasury person.

my passing reference to The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder did not do it enuf credit as it tells a story of Anson's heroics and survival every well.

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

15

no matter how high they go, most gentlemen don't like stocks. nor do they realize that bonds have to go up to save the banks from marking down their holdings.

10 Qualities of a Modern Gentleman

seems like a good day to review all the reasons that the former president didn't win in 2020. lets start with the big pharma that withheld the announcement that they had an effective vaccine until the day after the election.

Steve Ellison replies:

Marginal voters proverbially vote their pocketbooks, and Mr. Trump had the misfortune to be the incumbent as GDP abruptly contracted by 9%, and unemployment rose to 15% in April 2020.

Vic writes:

yes that's a winner although no evil hand in that. let us not forget the military in their advocacy and demeaning and threats. all the three-letter agencies and the doj. scores of 4-star generals comparing Pres to Mussolini and guaranteeing that they would escort him out of office if he resisted. the professional sports leagues all acting to undermine. Director Wray negating all of Trumps critiques about their bias. another reason for the former golfer to lose was the lineup of all of the Fangs to do whatever they could to do him in.

Gary Boddicker adds:

Constitutionally questionable executive and judicial changes to voting rules in key states, bypassing legislatures and favoring Democrats. “It’s unsafe to vote in person!”

Vic continues:

excellent book for those who like Patrick O'Brian but aren't see salts. none of O'Brian's erudition but author made valiant attempt to research incident.

The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny and Murder

Also: Shantaram: A Novel

a critique of my methods, lifestyle and answer is elicited on twitter. i don't know when exchange took place - i would guess 15 years ago. I would add to my defense that I was much younger then and also I did not take account of ability of market to squeeze you and margin you out. they and the market inexorably get together by an evil hand to manipulate prices and margins so that you will contribute to the big players so that one day they will do you in and then prices will get back to their norm. one solution is to have good credit. Imagine the palindrome having enuf confidence to withstand the Bank of England and all the banks they control to speculate against the Pound successfully.

Vic's twitter feed

Jun

7

Distractions

June 7, 2023 | Leave a Comment

with all the hoopla about the perfect father stumbling - one notes that he can get up from the floor with ease - more important he can create 10 LLCs with beneficiaries of all in family with impunity. the odds of perfect father winning the election now at a max of 38%.

The venerable Sam Eisenstat liked to run overlapping monthly S&P as independent and would predict the next 6 months as momentous with great accuracy.

who is the most corrupt shark now trying to deflect attention by pretending to be anti-woke? perfect example of distraction behavior by spiders.

Distraction display

how much money can one make from Sam while pretending to be vigilant in stopping his predations?

The Folly of Fools is one of the most foolish books i've ever read. the vigilance against deception is very high and no subject is more studied and self restrained.

there are at least 3 big speculators i know who have many daughters with one of them being a bad seed as far as the others are concerned. is this chance? or some hidden regularity?

Vic's twitter feed

May

29

in what other areas, apart from financial markets and sports betting, is there vig? and what is really relevant for everyday life? and how to avoid it?

maybe we don't see it that way because of Gell-Mann Amnesia affect.

Hernan Avella responds:

There’s a rich literature on rent-seeking behavior. It’s pervasive, Pharma, Telecom, Agriculture, Natural Resources. Not all lobbying is RS but the majority is.

Vic asks:

is there a universal law of vig where it goes to 2% in all activities like sports betting?

Jeff Watson offers:

I wrote this in 2009 about vig:

The Vig Keeps Grinding Away, from Jeff Watson

Steve Ellison comments:

Games that advertise that they're commission free usually charge the highest vig of all …

Mr. Watson's statement was written well before all the retail brokerages offered commission-free trading, which I contend simply means convoluted execution that costs customers much more than the $7.95 commissions that existed previously. "Where are the customers' yachts?", indeed.

Separately, the way the CME evolved is a good example of the Professor's constructal theory that all systems evolve to increase flow and velocity.

Hernan Avella disagrees:

Your insights on electronic trading seem to lack sufficient grounding. Abundant evidence disputes your hypothesis, highlighting the significance of the percentage extracted rather than the total volume. The evidence is clear that more opaque markets, like credit and emerging debt, are more expensive, for everybody except for a selected group that invests heavily in keeping the status quo. Electronic markets are more transparent, more anonymous, standardized, continuous, centralized, offer multilateral interaction and informationally more efficient.

Zubin Al Genubi responds:

Give the evidence then, if its so abundant, rather than your usual vague negative comments.

H. Humbert comments:

The beauty of long term investing is there's no vig and there are no taxes, other than once or twice in a few years.

The origin of the word is interesting. It's a Yiddish corruption of a Russian (or some other Slavic) word pronounced "vi igrish" or "gain", but it's more like "winning in a game", and the root means "game".

Alex Castaldo adds:

Interesting. The word can be found in online Russian dictionaries.

"vigorish" has a similar pronunciation, though the meaning has changed to be the fee for the game instead of the winnings.

Nils Poertner writes:

we want to battle against vig in all aspects of our lives. almost build a register where there is vig and share it with family and friends.

Henry Gifford comments:

Vig is one of the many things I find it helpful to view with an understanding of the laws of thermodynamics. The laws of thermodynamics describe the movement of heat in the universe, and because all energy is either heat now or becoming heat, they could be called the laws of heat.

The idea of “follow the money” to understand a system or organization or relationship is closely parallel by “follow the heat”, and heat follows clearly defined laws.

In approximate inverse sequence to importance, the fourth law says that if things A and B are at the same temperature, and things B and C are at the same temperature, then things A and C are at the same temperature. This is also called the zeroth law because it is so basic it should have been thought of first. The fourth law reminds me of the unlikelihood of much true arbitrage existing.

The third law says nothing can be cooled to absolute zero, because that would require something colder to absorb the heat, and nothing can be colder than absolute zero.

The first law says energy can neither be created nor destroyed.

The second law, most analogous to vig, says that heat always flows from hot things to cold things, and never flows the other way on its own. This law is the most profound, with many implications.

For example, one implication of the second law is that a car engine cannot convert all the energy in gasoline to mechanical energy - some will leave as heat that is not useful (except for heating the passenger compartment during the winter). Vig. A utility power plant burns fuel and about 31% of the energy in the fuel gets to the customer’s electric meter - 5 or 10% transmission losses (heat escaping from wires is “lost” - see first law), the rest is waste heat at the power plant. Vig. Various devices can reduce the amount lost to heat, but these devices have too high a vig themselves.

Big Al adds:

The first law makes me think of markets (not the Fed or banking) where money is neither created nor destroyed. For example, in the FTX collapse, the media talked about all the money that was "lost". But of course it wasn't lost, it was simply transferred from one group of entities to others.

Hernan Avella critiques:

This line of thought fails empirically when looking at deflationary crises, loss of crypto keys, central bank operations, bad loans, bankruptcy.

Henry Gifford responds:

Loss of crypto keys and central bank operations both follow the first law - printing money leads to inflation (if inflation is defined as a lowering of the value of money), destroying some of the money in circulation by losing keys, or destroying a dollar left in the pocket of clothing getting washed, increases the value of the remaining money.

I have heard the term “deflationary crisis” before, but don’t believe there has ever been a crisis whose root cause is the increase in the value of money.
In the saving and loan crisis of the late 80s, lenders sometimes asked borrowers to make sure they borrowed enough to make the payments for two years, as it was taxpayer money being lent out, and the lenders were collecting enough vig to make it worth going under I s couple of years.

A bankruptcy stops wasteful behavior, and the threat of bankruptcy causes people to take steps to prevent it. But I guess the waste in a government can continue forever, apparently violating the first law, while also proving that a perpetual motion mechanism really can exist, violating both the first and second laws.

Larry Williams comments:

printing money leads to inflation—data does not suggest that to be true

May

29

Tony Hawk's body, according to Hampton Sides, looks like barnacles cover his hand. he has broken every bone in his body. He looks with disdain upon anyone worried about a broken arm of some such.

Often the last second of a market session changes the whole complexion. for example at 4:15 et on May 25, the S&P was 4150, near a 20-day low, but then Nvidia was announced. and in two days the S&P changed course rising to a 20-day hi at 4230. query: did the move have anything to do with zero-day expiration options?

books read and highly recommended this weekend: Darwin's Dog: How Darwin's Pets Helped Form a World-Changing Theory of Evolution by Emma Townshend, Trees: A Complete Guide to Their Biology and Structure by Roland Ennos, and Political Geography by Martin Glassner and Chuck Fahrer.

Darwin to Galton in a letter of 1840: "I am studying minute unimportant things while you are dealing with Big things like Rhinoceroses and Hippopotamuses." Darwin relied on a Galton cousin for breading info on cattle and dogs.

Only a small part of a tree's biomass is capable of photosynthesis, but trees are excellent competitors for light. They hold their leaves above all plants and shade them out. How is that relevant to the best performing nasdaq stocks in last 6 months having superior performance by end of year?

did Miami let it's guard down with 1 second to go into going after rebound? instead of high fiving, as is the custom when a crucial shot is made or missed, should Miami have been on its guard and fighting for the rebound until the end?

The ending of the Celtics game reminds one of the many astonishing wins that Tom Wiswell pulled out on the last move frequently a 2-against-3 win for Wiswell.

with by partisan wins like this, McCarthy must have regulatory capture forecasted for 2024 at a max. that's what the big boys want.

Biden says budget deal reached, takes ‘catastrophic default’ off the table

Vic's twitter feed

May

23

i thought i had played every racket game but Susan showed me a new one she saw when in Croatia with many grandkids: handball in the water with a water ball. apparently you have to wear very tight speedos when you play. Reminds me of Palindrome.

apparently beach ball is more popular than pickle ball. a ridiculous mutant game to me. but it does teach you correct pronation for serves. all players really get the racket way back with terrific torque on serve. problem is no one can return serve.

most gentlemen don't like bonds even after 7 in a row. happened 7 times since 2011. only a speculation - no evidence to support it - but to what extent are the sequence of 20-day lows in bonds designed to help the perfect father get a face saving deal?

an agrarian plies her trade somewhat shamelessly:

Yellen Warns Again That the U.S. Could Default as Soon as June 1

Vic's twitter feed

May

22

excellent book read over weekend, highly recommended: Friedrich Hayek: A Biography by Alan Ebenstein, and Freedom's Furies by Timothy Sandefur. the Hayek book introduces my to Edwin Cannan, and Friedrich von Wieser. I learned many things, eg Oskar Morgenstern was part of Mises circle.

Hayek's theory of business cycles very relevant to today, depends upon fed keeping interest rates too low and early stages of production being replaced by consumers.

Finale: Late Conversations with Stephen Sondheim a book that makes you feel ugly after reading it. Sondheim such a bad persona but good on harmony.

Sondheim in a typical gesture cuts off New Yorker interview after 3 months and 48 hrs of interviews because interviewer asks him about Webber.

an agrarian shamelessly boosts the perfect father: JANNET YELLEN SAYS ODDS OF PAYING ALL BILLS BY JUNE 15 `QUITE LOW'

bonds with 7th day down in row refusing to bail those who are stuck with problems so far.

one of Hayek's major points was that gov planning leads inevitably to total restriction of consumer choice. what do we have now saving us - gas stoves, electric cars, air conditioning, tipping - what else?

Vic's twitter feed

May

20

the more he's complicit, the better he does, and the better for market. when I won a number of National tournaments in a row, not one fan in gallery was rooting for me. Reminds one of reason that S&P is bullish despite. some excellent ideas about unanimity in favor of the idea that has world in its grip (very favorable for S&P) in Holman Jenkins article in wsj today:

John Durham’s Report and a Presidency in Crisis

anything to help Mr. Perfect (the good one forbid they should violate their institutional preferences):

Fed Officials Face ‘Loathsome’ Playbook for Debt-Ceiling Standoff

one posits that 5 or 8 of the NASDAQ 100 always account for majority of move. that's the way of all distributions especially normal and what they used to call Pareto. and why would it be bad if it's greater than usual?

thing missing is all fellow travelers asking when S&P will hit an all-time high. others who refuse to adjust to change wonder how S&P can go up while the perfect father improves his odds every day. ask the 3-letter agencies, the professional sports leagues, and the consumer bigs.

a personage who has never had an economics course and is a master at sucking up to the current boss talks about the separation principle and the lags in policy. sounds good. now the Brooklyn acolyte must say how important raising the debt ceiling is. a 1-2 punch.

it would be good if someone on the favored side of the aisle were to reduce centralized influence on individuals ability to choose.

a shocking anomaly: the perfect father actually for once loses prob of winning on grounds that laundering thru 19 companies is worse than improprieties with the opposite sex. that's the only explanation for why we are not visited with another 20-day high in S&P.

Bidens Used Web of Shell Companies to Conceal Foreign Cash, Bank Records Obtained by House GOP Reveal

Vic's twitter feed

May

13

The playoff images and all other games illustrate one of the fundamental principles of a successful life: Never put all your eggs in one basket - the mouse with one hole is quickly taken. essential for market success also.

the Knicks relied on Brunson exclusively - the Warriors relied on Curry exclusively with wristy shots with no hope of subsequent action. when the wristy shots failed, they were gone. What other illustrations of this principle do you have?

How is this related to market sense? a million ways. the foremost is never go for a regularity that leaves you with one exit based on a singular event. don't go for short term profits. what else?

Vic's twitter feed

May

10

Character(s)

May 10, 2023 | Leave a Comment

most gentlemen don't like stocks.

Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967)

the worse the polls, the better the odds - like the market - the worse it looks the better it is.

gas stoves, eternal flame, air conditioning, what else? how has consumer's ability to choose been restricted, and how does this cause inflation? lady follower at the treasury can always be counted on for support of expansion of direction from above.

two biographies of great men: one leaves you sick, A Most Remarkable Fella: Frank Loesser and the Guys and Dolls in His Life: A Portrait by His Daughter; the other Theophilus North by Thornton Wilder.

Loesser was a great composer, of Show tunes, lyrics, and popular songs, but the book doesn't say anything about how he composed the music, the harmony, rhythm, melody, et al. but we learn about his drinking, smoking, womanizing, and chiseling all his players. Mien was similar to Rogers.

Loesser was a great business man - similar in all his personal characteristics to Rogers. Wilder on the other hand was always helping people, didn't drink, and teaches you about Goethe, Shakespeare, Goldsmith, Homer, Bach, and other greats.

one of the problems of a malfeaser is that when your associates know about the bad deeds, you can't say no to them. It is for this reason that the shrewd palindrome who I worked for intimately for 10 years was very careful not to involve or disclose to me any such deeds. Those currently in high office have a similar monkey on their backs.

Vic's twitter feed

May

7

there is a shibboleth among scientists that if an effect is true, the greater the magnitude the more likely it is to hold. nothing can be more detrimental to the market player. the intricacies of deception that the market plays are even more ingenious than those played by spiders and other animals and insects.

some pickleball thoughts: In Brooklyn, especially Brighton Beach from 1930 - 1977, a game almost identical to pickleball was played by thousands including my whole family - it was called paddle tennis and played the same in New Zealand.

the game was very popular in the 1920-1930s and was a mania played in private facilities on the rooftops of big buildings in Manhattan. It was played with a tennis ball sometimes punctured and that bail is still most appropriate and better athletically than the contrived plastic and ugly ball now in use. The game was and is completely athletic with all good players rushing to the net on the serve and return of serve. the one area that the old good players were much better than the current is that they all had topspin backhands or lefts.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

29

a terrible warning form 1956 Road to Serfdom: the bulk of the intellectual community almost automatically favors any expansion of government power so long as advertised as a way to protect individuals form bad corps, relieve poverty. anything goes, "protect the environment, promote equality."

one has been reading Forty Studies that Changed Psychology in conjunction with my visit with several prominent psychologists at Gail's 80th. while the personages don't subscribe to these studies, I am amazed at the the self-serving biases.

studies in the main don't take account of multiple comparisons (they tend to implictly look at many hypotheses and choose one that works). I will review some of these studies but the study on predicting the outcome of marriages with a slope as the key confirmation is terribly indicative.

a good thing to keep at hand when visited with a loss in markets or life:

Why the Giannis Antetokounmpo ‘Failure’ Speech Is a Viral Phenomenon

a little banking-crisis news is what the dr. ordered to set everything up with bonds and stocks at 20 day highs.

how does the next 8 months look given that the bonds and S&P are up during the first 4 months? it has happened only 8 times since 1996: 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017. strangely that run of 8 years up was the only times they were both up.

during that period the S&P advanced from 10325 to 27028. that 170% run were the golden years. S&P fell once in 2011 by 6%, in 5 of those remaining years, the S&P rose to end of year by 10%, the other two just a small rise. all prices adjusted for drift and contract changes.

How is the S&P during next 8 months given bonds and S&P up first 4 months? predict up 7% in next 8 months. strangely the next two months looks down with the last half of year showing a 8% rise. bad however is refusal of Germany to catch up to US. depends imho on whether perfect father continues to stay ahead in presidential odds. of course with 8 observations all clustered form 2010 to 2018, margin of uncertainty is great.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

25

great books read over the weekend during my trip to Austin: Our Town by Thornton Wilder, The Road to Serfdom by F. Hayek, Mathematical Biology: I. An Introduction by JD Murray, Life of Francis Galton vol. 1 by Karl Pearson. reviews of each forthcoming.

But experience is often fallacious in ascribing great effects to trifling circumstances. Many a person has amused himself by throwing bits of stick into a tiny brook and watching their progress; how they are arrested, first by one chance obstacle, then by another; and again, how their onward course is facilitated by a combination of circumstances. He might ascribe much importance to each of these events and think how largely the destiny of the stick has been governed by a series of trifling accidents. Nevertheless all the sticks succeed in passing down the current, and they travel, in the long run, at nearly the same rate. So it is with life, in respect to the several accidents which seem to have had a great effect upon our careers.

- Francis Galton, Journal of the Anthropological Institute, 1875, p. 391.

volume 1 of Pearson's Life of Galton is devoted mainly to the great man's childhood, his ancestry especially on the mother's side, and his relation with his cousin Charles. It is a moving and memorable chapter. How did I come to read it over weekend?

it was my first wife's 80th birthday, and she managed to keep all the books and paintings. While the great personages among her friends passed by at the party hosted by my daughter Katie, I saw vol 1 on her copious book shelves and gave myself a treat by rereading it.

when i presented this painting at a Galton meeting in London, the speaker decried Galton's lack of Mathematical rigor and the tradition was "no feedback from the audience". Subsequently Stigler showed how nonsensical that claim was. It is interesting and telling that at a meeting designed to honor Galton, even his greatest followers were afflicted with shame. it is amazing how good mathematician can be so foolish when venturing out of his own field. the same is true when quants take a gambol on markets. and I would guess the same is true of chat gpt.

the big circular thing in the background is the cyclone imported from the Columbian exhibition of 1899. the cyclone is still packed even though the Dow had declined from 290 in 1929 to 70 today. the construction in the North is the Trapeze designed to give soldiers training.

my comments about sticking to your own last for math people was based on Murray's foray into psychology quantifying likelihood of marriage dissipating based on Gutman's work which is completely overdetermined et al.

David Margulies in his review of Our Town calls it the great American play. "it's all there, the passages of life." there's no scenery and no curtain. If you appreciate the commonplace and the wisdom and greatness of the common man or woman you will love this play. Although I had seen the play a few times, I never appreciated its greatness until I reread it this weekend. It inspires me to write a play based on my experience. "no curtain, that's Arthur Niederhoffer taking his physical test for being a policeman in 1937."

Road to Serfdom of 1942 is all too prescient. "the emphasis shifted from gov administered production activities to indirect regulation of private enterprises and to gov transfer programs." look at a typical day in gov control. no meat in nyc, no private money for everyone else.

"coordination of men's activities through central direction leads to serfdom. also central direction is a road to poverty." intro to Road to Serfdom.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

18

The Bourgeois Virtues: Ethics for an Age of Commerce shows the contributions of entrepreneurs and private property especially originating in the Netherlands.

One can admire, appropriately, the entrepreneurial vigor of heroic figures, an in 1958, for example, the Austrian sociologist and anthropologist Helmut Schoeck did: "We tend to forget that mankind's emergence from stereotyped and stagnating ways of life, on low subsistence has exclusively depended on the emergence of independent and enterprising individuals…who had enough resistance to escape from social controls… imposed in the name and interest of 'the whole society.'"
– Deirdre Nansen McCloskey, Bourgeois Equality

McCloskey makes the point that it is the emphasis and praise of society for entrepreneurs like Jobs and Musk that creates the benefits and material well-being of society.

It is clear that we are in the opposite kind of society now where entrepreneurs are vilified and held up to scorn — as witness that no bio of Baron Coleman. and countless other great benefactors who start businesses are ignored. yet the death of the most minor actress or sports figure is cause for great acclaim and promotion.

nobody asked me, but…Gunsmoke and The Collected Stories of Jack Schaefer cover the same 1860-1880 period, but Schaefer's stories are much more poignant.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

16

nobody asked but…one of best ways to understand today's developments is to reread Hayek's The Road to Serfdom. the 1956 introduction is all too prescient. the zero-day options seem like a magical formula for vig. the ETF's using zero-days strategies must be great shorts.

query: what are the chances for a Barron Coleman day on Monday? a Barron Coleman day is named after one of the most remarkable and gifted men I ever met. He was the founder of two billion-dollar companies and he was a golf champion and musician. he was a great salesman. when you asked him how he was, he liked to answer "everything's up except my widdler." a Barron Coleman day is one where both bonds and S&P are up.

in a grievous omission I cant find a life or legacy of Baron Coleman or references to him for building Hospital Corp of America or Hospital Affiliates. Hopefully some readers will fill in details of this great man. (See Baron Coleman legacy.)

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

14

in terms of timeliness and forecasting ability, the ppi should be replaced after 70 years of untimely misinformation. much better is an index of futures prices like copper and S&P and grains.

how many times will an announced number cause vig with no meaningful effect on drift?

you would think with 200 economists on the staff, someone would update the 60-year-old studies of Moore and Shiskin of 1967.

everyone should read The Origin of Species and Don Quixote every year or so. it's like a cleansing tonic and leaves one more productive and joyful. the narration of The Time It Never Rained by George Guidall is memorable, i can't praise it enuf. my favorite is the banker.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

12

Cigs & vigs

April 12, 2023 | Leave a Comment

nobody asked me, but…increasing vig: i estimate that on a 2 hour 30 minute radio broadcast half of the time is devoted to commercials. in the 1950's radio shows had 2 minutes of commercials per half hour. Just to max vig the big westerns were supported by Big cigarette. the cigarette commercials of the 1950's were so good that one would have been tempted to start smoking. the filters were white and the packing was tasty and pure. what other examples do you have of vig increasing in markets? public performance in options?

a bastion of vig. 1 billion a quarter: 2/3 interest rates and 1/3 stock futures:

CME Group Inc. Reports Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year 2022 Financial Results

Geraldo Orchestra - I've Got My Eyes On You 1940 Cole Porter Songs From "Broadway Melody of 1940"

if i were asked to name a book i recommend, it would be The Time It Didn't Rain by Elmer Kelton, the biography of Francis Galton. Atlas Shrugged. also Secrets of Professional Turf Betting

A loser's lament on crude:

It's All Right With Me - Ella Fitzgerald

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

10

Harpo Speaks is a book of very flawed men playing poker and drinking. one good thing is Oscar Levant spelling Prokofiev on his own concerto. Harpo never learned how to play the piano or harp. altogether an ugly group to say nothing about how he treated the idyllic wife. but who knew that the drunkard but very knowledgible Oscar Handler was the higher-paid concert pianist of his era.

Umberto Eco showed that new technology loses value for the masses over time. the tendency for all speculative activities to become maximizers of vig is similar. all become such that 52% is necessary to win and this is out of reach for most.

the loathsome spectacle of McEnroe and Roddick and Agassi playing pickleball like amateurs illustrates the point i was making about Umberto Eco with everything devolving to a max of vig.

the funny thing and indicating of max of vig is that in Brighton Beach and New Zealand we played a game 90% like pickleball with 30 courts in Brighton Beach alone but we played with a tennis ball which is much better for the current game than the plastic monstrosity that they use today.

by the way without patting myself on the back usually i was much better at the age of 11 than all the tennis players at the game. i admire the pro pickleball players who are good on all aspects of the game. Ben Johns is a good player in all aspects who would have been one of the best at Brighton Beach.

you've heard the one about how the amount of below-the-waste romance is 1000 times greater when you are engaged than after you're married. 45 years ago when susan and i got engaged she played racquetball and tennis with me all time. the last 45 years not once but we put up a court on our hard court tennis court and she played yesterday. and I say she could beat Chris Everts after a week or two of practice. i'm very proud of her that she didn't forget.

Bobby Riggs liked to come to Brighton to hustle in paddle tennis and paddle ball and I played him both games when I was 12. he was lucky to get 7 pts in each.

kindly forgive my boasting about the play of 70 years ago. you see now i am immobile after having a stroke and the old times are much sweeter.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

6

no better way to while away the market night time hours than listening to 100 Great Radio Shows, mainly westerns, detective stories, comedy, and suspense. only 2 minutes of commercials for a 30-minute show. highly recommended.

along with The Story of Mankind, by Hendrik van Loon, and 10 Gunsmoke radio shows this has been my night time listening lately. so much quality here. so educational. so resonant.

Elmer Kelton who won the spur award 7 times and wrote the best western in The Time It Never Rained was forced to make ends meet in his last days by speaking to Elder Hostels. He talks about the plight of Western versus Eastern in Elmer Kelton Tells the Truth: His Best Talks on the West, Cowboys & Writing.

He Created a New Kind of Western

a good bio of a great man. but the one thing I demur is that Kelton, in listing the best Westerns, leaves out Jack Schafer's Monte Walsh, which to me is the second best western of all time.

the third greatest western writer: John Meston. all his scripts for Gunsmoke are masterpieces.

Vic's twitter feed

Apr

4

Money and markets

April 4, 2023 | 1 Comment

query: lots of talk about the money supply having a terrific down but I can't find it anywhere. apparently not released weekly anymore. my charts don't go past 2021. query is where do i get current figures? good old Paul Derosa always had the latest by surveying banks.

very quietly S&P is up 9% for the year, and 30 year bonds are up 7%. this is a uniformly bullish scenario for the next 3 months for both markets. this in conjunction with perfect father reaching a hi 0f 32% in odds of winning.

if the great Sam Eisenstat were alive, he'd run regressions to show how bullish it is. all we point to is 86% up back to 2011.

with agrarians at their peak in the 3-letter agencies and the treasury, regulatory capture looks to be at max. what could be more bullish?

Individual Investors Slow Stock Purchases, Leaving Markets Vulnerable

SceneScape: Text-Driven Consistent Scene Generation

what are the elements that make the scene in the market and how can it be quantified and predicted for market behavior?

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

28

Charles W. Morse was instrumental in two panics. the first came during the civil war. he believed that the worthless greenback would lead to all industrials and railroads going thru the roof. when sec chase sold gold, the boom burst and Morse was execrated. the second Morse was the ice king panic.

there's trouble in market city. it's all because the bond prices are way below the cost for many banks and others. even the perfect father is beginning to suffer. there's one way out. for bonds to go way up. a good speculation.

one has been reading Fifty Years in Wall Street. the book is resonant with me because i could write a book 65 Years in Wall Street. that will have to wait until stocks go to a new high amid ag making fun of me. i can hear him now: "It took 18 months."

but the Clews book is amazing in that all the characters he talks about from the 19th century have their exact counterparts today. i will memorialize these shortly.

it's a little difficult for me because I was asked to write a preface for that book. and the frugal publisher didn't want to spend the $750 to get a copy of the book. they borrowed my book. and returned it unbound. its 700 pages, and in my current state i can't lift it.

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

22

nice deception in bonds: down over 4 pts in last 2 and a half days…yet the entire problem with all the banks was they had bonds way against them down. so naturally the maneuvers for the market and the perfect father is to bull the bonds up.

although the chair without a background in finance is an ignoramus regarding economics, he can sense the agrarians all over the 3-letter agencies, the consumer products companies, and the agrarian at treasury, that they all want bonds up. presumably the 5000 financial economists and the banks which they all talk to before the meeting have emphasized that the perfect father and the fellow travelers want bonds up.

what is useful number 1 advocating? presumably the discussion at 2: 30 will put him in limbo.

as part of the back scratching and incestuous relations, ed used to give stipends to half of all finance profs. presumably they still back scratch each other. my grandfather Martin who spoke 50 languages as a interpreter used a back scratcher to dance with.

there is always a record. the decline form 1530 to 1600 in just one half hour from 4037 to 3969 - a terrible 68 full big points - was the second largest ever. the only exceedance was on 2-6-2018 when the decline was 86 points.

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

21

the public has no right to lose so much and to be fooled by the bromide that they get a better deal from the high frequency boys at the opening. the reversals at the opening 30 minutes are spectacular unless you are trying to get a good fill.

nobody asked me, but…perhaps the single greatest mistake that specs make is to try to go for short term profits -like the move in the next half hour or worse yet trying to sneak 2 pts of profit. the vig on such trades is at least 20%. much better to try the impossible of beating the 52% on sports bet.

always a record somewhere: gold down second largest ever, down $39 before FOMC. only 12-22-2011 bigger down move of $45.

one is reminded of my 1 day i had a job on Cramer's site. i got fired because i mentioned that Galton had invented the concept of regression. he says there is always a bull market somewhere. I say there's always a record move somewhere.

i place Cramer and Mad Dog in the same box. they both know so much and try so hard to come up with good predictions, they both have the benefit of experts and insiders, they are both less than random.

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

17

with agrarian economists in every 3-letter agency and the treasury, it's hard to look to free markets in the near term. but this too will pass as the British Library scholar of the 1840's views go out of style and poverty and envy reign.

A little story: Richard Sandor once introduced me for a lecture about my non-mathematical colleague at UC who garnered a Prize. He told that while he was on the Exchange many savants noticed the vol of distant options was way too high mathematically and market speaking. He ended right before my talk, "Not one of them is still around the Exchange." As the "prefect father" according to Ron Kline would say "true story" and one has nightmares about 30 years later.

the great Robert Merton was in the audience as his son was also honored. I told the story of Davey Crockett refusing to vote for aid to the benefit of a widow of a distinguished naval officer and how he offered to pay out of his pocket. Amazingly I have a letter from the 90-year old Robert Merton asking me for the reference to that story.

not the end of the story. I went up to Richard Sandor at the end of my talk and I said that like Horatio Bunce I realized from Richard's talk that I was a wrong to sell out-of-the-money puts and that I would never do it again because my adversaries controlled the margins et al.

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

12

(1) the bonds had their biggest two-day advance of 4 big pts ever. (2) the problem seems to be that Silicon Valley Bank was offering depositors 2.2% on their deposits. no wonder they all flocked to them.

(3) the most laudatory testimonial for the two silvers come from man who doesn't read books SBF. it was taken down. (4) interesting to see the judicial system bending all the way to accommodate comfort of SBF, the Uncle Remus tale of Brer Rabbit and the briar patch comes to mind.

Vic's twitter feed

Mar

5

excellent books read this weekend: The Big Ratchet: How Humanity Thrives in the Face of Natural Crisis, by Ruth Defries. the numerous incredibly lucky things that make life on earth possible. the three indespensible requirement for life are: (1) a stable climate, (2) a planetary recycling mechanism, and (3) a smorgasbord of diverse species.

these 3 mechanisms would seem to play a role in markets, preventing any hatchet-like move in one commodity like bonds and its influence on stocks as exemplified by March 3, 2023 action with a 2-pt increase in bonds sending all market life thru this.

Beating the Dow, by O'Higgins and Downes, recommending buying the lowest-priced and highest-yield components of the Dow as a superior, infallible investment rule. (no cognition of multiple comparisons or ever-changing cycles.) the rule doesn't seem to work anymore.

i have the 1991 edition but many interesting facts about the stability of the Dow. contrary to popular belief the 1923 components are almost all there thru acquisitions. emphasis on Dow stocks as magnets for investment.

Timothy Sandefur's Freedom's Furies, a well-researched and informative review of the work and lives of Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Ayn Rand.

Thayers Life of Beethoven, revised by Elliot Forbes. A year-by-year chronicle of verified events in B's life. the great man's music and quirks and obsessions.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

27

one of remarkable things about effective altruist saga was that while he was the second biggest donor, and promised to give a billion more, and every celebpol was captured, the Palindrome appears to have been uninvolved. he has instinct.

Beethoven was in a furious rage in 1819. his favorite restaurant didn't have his favorite of veal. he ran out cursing and would have been taken for a vagrant again had not Schlesinger rushed back to Vienna and sent him some veal upon which B kissed him and called him his best friend.

that's Ken Roman who plays squash 3 times a week at 92 and is former CEO of Ogilvie where he taught Ogilvie how to write in complete sentences when he became French.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

21

Weekend reading

February 21, 2023 | Leave a Comment

while snoring at the market over the weekend, and remembering that I had to be awakened by my assistant at 915 on Friday feb 17 as I had "watched" the market for 24 hours straight and I can no longer do that without sleep, I read some good books over the weekend.

i was younger then: Someone in a Tree

the best book was Beethoven Unleashed. here is a year by year chronology of Beethoven's development, family life, music, and love life. I know a hundred anecdotes about Beethoven (collab and I were once going to do a play about the great man) and this book thrilled me by teaching 100 more also about his hard study under Hayden, the progress to write string quartets, and the Austrian war's influence on his fortunes. highly recommended. I recommend the audio version which brings forth music to illuminate each part of his life (although their constant playing of the fifth and ninth symphonies is boring and over the top).

the most disappointing book for me was Models of Adaptive Behaviour: An Approach Based on State by Houston and McNamara. It takes a state approach to predicting molecular behavior. all the states could just as well be market states with the change of a few words. an organisms behavior strategy is a rule that specifies how the organism deals with every possible circumstance. a strategy is a rule specifying the dependence of behavior on a state and time.

"the costs and benefit of an action must depend on state." "fitness is a measure that can be used to measure the performance of strategies." "that an action cannot be considered in isolation is an important reason for considering sequences of actions and hence for using dynamic programming." regrettably there is one empirical finding that illuminates the state-based topology into concrete life. Although I can get the gist of most mathematical treatises, the dynamic programming examples and other techniques were beyond me.

I turn to a book that's much more useful to financial readers and mure more up my alley: This is the Road to Stock Market Success by George Seamans.

the Seamans book was first published in 1944, and the dow was about 150 at the end of that year, and Seamans recommended the base method in use of Heads and Shoulders to sell high and buy low. There are so many bad recommendations in the book that it's even worse as a guide book than Reminiscences of a Stock Operator.

From George Seamans (1945):

What is a business barometer? Whether it be Barron's Weekly, the Federal Reserve Bank, the Cleveland Trust Co, the National City Bank, or any other– it is the published facts of supply and demand as expressed in the volume of steel production, number of freight cars loaded, orders for locomotives, amount of payrolls, amount of checks cleared, bank savings, money in circulation, electricity consumed, quantity of lumber cut.

Supply and demand (the time element theory–a time to buy when low, a time to sell when high) is the basis for all forecasting of market movements.

"But who has time to read books?" he replied. Whereupon I told him frankly he wasn't fit to hunt squirrels.

[One notes that SBF prides himself on never reading books. and if he were one of the big shots that constituted the thousands of clients that Seamans had, Seamans mite call him a baboon.]

In the market session of October 19, 1937. Stocks crashed that morning by ten points or more. However by two or three o'clock of that same day many of these identical stocks were up to their previous prices. Was this the play of genuine and natural forces of "supply and demand"?

The safest time to buy is when the market is dull and trading is going on only in small volume with prices on the easy side. If you buy then, exercise patience (comparable to that of the Insiders) and hold on until activity develops at times taking as long as six months or more for the market to generate. Months later you will get 'the' signal that it is time to sell.

In 1914, at the outbreak of hostilities, stock market prices dropped. In September, 1939, prices soared upward the moment a European conflict became a certainty. Developments in industry since the last war in sociology, economics, electronics, machinery, politics and finance were of sufficient importance to warrant entirely different conclusions. In 1918 for instance we sent troops to Siberia to fight Communism. In 1944-45 our presidents drank vodka with Stalin and toasted his great country.

Seamans is adamant that the big-guy subscribers to his service which number thousands should never hesitate to sell short. Thus he joins the boy speculator in sowing the seeds of destruction.

i am very fortunate to have a very sharp wife who has seen many a mistake in my trading over 60 years i have been trading. (she has only seen 45 years.) she sees me reading all these old books and throws up her hands and like Don Quixote's wife she burns them while I rest.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

19

Snoring as a fine art

February 19, 2023 | 1 Comment

Snoring as a Fine Art: see War and Peace, General Kutuzov could have snored with all the bulls on S&P, bonds, gold today.

"Snoring as a fine art": desite the enemy's ardent attempt to scare all bulls to oblvion, S&P, bonds, and gold ended close to unchanged or up. a typical way to force speculators to lose much more than their entitlement.

"Snoring as a fine art": bulls in bonds, S&P, and gold subjected to terrible warfare and mark-to-market loss during lows but all markets ended unchanged or up on day. A typical way for the bigs to make public lose much more than their due. (and snoring remedy)

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

14

Many markets are near 30-day highs but haven't breached it. crude, bonds, S&P, gold to name a few. is there a forced of destiny that pushes these markets to set significant extremes when they are close but now quite there?

little things matter in super bowl and market:

The Little Things You Do Together

Chief's coach banned players from watching Rihanna halftime show. i.e., it's the little things that make a win, and shades of Rene Lacoste who was quintessentially focused on the next match period. also Ted Williams. also me when I played squash.

let us reiterate our stand that we must continue the fight against inflation, thereby assisting 30-year bonds. (whatever the perfect father wants.)

Lobogola lives:

S&P refused to set its required 20-day high (for 8 consecutive days). should make the "usuals" teeter to bear.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

11

is there one general factor, i.e., one market, which impacts all other markets? and does this general factor change within day and between days?

what is reason that the bulk of the consumer products companies - especially Disney, Amex, and Gillette, and the professional sports leagues - are uniformly agrarian? is it in their self interest? or just the training that their top execs get at Harvard and Yale?

a typical article. but i noticed this much earlier. their Hall of Presidents, e.g., has always been a platform against those who admire enterprise.

Disney World was our destination. What I found could be the end for a beloved American company
Massive layoffs at Disney are unsurprising.

a nice, archetypal way for the public to lose more than they have any rite to lose. On thur, crude was the least volatile of any commodity or itself. its total range was 50 pts from 77.50 to 78.00. and the moves between half hours was 20 pts. friday crude moved 250 pts from 77.50 to 80.00 from 2:30 TO 4 EST.

invaluable advice from the great Bill Tilden: (1) Keep your eye on the ball. (2) The body must be at right angles to the net and the shoulders parallel to the line of flight of the ball.

(3) The weight must always travel into the stroke that is from back foot to the front foot. (4) the shot must never be hurried or cramped. Match Play and the Spin of the Ball. Bill Tilden was considered the greatest tennis player ever as of 1930.

Some interesting market advice was given in his classic article, Pace and Speed. "Speed and pace are two very different things. Speed is measured by the time required by the flight of the ball thru the air. Pace is the momentum (speed plus weight) with which the ball comes off the ground from its bounce. It is the solidity of the stroke." one should compare this to the velocity of the price change of a market. that's speed. but pace is the volume behind the advance.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

7

an interesting hypothetical: what would happen if Flor. Gov would announce that he will not run in 2024. i would guess that 45 would take the lead of now leader "the guy". and the chances of R's winning the election would drop from 51% to 45%. most important S&P would soar.

free associations: two usefuls jim chanos and Mohammad el Erian: pockets of absudity, worthless pieces of paper, gross margin higher than tiffany, "the best father I know", "agree with larry", "as you know, i was calling for a 50-basis hike."

estimated bet on super bowl is 7 billion - estimated on world cup is 60 billion. big industry in spotting fixing in it. the estimated volue in e-minis is 400 billion a day. perhaps same in spiders. which field has more chicanery?

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

6

one has been wrestling with the question, which many put to me to embarrass me over the weekend, when we will hit an ATH again. it's been a whole year. since 1996 there have been approximately 30 days out of 8000 that have lasted more than a year without. from 1996 this would be extremely bullish for S&P, and crude. but from 2022 very ambiguous. for gold the stats are very encouraging - bullish now at $1878. So I turn to books I have read over weekend for long-term foundation.

Verdi A Biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz. one learns about every respect of Verdi's day to day life with not one iota of info about his music. Its particularly good about his Menage a troi with Stolz and Strepponi. How the wife suffered with his brutal behavior. and how it was routine for Verdi to leave 50,000 francs in his wallet in shared hotel room with Solz and how Verdi, one of richest men in Italy when he died in 1901, was very generous throughout his life except for the conductor Miriani who he decimated for bringing Wagner to Italy. Much more harmonious and enjoyable is the Life & Works - Giuseppe Verdi by Siepmann, et al.

Memoirs of a Superfluous Man by Albert Jay Nock. this book which honors Jefferson, Rabelais and Artemus Ward is the perfect antidote for those who are dissatisfied with the present milieu and a preventative for going a gaping with strange Gods whose blandishments go against traditions of their culture and discipline. Much closer to home is The Travels of Marco Polo and how a Venetian merchant was able to learn about and prosper from Asian cultures except the Chinese.

Robustness and Evolvability in Living Systems by Andreas Meyer. distributed robustness and not robustness of parts is the key to stability. a brilliant author's exploration of genetics, biology, and chemistry with much extensions to our field.

much talk about bias especially from the big 2 newspapers. but left out is the incredible ratio of pro "guy' to anti golfer articles and reports of former mayor's site. amazing that they persist in this when one would speculate that 50% of their users are neutral. thus the business site joins the professional sports leagues and the 3 letter agencies et al in agrarian activity.

AllSides - Don't be fooled by media bias and misinformation

the guy pulling out to clear lead in odds of winning which is very long term bullish as more capture and consilience with all the agrarians harmonizes.

Marco Polo was a great inventor but was very calm didn't seek out adventures but was a wayfarer as he brought back to Venice gunpowder, spectacles, paper money and numerous maritime inventions of his own. There is a modern day counterpart. Hobo Keely. that's Hobo Keely who traversed 30 separate countries and left every one better off and met all his responsibilities to his noble bosses while not refraining from prurient activities. For those new to the Hobo i would refer you to Daily Speculations where he has chronicled his travels almost daily for 20 years.

Like Marco and Odysseus who were gone from their homes for 20 years, they were not reconized when they came back. and worse yet, all sorts of moochers were living in their home. Hobo has found home stolen or burned down, be it ever so humble even if it was a pipe.

Vic's twitter feed

Feb

4

query of the day: we know that the more trouble it's in, the better the stock market for the future looks. what politician is like that with his odds constantly increasing while the backdrop gets worse and worse?

and the more useful idiots who make the rounds and who have always been bearish and love to predict a devastating fall is ahead, the better it is. the upside down man was correct in saying his partner never had a rite prediction.

as prof does his thing breaking thru unprecedented 5 consecutive Sogi's and constructals, we note gold at an 18-day low down $40 today, and coffee has very quietly dropped 20%. and scarily the European stocks refuse to harmonize up with US stocks. crude touched $74.

Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

the futures markets refuse to be outshined, in the old days of the pits it was more obvious but i dare say not more prevalent.

How the NFL Cheats: A Five-Part Report

Victor Niederhoffer Presentation

Stout-Hearted Men - South Wales Male Choir (Cor Meibion De Cymru)

from shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in 30 and 2 days. 2 days gold at 200-day high at 1967. was at low on 6 Jan at 1870. now back to low at 1875 in two days. guaranteed to happen: "let's churn and create liquidation."

The former Ivy prez joins Boy Rasmussen and other chronic bears but this time will not be kicked out for 30 to friend. "Boy Rasmussen" going to Dodge before the others get their first and lower the price. See The Good Old Boys by Elmer Kelton.

Vic's twitter feed

« go back — keep looking »

Archives

Resources & Links

Search