Sep

30

Bye Bye, Mower-and-Blower Gangs. The Electric Robots are Here.

In a step toward ending mower noise, a robot named Farmer Joe, made a debut on the Town Hall lawn on Sept. 21, cutting grass in total silence as reporters and local leaders looked on.

Sep

28

The IMF called the UK’s unfunded tax cuts excess in need of revision, while Moody’s warned about the UK. Mohamed El-Erian, chief economic adviser at Allianz SE, said the Bank of England now needs to raise interest rates by at least 100 basis points its next meeting on Nov. 3.

coordination or lone wolf?
UK Long Bonds Post Record Rally as BOE Moves to Stem Crash
• Yield on 30-year gilts fell 106 basis points to 3.93%
• BOE move follows disorderly selloff in recent sessions

The Bank had been warned by investment banks and fund managers in recent days that the collateral requirements could create a situation in which forced selling drove up the yield on UK debt. ie, money mite be lost by longs.

all concerned that the English wish to lower service rates:
Bank of England Buys U.K. Government Bonds, Intervening to Stabilize Market after Huge Selloff

cotton joins lumber and copper and every other market:
Cotton Prices Drop Amid Economic Worries, Strong Dollar Pressure
Futures shed one-fourth of their value in a month as slowing consumer demand overshadows potentially poor harvest

service cuts could create deficits: "US 10-year yields gained almost 80 basis points to head for largest monthly increase since 2003. The yield rose to 3.97% later in the day. global bond rout accelerated this as the UK’s plan for large tax cuts reinforced fears of more rate hikes."

us putting pressure on IMF to remove lowering of service rates:
US Encourages UK to Dial Back Tax-Cut Plan
• UK bond plunge has forced emergency Bank of England purchases
• Selloff in gilts, pound reverberated across world markets

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

27

The historical moment is France's declaration of war against England and Holland in 1793. From Cochrane: Britannia's Last Sea King, by Donald Thomas, p. 37:

However, a young officer in Cochrane's position, joining the navy with a hope of enriching himself with prizes, faced a more powerful enemy than France or Spain, and one whose weapons were a good deal more sophisticated: the Admiralty and its prize courts. In the view of many serving officers, these courts were at best unsympathetic and, all too often, cynically corrupt. It was relatively common for a hopeful young commander and his men to find that, after a hard-won capture, the Admiralty proposed to appropriate the entire value of the prize. It was always open to the heroes to fight for their claim in the prize court. But even if they won the case, they might hear that the cost of the proceedings had swallowed up more than the sum due to them, so that they were now in debt to the court as well as having been robbed of the proceeds of their valour.

A man might complain publicly or privately against the prize system. But before he set himself up as a "sea lawyer", he was well advised to remember that this very employment, let alone his promotion, lay in the hands of the Admiralty itself. In consequence, there was a good deal of private grumbling and very little public campaigning.

Vic writes:

very much like the market where often the only way to receive or fight back is to sign away your rights in a preliminary hearing or arb.

Sep

27

events i am looking at: (1) Pres prob of winning at new high, (2) 3 20-day lows in a row in S&P [as of Sunday], (3) almost every commodity down 20% in last month, (4) 30-year bonds and crude down 7% to new yearly low on thur to new 120-day low, (5) bitcoin below 2000, gold at new lo at 1652.

with every market down 20% from a few weeks ago, how insensitive and virtue-signaling are the CBs with their unanimous and irrevocable stance to beat fixed income down. and will we have to wait for friday before they stop their virtue signaling?

like the dark bicyclist they ride the wave, and he's now for the first time more likely than the baseball player from florida at 17%.

there's something apropos of all the CBs reaffirming their idolatry of the tall chair from 1986 who hated capitalism like they do and so many others these days. but eventually the "preferred measure of inflation" announced on Friday will hit the real world.

don't believe that I have approx 9200 followers normal way by gradual accumulation. only way I could stop the decline was by promoting at $5 each increment. on the other hand all of my tweets are canceled because the algo doesn't realize that the more the unifier rises, the better for the S&P.

a typical recent commodity move:

Lumber Prices Fall Back to Around Their Pre-Covid Levels
Rising interest rates have taken an ax to one of the pandemic's hottest commodities

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

21

You can transform a patch of weeds into a piece of heaven

Sep

20

it used to be a given that when the private sector performed a job, it was much more efficient than the alternative. a variation of the broken window fallacy. thus the estimate that 100 executive orders of the bicyclist cost the taxpayer 1.5 trillion understates.

the reason for inflation is the decreased trade in the economy that by the quantity theory leads to higher prices.

nobody asked me, but…it used to be that the money supply announced thur after the close had the greatest influence on the market. now it's not even published anymore and M2 is not published either. in the old days, say 2000 and before, a spec paid commissions of $10 or so a side. now one pays 0.25 + 1/75 a side to the CME vig. but in the old days the members on the floor wouldn't give you a fair deal. now it's the high-frequency persona. I liked the 20th century better. it was a fairer deal.

and yet the chair is proudly following Volker who caused the 1987 crash along with Baker and wished to stamp out all technology. he didn't use a typewriter nor tape. i met him at Larry Ritter's bedside and it was a dismal experience to meet someone who lived in an era 50 years receding. and yet he is idolized. he should be ostracized. no wonder chance gardener tore up his speech and gave us Volker. fortunately the FOMC is very bullish for bonds and S&P.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

19

The infernal racket of blowers and mowers; Greenwich introduces a robotic solution

Sep

18

anatomy of a city, infrastructure, and the road not taken from a trio that will alert you to the engineering, planning, and beauty of the things that make life work:

The Road Taken: The History and Future of America's Infrastructure

In The Road Taken, acclaimed historian Henry Petroski explores our core infrastructure from historical and contemporary perspectives and explains how essential their maintenance is to America's economic health. Recounting the long history behind America's highway system, Petroski reveals the genesis of our interstate numbering system (even roads go east-west, odd go north-south); the inspiration behind the center line that has divided roads for decades; and the creation of such taken-for-granted objects as guardrails, stop signs, and traffic lights - all crucial parts of our national and local infrastructure.

A compelling work of history, The Road Taken is also an urgent clarion call aimed at American citizens, politicians, and anyone with a vested interest in our economic well-being. The road we take in the next decade toward rebuilding our aging infrastructure will in large part determine our future national prosperity.

the move from 4:30 to 5:00pm is very diabolical as it leaves options at 3900 uncovered. perhaps someone knowledgeable about options can explain the intricacies of who's hurt and who's naked as well as the CME rule that allows members only to execute options after 4:15 pm.

looking back at the pools and cliques of the 1900's, and comparing that to the deal that the public gets today relative to the insiders, I believe that 1900 was better.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

17

nobody asked me, but…(1) as always the more the dark bicyclist gains, the better for the market. he's now up to 15.2% prob versus 9% 2 weeks ago. (2) the professor could not be denied as he refuses to allow the round number of 3900 to be undefended. but he does it in the company way so only the member can profit as it goes above the rounds at 3900 at 5pm closing time so the members can rake the shorts on Monday. (3) I read The Book of Daniel Drew, and it's amazing how evil and unrepentant Drew and his associates Fiske and Gould were as they formed pools to rake, deceive, and break the public and repeatedly tried to turn on the partners out of vengeance for past misdeeds.

The saying, "selling watered stock," has now got to be well-known in the financial world. So I've wrote down in this paper about the affair of salting my critters. Some time later I became an operator in the New York Stock Exchange; I hung out my shingle on Broad Sweet. And the scheme was even more profitable with railroad stocks. If a fellow can make money selling a critter just after she has drunk up fifty pounds of water, what can't he make by issuing a lot of new shares of a railroad or steamboat company, and then selling this just as though it was the original shares?

- The Book of Daniel Drew

I have an updated study of the likely performance of the market the rest of the year based on the last 50 years. in sum, its much better for the market to be up the first 9 months. neutral if down, but very bullish for year following - never two downs in row.

For a story that you will want to share with your kids and have a good joyful cry about:
Mom's reaction to son's long-awaited callup is priceless
After 863 Minor League games, Wynton Bernard stars in debut in Rockies' win

nobody asked me but…(4) when are speculators going to learn that a bad earnings guidance or report after the close is just one S&P arrow in the spring and is not a cause to panic? (5) after a tremendous decline in the previous week ending Friday, is it the time to be bullish or bearish? (6) dark bicyclist unifier continues to climb in the prob of winning. a hypothetical: if the R's lost the senate and house in November, the market would have its greatest rise ever. the worse the market looks, the better it is for the future - the more agrarian the mojo, the better it is.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

16

Below the historical FDX down moves of more than 10% in one single day, since 1980:

Sep

16

Market declining in sympathy with announced retirement. I was lucky to see him play on several occasions. A great player and a great gentleman to the game. What a backhand, and what a forehand, serve, volley, footwork, strategy and touch.

Alston Mabry adds:

Farewell address, very classy.

Bud Conrad agrees:

Yes. Classy.

Laurel Kenner recalls:

My tennis teacher knew him and said he never swore.

Sep

16

Talking with strangers is surprisingly informative

"anybody knows more about something than you do"

Significance

Conversation can be a useful source of learning about practically any topic. Information exchanged through conversation is central to culture and society, as talking with others communicates norms, creates shared understanding, conveys morality, shares knowledge, provides different perspectives, and more. Yet we find that people systematically undervalue what they might learn in conversation, anticipating that they will learn less than they actually do. This miscalibration stems from the inherent uncertainty of conversations, where it can be difficult to even conceive of what one might learn before one learns it. Holding miss-calibrated expectations about the information value of conversation may discourage people from engaging in them more often, creating a potentially misplaced barrier to learning more from others.

Zubin Al Genubi agrees:

I've noticed people don't listen well. They often like to talk. Its good to listen and encourage others to talk and they think you are a great conversationalist. As Yogi Berra said, Listen and its amazing what you can learn. I have some good ideas but no one listens to me.

William Huggins adds:

2018's Nobel in econ went out (in part) for the endogenous growth theory, which posits that a good part of economic growth that isn't "more people" or "more kit" comes from the positive externality associated with education. Romer basically says that once someone learns how to do something better, we gain by having them tell us about it. people uncomfortable with updating their beliefs might avoid conversation and lose out as a result (value of keeping an open mind?)

Nils Poertner writes:

deep down it is probably that we are so excited about our own ideas (whether adequate or not) - that we often over-sell it to ppl in our own social circle. mea culpa. whereas with strangers it is often more a light touch - or an encounter that lasts a few minutes only and this lightness creates a magic…and a sparkle and that is all that is needed sometimes.

Gary Phillips expands:

I've always been a gregarious person, not because I am socially needy, but because I often find conversations with strangers to be an edifying experience. Quite instinctively I gravitate to the following people:

1) smarter / better educated individuals - if you're going to converse with someone, you might as well learn something. I love talking with my friend David, who is a Lubavitch rabbi. His knowledge of the Talmud is extraordinary, and its analogs to trading are remarkable.

2) older people - experience has given them a rational perspective on life and insights that are invaluable. My favorite encounter was with Lou Lesser, a L.A. real estate developer who was 93 when I picked him up in Beverly Hills and drove him to Laguna Beach. He regaled me with stories about his life, including personal experiences with Marilyn Monroe, John Kennedy, and Mickey Cohen. It was a ride I'll never forget.

3) tourists in the U.S. - talking with a 2 young ladies from Kyrgyzstan I met at a local bar in Chicago. Extremely intelligent and well educated, they were extremely critical of the lack of education and sophistication of the average American. They were completely shocked by Americans' lack of knowledge and ignorance of what lies outside of America. I was the only American they had met, who had heard of their country. Nevertheless, while they were very cynical, they were also beautiful, charming, and thoroughly engaging.

4) people from diverse and varied walks of life- if you are seeking a diverse experience with people of varying levels of social status, there's no place better than the joint. My 30 days spent incarcerated in the Montgomery County Correctional facility was not necessarily entertaining, but it was certainly educational. There's not much street cred to be earned jacking an O.G., so I was afforded a level of respect, and was able to engage and befriend various inmates, from incredibly disparate backgrounds and lifestyles.

5) people you meet while travelling- my favorite aspect about traveling is the ability to meet a wide variety of people. I have a tendency to let my guard down while traveling, and open up even more than usual. recent trips to Japan, Mexico, and Crete were made all the more enjoyable because of the people my wife and I interreacted with and met.

Kim Zussman responds:

Typically internationals - especially Europeans - look down on Americans in this way. As if the prize is not what you own but what (or who) you know (especially in France).

Funny thing is that in most countries outside the US wealth-generation efforts are futile because of huge governments and massive corruption. At least if smart people aren't allowed to become rich at least they can become educated, cultured, and erudite. Their educated-but-poor status is a consolation prize, and when they are here there is envy.

In the USSR the only wealthy people were in government or military - which is the same now with the addition of para-governmental oligarchs. You can be talented and work like the devil but if you're not connected you have to settle for Dostoyevsky and Dugin.

The problem with America is that, for the most part - less so in recent years - the main limit on your personal success is yourself. This is not very compassionate (elevation of failure), and is the fuel of socialism. We are ugly Americans for not expending formative decades on poetry, languages, and philosophy - but allowing people to compete in a quasi-free economy.

Pamela Van Giessen writes:

There are interesting people wherever you look for them. Especially in this day and age, no one place has a monopoly on interesting and clever.

Larry Williams agrees:

And they don’t have a clue where our state and cities are. Snobs for the most part Europe is not superior to much of anything other that Italian wine and food. It’s a worn out old lady that was beautiful in its day.

William Huggins asks:

Any Americans here happen to read Gustavus Myers America Strikes Back (1935)? He had a pretty savage takedown of European elitists that's heavy on economic history and well referenced. Much of the sentiment here echoes his charges.

Stefan Jovanovich notes:

Disdain for Americans at home and abroad is the oldest of all cultural traditions. It has survived the death of beaver hats, bustles and whist and shows no signs of decline. I think the scorn for Americans here in their own country has its root in bewilderment - how can all these fat stupid slobs have made their language and money the world standards for communication and exchange? Beats me.

Boris Simonder suggests:

A test would be to survey domestic population on domestic locations of cities/states. Who would do better since you mention location of cities/states? Jay Leno has some clips from his Walk of fame episodes.

High quality cars Larry, at least fossil, although EVs and H2 is up-coming and leading. Telecom networks, Beer, furniture design, clothing designs, Handbags/Cases, Trucks, Industrial/Electrical Machinery/Equipment, Pharma, Mineral fuels, Plastics, Optical/technical medical apparatus, Iron/Steel, Organic chemicals, Insulated wire/cables, Optical readers, Centrifuges, Electrical converters, Auto parts to name a few high value exports. EU accounts for approx 30% of total global export value. Just a tad more than Italian wine and food.

That old lady still has some of the most beautiful ones. Go visit Norway again.

Larry Williams responds:

I'll take the food! You can have the handbags and such.

Sep

10

every morning I wake up to another solved mystery where Sherlock Holmes applies the powers of deduction and observation to solve another crime thinking backward to see what chain of events led up to the current crime scene. I try to apply that same reasoning to the market.

what led to the amazing rally in crude today and the hyperbolic rise in S&P from 3900 at 9:A.M EST on wed sep 7? it had to be the rising prob of the dark bicyclist winning the 2024 election to 15% from 11% a few days ago.

Victor Hanson says the reason is the increasing woke everywhere. He details 10 examples of this in his current. as I have mentioned many times, the more woke it is the more regulatory capture there is. the big corps, the prof leagues, the Ivys are ecstatic.

nobody asked me but…why is the tall chair Volker lionized for fining the economy by raising rates to 18% in his tenure and trying to make the world free of technology and innovation and growth? No wonder the current chair tries to emulate him to the dark bicyclist's ascent.

now dark unifier at 17.2% prob same as desantis. an amazing increase. doing the rite thing for improvement in his chances and it follows the market nice 4%+ move this week in S&P and Nasdaq but strangely bonds are down 7 percentage pts at 60-day low. somehow the signaling of the bears in bonds to help the dark one are believable. the chair mite be switching his allegiance to 30-year bonds.

query: the traders instruction book is full of signals to buy grains around the new moon. has it worked for grains and others markets? someone would kindly explain this study to me:

Impact of the Moon Phases on Prices of 110 Equity Indices and Commodities

looking at the 4 years since 1996 that as of sep 15 were down for the year: 2000, 2008, 2011, 2015. the change to the end of the year was approximately -100 points with 3 of 4 down for the year. before 1996 the same qualitative expectation.

for the 11 years it was up from the beginning of the year, all were up from sep 15 to the end of the year about the same 100 S&P pts as the move when it was down for the year. note that 4 observations is not statistically meaningful.

of all the Sherlock Holmes stories, my least favorite is The Hound of the Baskervilles. however, there is some great advice for speculators in it. Lord Baskerville had made back his fortune by speculating in S. African equities. "however knowing that after a big win it is good to stop, he withdrew his money from S. Africa at the top and lived comfortably and generously in his mansion" (i paraphrased). the question of the ideal stopping point is a very good one. Certainly not at the bottom like most gamblers but perhaps not at the top.

a correlation between being the first on Yankees to kneel during the National Anthem and subsequent quitting? and Boone was his usual self in praising Hicks when he benched him. was it partly because of the kneeling?

Yankees' Aaron Hicks benched after terrible mistake leads to runs

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

7

Timely advice

September 7, 2022 | Leave a Comment

timely advice from 1904 Wall Street Speculation: Its Tricks and Tragedies:

By the time the insiders are ready to sell their stocks, the insiders have the public all deceived into believing that it is now just the time to buy and on the other hand when the insiders are ready once more to buy stocks, it is as easy to have the public again misled into thinking that now it is the time to sell if they would get out before the crash comes.

many persons don't have the dignity of receiving my tweets since they are held because they are not uniformly in favor of the bicyclist. the only way persons get my tweets is if I pay to promote. while I have 9000+ followers because of my payments, a normal tweet of mine will only receive 4000 impressions because the tweets are restricted. now that the bicyclist is at a max of 15% in his prob of winning, perhaps the canceling will not be as egregious.

it was a jay powell day, "green all around except in Texas." methinks he doth protest too much as do the colleagues especially now that they see the bicyclist has the weather gage.

Sep

6

by the way, unlike the contrived biases of the Harvard pseudo-stat, master of self-fulfilling questionnaire to college students, the stock market shows real biases. one is the tendency to take small profits after a big loss. all who sat thru the depression succumb.

free associations: 37-day low in S&P at 3941 (july 18, 2022, was 3811), fake hecklers, blood red, 2 marines, unifying, semi, amnesia, founder of regression, senate prob of 38%.

application for drs. these days: "what have you done to stamp out and reverse?"

a good essay query for incoming students: compare and contrast the post-game interview of the home run champion with the beaten female star. pay particular attention to the compliments to competitors and teammates. what is the signif of this for market and crime?

Sherlock Holmes has numerous gems of advice for market people. My favorite is how he discards useless knowledge for useful ones. Let us not allow the useless to crowd out the useful ones. In this he was very similar to Emanuel Lasker the champion chess player of Victorian times.

How does this apply to markets? remember when the whole world is giving you one reason after another to sell like now and symbolized by El Erian and the always-bearish former mayor's news and data service - remember how the old time cliques worked. when they wanted to accumulate, they fed the newspapers and important players bearish but very persuasive news. and when they wanted to sell, the opposite. what is the solution? discard the ephemeral and concentrate on the 10,000-fold a century drift - especially when the market is at a 30 day minimum.

Lasker like Sherlock never studied opening games or book games as it crowded out his creativity during games. I hated to get coached in between racquet games as it dampened my free style.

Vic's twitter feed

Sep

3

Tiger Management founder Julian Robertson dies at 90

I enjoy reading obituaries because there is a series of events that we use to describe a person - at the same time there is this internal rollercoaster of emotions going on - which we never know.

Alston Mabry adds:

From the NYT obit:

“I had become convinced that the hedge fund was the way to invest,” he
recalled, and that short-selling was “a license to steal.”

Mr. Robertson prospered, but in the mid-1990s his performance grew
ragged amid the mania for untested dot-com stocks. Investors withdrew,
and in 2000 a baffled Mr. Robertson, his strategy no longer working,
closed shop.

“There is no point in subjecting our investors to risk in a market
which I frankly do not understand,” he told investors.

In a 2004 biography, “Julian Robertson: A Tiger in the Land of Bulls
and Bears,” Daniel A. Strachman quoted Mr. Robertson as saying, “The
mistake that we made was that we got too big.” This meant, he added,
that “to make it meaningful we had to buy a huge amount of a company’s
stock, and there were only a few companies” where that was an option.

Easan Katir remembers:

While on a road show pitching a private equity deal in 1989 I recall a rendezvous Dean Witter had arranged at Tiger Management. I briefly chatted with Julian. He handed us off to a few of his cubs for the meeting. RIP, Julian.

Sep

3

I was reading upside down to a grandkid today. Its an interesting exercise. Requires a mental readjustment. I recall some people looking at charts upside down. They are not the same. The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix used to play recordings of guitar played backwards. Bach used palindromic music. Also an interesting effect requiring a mental shift. This kind of exercise is good for the mind.

Alston Mabry responds:

In learning science this is called "disfluency." If one group reads some material normally, and a second group reads it upside down, the second group will have significantly better retention of the material over any given time frame. It's been done with things like normal type vs funky, hard-to-read type, as well as clear type versus fuzzy type. The group that struggles more mentally to read the material demonstrates greater retention.

Zubin Al Genubi adds:

In the book Why We Sleep he says a full night's sleep after learning helps retention by over 40% over all night crammers.

Nils Poertner writes:

reading a text upside down can have other positive effects, eg:
1. pay attention to the white between the black ink letters,
2. then turn it right again and read the text
3 reading is then typically easier

we all learn to read letter by letter. "w" "e", too, but overtime we tend to rush things and want to grasps whole words and lines but vision is all about habits and a lot more than reading a text.

smart phones support bad visual habits , as one is tricked to look at the whole text at once - but we need to practice the art of looking at details -at least from time to time, too, and to remember it. we got to remember things- memorize - that gives us the speed later. and first, we got to relax the visual field /brain (looking at white spaces is just one way to achieve it- there is a lot more one could say - see Bates method uses micro print for visual relaxation- yes micro print).

Easan suggests:

The advent of inverse ETFs helps look at charts upside down, doesn't it?

Archives

Resources & Links

Search