Financial topics

[jcsok]

Hig - just want to let you know that I'm still around, waiting patiently, but I'm not much of a trader, more of a long term picture guy. I haven't been on the short side since 1450; I'm almost ready, just not there yet. Since the T bonds have rolled over I'm very interested in the short side again. I have never been ready to play the Russian Roulette on the long side during this run. Exited most of my cattle herd 2.5 years ago because I wasn't greedy. Cattle fell off the cliff. EX will too. War is coming.

[Higgenbotham]

I've been recalling some of the casualties of the last bubble that ended in 2007. In 2006, Jerry Favors and Zoran Gayer passed away at relatively young ages. Both had been bearish starting in maybe 2004 and both were very good and well respected analysts. Jerry was 52 and Zoran was perhaps 60. Bubbles can kill if you get on the wrong side of them for too long.

http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/name/j ... =guestbook
https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/ ... yer.67863/

[Higgenbotham]

Hig - just want to let you know that I'm still around, waiting patiently, but I'm not much of a trader, more of a long term picture guy. I haven't been on the short side since 1450; I'm almost ready, just not there yet. Since the T bonds have rolled over I'm very interested in the short side again. I have never been ready to play the Russian Roulette on the long side during this run. Exited most of my cattle herd 2.5 years ago because I wasn't greedy. Cattle fell off the cliff. EX will too. War is coming.

I made some money on the short side between 2009 and 2011. But starting in late 2011 to about mid 2014 I lost a lot of money on the short side. From mid 2014 to now, I made some money on the short side.

I agree the market is not quite done. The recent break looks more like the February 2007 and February 2011 breaks than anything else I can think of. It reminds me a whole lot of February 2007 just as subprime started to rear its head and nobody feared it or understood it, but it was there nonetheless. That month, there was a very quick and sharp drop in the market. I am not short now. I've been trading from the long side since Friday, but small. Also went long a few select stocks.

[aeden]

In other words, those concerned that yields may spike further tomorrow - and slam stocks - have good reason: the OMB may unveil the first republican non-balancing budget. Actually, one look at the 30Y Treasury shows that the selling has already begun. tyler

I think the dead cat will bounce from here some and we will resume a slow grinding soul crushing down leg. This is purchasing power to the ivory tower Keynesian veil cults. The smaller North American short position will be closed since cash will always be King. One thing we all must remember is the German lesson that wages fueled inflation as we are told the well heeled money just left the region as the common market was abandoned giving rise to evil intent. Many expected the Euro to collapse already and we seen Soros blather about Brexit since it appears He just may survive regional currency wars once again intact. I seen they trotted out the anti fragile guy again and will catch up with that when time allows. I still guess cascading failures such as water wheat and weather will dominate logical zone collapses as we seen before. Ninety nine percent do not even pretend to care about market conditions since even they fathom how corrupted things actually are. The Queen of the Damned still walks free. I also wanted to note the actual street conditions in northern California as even the African American community is seeing the rapid implosion in actual conditions. The normal taxpayer people of all stripes are seeing it as the dimmcrats generals lost the last war. What is the difference between rhinos and moleks? Nothing...

https://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default ... k=q4NXhWMn

Yellow Cake plane crash: https://youtu.be/lnhYJ-3MS8I

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpT4eigk5j4 eb5 linkages again --- drugs in - weapons out....

https://www.documentcloud.org/documents ... tions.html non vetted

Taxpayers are not amused with the inability's seen to negate this evil as we are looted to serfdom of design.

US consumers deep in the red on their household debt, just what will keep the US economic expansion going from this point on is far less clear, especially if the stock market has now peaked, as recent events suggest. tyler

[aeden]

The sources of water have dried up and the water taps will soon have to be shut off completely.
Current estimates put that day – now called “Day Zero” – sometime in mid-April. http://www.aish.com

[Higgenbotham]

The sources of water have dried up and the water taps will soon have to be shut off completely.
Current estimates put that day – now called “Day Zero” – sometime in mid-April. http://www.aish.com

As of now, there is water rationing previously unheard-of in modern civilized cities. People are urged not to flush toilets, to shower and bathe infrequently with minimal water, and walking around with unwashed hair is considered a sign of national patriotism. The government admits they are facing a probable total collapse of their economy, their infrastructure, and their way of life.

Recent comments here:

The reason the stock market still exists right now is that it's been massively supported with bailouts that the civilization cannot afford and has come at the expense of massively decaying infrastructure and other problems.

Similar to national economies and governments, centralized utilities will fail or become so decrepit as to be unsafe and unusable. All centralized utilities including the power grid will shut down permanently.

Today's news:

The U.S. stock market extended gains on Monday as investors digested the newly released plan by the Trump administration to spend $200 billion to spur work on the nation’s infrastructure.

I started working in infrastructure engineering 4 years ago. The pay and working conditions were so horrible I gave it up last year. I thought with a need that great, something would be done to improve pay and working conditions, but it wasn't. Don't expect the situation now occurring in South Africa to be averted here.

[John]

No problem. The cities and states will pay for everything.

[Higgenbotham]

$4 trillion to bail out criminal banks, while we were told "saving banks" was essential to our survival and, today we read, $200 billion for infrastructure.

Something else probably worth mentioning is that none of the Millennials hired to do infrastructure engineering work were taught the essentials because the universities no longer teach the courses. The reason universities no longer teach the courses is that essentially no infrastucture has been built in the US in 40 years. If anyone doubts this, try to find a course in a US university for design of buried piping systems. I only know of 3 universities in the US that teach such a course.

[Higgenbotham]

From another infrastructure engineer on the electrical side (written 2 years ago):

I have noticed that my own company is drastically reducing stock levels which is making the JIT systems of my customers even more brittle as I have had several situations just this week where something has broken down and neither my warehouse nor my customer has the parts to enact a fix and down-times are lengthening because companies have to wait for parts to come in.

Seeing these issues just re-enforces my fear of a very rapid breakdown of civic infrastructure should the financial system grind to a halt, I mean if the lack of a 5KV splice kit can down an entire steel processing line for days then what will happen when critical infrastructure component goes down and replacements are a six to eight week lead time away because no-one wants to keep the stock on the shelves?

https://ourfiniteworld.com/2016/04/18/u ... nt-page-3/

[Higgenbotham]

From Vanderbilt University professor Arthur Demarest, who has studied the collapse of 18 civilizations:

These events illustrate just one of the patterns characteristic of the collapse of civilizations that are now evident in our modern society. This particular one is called “hypercoherence.” This risk is well known by the IT community, but the public aren’t catching on. Hypercoherence is when a society’s systems and its regions become so well integrated and interconnected that when there is a problem or failure in one part of the system, it brings the whole system down. In the case of civilizations or complex societies, such hypercoherence has been involved as one of multiple factors in the decline, upheaval, or collapse of economies, states or empires or even of whole civilizations. By itself hypercoherence would normally lead to a crisis that often could be overcome. However, if such a hypercoherence crisis is combined with some of the other common dangerous weaknesses, it can lead to total disintegration. Our modern global interlinked world already has many such additional weaknesses like shorter and shorter cycles of thinking to judge political leaders, to demand profits of CEO’s, and to plan business or government decisions...

https://www.arthurdemarest.com/hypercoh ... h-airways/

He doesn't mention "Just In Time" inventories here, but it's the same issue. The reason it happens is because it's cheaper to use JIT and in order to compete every company has to use it. So it's a race to the bottom until the inevitable collapse happens.