Dec

27

The market has always been a discursive struggle between the bulls and the bears. A system of oppositions that one might think, would logically or functionally negate each other. Of course, the relationship never stays linear for long and the inevitable convexity leads to a Hegelian resolution of thesis and antithesis.

The dialectical tension between an "impending" (but reluctant to manifest) recession (inverted yield curve) and a resilient economy (Q3 GDP +3.2) and labor market (unemployment 3.7%) underscores the struggle between the "higher for longer" bears, and the bulls who believe in the equivocation of "pause" with "pivot."

A reactive Fed will continue to focus on a strong jobs market and keep its tightening bias, which WILL inevitably cause a deep recession; however, the recession won't come "soon enough" for the Fed to save the day. And, the seemingly gradual descent into negative growth, will allow the recession trade to dominate its opposition.

Larry Williams responds:

The actual economy down but not out or negative:

Gary Phillips replies:

i get what you're saying. (perhaps the economy is strong enough we never have to endure a recession in 2023.)

but, methinks you're missing MY point: the longer the economy "holds on", and the longer it takes for a recession to rear its ugly head, the longer the Fed continues QT ( good news is very bad news). on the other hand, if there was an impulsive and deep, drop in growth, (bad news would be welcomed with open arms) the Fed would be more inclined to pause or pivot sooner (de facto put).

Read the full discussion here with additional contributors and charts.

Dec

22

Click the chart for full view:

Larry Williams responds:

Or this:

Jim Cramer breaks down fresh charts analysis from the legendary Larry Williams

Dec

22

Mr. Wonderful

December 22, 2022 | 1 Comment

correct me if I'm wrong : Mr. Wonderful received 15 million to promote SBF + 3.6 million to cover his taxes: he invested 15 million in crypto and makes a big deal about losing 15 million against 18.6 received. amount of money that was lost by those who were influenced by him is staggering.

somehow Mr. O'Leary should not be on the committee to uncover missing money for those who list billions.

thinking of O'Leary vehement defense, i compare it to Stockholm syndrome, "he doth protest too much, put a thief on a horse and he'll gallop." this picture it best: Willie Sutton disguised as policeman in front of bank he robbed. "how could you ask an officer to violate law."

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

14

i have had the pleasure of reading or listening to 1 book a day for the last 4 years. here are the books i find the most educational or enjoyable that i listen to about once a week.

The Time It Never Rained
Don Quixote
On the Origin of Species
Master and Commander
Americana: A 400-Year History of American Capitalism
American Dispatches from the New Frontier
Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined
The Art Of Travel: Or Shifts And Contrivances Available In Wild Countries

all these books are highly recommended and great for education and mollifying anxieties. All i listened to on Audible (i have 470 books ordered from them) except for Origin, Benjamin Franklin, Art of Travel and Infrastructure.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

14

revelations from start to finish and duration of many years:

Crypto Critics Corner: Sam Bankman-Fried Arrested

as mentioned family frauds are the most difficult to unravel. query: why is quickbooks considered an inappropriate accounting system to a company? it seems very useful to me.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

11

Fish in the sea

December 11, 2022 | Leave a Comment

thanks to all who wished me happy birthday.

Someone in a Tree - Stereo - Pacific Overtures - Original Broadway Cast

there are so many fish in the sea. five declines in row, followed by a rise, decline. 22-day low since nov 8. in honor of my 80th birthday, 2 patterns both very bullish, t's of 4 five days later. program originally written by Sue and me in 1979. "i was younger then." still here.

The Mikado (Finale)

fish in the sea. last 2 FOMC meetings witnessed S&P down more than 100 big sp each— the serial correlation is 0. on a favorable note the Ray-Ban bicyclist is up to 23% prob of winning versus 12% 2 weeks ago.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

11

the most demoralizing recent fraud I was victimized by was particularly disturbing as it involved my books which is a tribute to my parents who had a library of books even bigger than mine since my father was paid by all the publishers to thro books in the river but he saved them.

the fraud inflicted on me was a big con. (1) i received a call out of the blue: a book seller told me that I was buying lots of his books so would i mind if he came over to look at my collection. (2) he recommended that I sell my books at a well known dealer out of state.

(3) the book seller i had done business with but she was in mourning — a friend was very sick. she sent me one of her most trusted lieutenants to go thru my collection. (4) the lieutenant told me my books had mold and that i should send them to her principal so that they could be restored and evaluated.

(5) the new book seller in a nice touch told me not to worry too much about it as the mold was not particularly damaging. he also sent me a video of his father who was a very venerable professor like my father. i took aubrey to visit the old book seller.

(6) i received an offer for my books for about 1/5 of what I paid for them (i had held them for an average of 20 years). seeing all my books presumably with mold and taking account of the tragic situation of my book seller i accepted the offer in haste.

(7) on the train home i began to rethink the situation. (8) i met the new bookseller on the train and asked him why he was at the meeting. he said how was he going to get paid if he wasn't involved?

(9)the next day i called and offered 25% more than the accepted price to cancel. the old book seller (he or she) said that they couldn't accept my cancel and offer since the books were already in play. (10) there were some other turns in the big con. they offered to send me half the books back for a price. so I would be assuaged. but they were the remnant.

i cried about my idiocy for several weeks and haven't gone back to my library in 2 years as it's too painful.

one lesson for the current excitement about crypto is never to let your goods out of your possession. also never accept a recommendation from a celebrity or friend without asking what their piece of the deal was.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

7

If Timing in mkts is everything - I mean everything - how can one improve it?

Few yrs ago, there was this mixed martial arts boxer called Chuck Liddell. He had amazing timing like no other one else had - and was mostly a counter-boxer. Eventually others figured him out but he has his run. He observed his opponents carefully- - and in the right moment broke the pattern and leaped forward when his opponent didn't expect it. Same parallels to trading mkts perhaps?

a - observe everything
b - develop a bit of courage for the leap (but only after a and plenty of practice)
c - practice.

William Huggins responds:

reminds me of Miyamoto Musashi's exhortation to his students that breaking the opponent's rhythm was the most important part of competition. He suggested a number of techniques (fight with the sun behind you, chase opponent onto uneven ground, stab at the face, etc) but I wonder if those are of limited applicability when squaring off against faceless (and innumerable) market-based opponents simultaneously.

his Book of Five Rings is hundreds of years old and thus free everywhere.

John Floyd writes:

Extending on your martial arts analogy….and bringing in the law of everchanging markets…timing is improved in terms of outcome and consistency if one recognizes and can adapt to prevailing conditions, using experience and intuition, and what tools to pull out of the quiver and employ.

This article from one of my teachers talking about my esteemed dojo mate Paul Williams is a worthy read on an application of timing.

Zubin Al Genubi adds:

One of Miyamoto's strategies was run, then suddenly turn and attack while fleeing. I've found it a useful trading strategy. He would also arrive to a duel early, or late, throwing off the opponent's timing.

Paolo Pezzutti comments:

Intermarket relationships can provide good timing. For example when bonds print a new 20-day it is quite bullish for stocks over the next days. Buy signal last Friday at the close. Since Mar 20 holding 3-5 days T-score up to 4. Last 10 trades after 5 days all positive. (Chart on TWTR.)

Dec

7

Watching Victoria via PBS Masterpiece sub, and it's shown that, during the 19th century, one treatment for syphilis was basically a mercury sauna, inhaling the vapors - yikes!

The history of syphilis is an interesting case for seeing how quack medical treatments, such as mercury, were applied and killed people even more quickly. Of course, one shouldn't judge too harshly as they were treating things of which they had no understanding.

The relevance to trading is that humans have an impulse, when confronted with challenges they don't understand, to resort to superstition and to believe anything that is claimed with great confidence.

Penny Brown notes:

Flaubert took the mercury treatment for syphilis and as a result his tongue turned blue.

Laurel Kenner adds:

Qin Shi Huang, first emperor of China, drank mercury-infused wine to attain eternal life. Rivers of mercury surrounded his burial chamber, a depiction of China. Qin died at 49.

Gyve Bones writes:

We saw examples of that in the recent pandemic. At first "masks don't work. Don't wear masks." then… "Everyone must wear a mask at all times, even alone outside or in a car." Then "The virus stops dead in the vaccinated person, who will not get Covid, and won't spread it to others." then… "Anthony Fauci contracts COVID three times, but is certain it would have been worse had he not been quad-jabbed."

Now there's this disturbing study which shows the effects on infant cord blood and their immune systems from mothers who have been infected with COVID.

Henry Gifford comments:

The early instruction for people to not wear masks was so that security cameras could see people’s faces. The police seem to really love security cameras with an enthusiasm that strikes me as going above and beyond any usefulness to “fight crime”.

There was the time a landlord in NYC put a camera outside a tenant’s door to prove if the tenant was using the apartment as a “primary residence”, and would therefore still be entitled to rent protection or not. The tenant’s boyfriend put bubble gum on the lens and was promptly hunted down and arrested and charged with every crime the cops could think of, with an enthusiasm certainly not caused by anyone’s love for a NYC landlord.

Not being seen clearly on security cameras was, if I remember correctly, sometimes even stated as the reason to not wear masks, which made me wonder – if they think masks work, more people dying is OK as long as people can be seen on cameras?

Pamela Van Giessen responds:

Henry — There exists decades of research that show that masks do not reduce transmission. I have yet to see meaningful evidence (research or real world) that shows that they do work. The current situation in China would seem real world validation of the lack of mask effectiveness. Lockdowns don’t seem to work much either. Most people don’t die from covid either. They don’t even get very sick.

Henry Gifford writes:

I tend to believe things if they can be measured, if the measurements can be repeated by others, and if they can be explained by the laws of physics. I tend to not believe anything not meeting these three criteria. As the owner and fairly regular user of over fifty measuring instruments, the measuring part often means measured by me.

Continued…

Dec

4

that third person - who asked re SBF, "why aren't you in jail you piece of —" - just won national merit scholar. one is very proud. i've known that 3rd person for a major portion of his life.

why do prices fluctuate so much? to give speculators hope and make them trade excessively.

seems to be sapient piece except for refusal to acknowledge that 90% of spending actual or promised was to bicyclist — which is expected on mayor's site:

11 Hours With Sam Bankman-Fried: Inside the Bahamian Penthouse After FTX’s Fall

also the secret back door exempting Alameda from margin requirements that others had, and fact that FTX invested more in venture capital firms than they invested in him. but mostly how is a person left with only $100,000 if his parents and friends took 87 million from co?

guess they're saving the reduced employment for close to elections. the 44 strategy.

calling out to Mr. E who always lives even when feet first, who always said that he spoke to the then Pres and he was saving the employment numbers for the coming election. we miss him greatly. the Falstaff and always ready to take care of the woke.

finally verification that FTX gave comparable money to R's as D when he gave 10 million to 46 campaign and promised 1 billion more. he said he gave dark money to R's but was it comparable to "second biggest donor to d's next to palindrome"?

here's a pretty kettle of fish: two small daily declines but from a big x-day high but last small decline had a tremendous rise from 9:30. like everything it has happened before but let's say 5 times in last 11 years.

where's it going. not much to make the professor happy. to add to kettle we have bonds at big y-day high putting them all together into kettle — only happened once in last 10 years.

Vic's twitter feed

Dec

1

DealBook to ask SBF "tough questions". perhaps 1 million investors and their counselors who have lost (10 billion?) will be not as forbearing? i would ask verification of his interview that he gave as much to both sides of the aisle. apparently according to interview with Asian reporter he gave money to other side darkly so that he wouldn't be ridiculed by agrarian sources. either way it's deception like the angler fish. i'd also ask him to expatiate on his statement that he doesn't read books.

Mr. Gitarts or Mr. Aiken who knows infinitely more about the crypto than I: "what questions would you ask SBF at end of deal book conference?" to the observer he seems to be the Houdini and the spider of deception.

a third person who knows as much about crypto as anyone answers my query, "why aren't you in jail you piece of — ?"

Barry Gitarts writes:

Yes, SBF was an outright fraud, but there are other things brewing in the space that have been banned a long time ago in traditional markets but have emerged again in crypto.

Remember the bucket shop? Well it's back as a crypto protocol. It pools investors money and will offer a trader a slippage free trade, the trader gets to choose when they enter and exit, however the pool charges 10BPS on the way in and on the way out, they charge double digit interest rates on the position even unlevered and offer up to 150x leverage which of course leads to liquidations.

So how has it done? Since inception in 2021, traders have lost $40m to this pool, and that is not counting interest, trading and liquidation fees. The pool currently holds $375m in assets, one year ago it had $100M in assets.

One would think traders would leave the venue after consistently losing, but trading volume recently hit a new high of $1B notional traded in a day.

Big Al adds:

The question I would ask is, "Who got those billions that SBF lost?" Mr. Gitarts comments may be a trailhead.

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