Financial topics

[vincecate]

Also I will nibble on a few hard asset plays for short term trades this morning, as those are safe alternatives to cryptos.

If P/Es are going from 35 to 5 then nothing is really safe, even gold miners.
After the crash, gold miners is one of the first things I would buy, but not today.

[Higgenbotham]

Also I will nibble on a few hard asset plays for short term trades this morning, as those are safe alternatives to cryptos.

If P/Es are going from 35 to 5 then nothing is really safe, even gold miners.
After the crash, gold miners is one of the first things I would buy, but not today.

I traded Marathon Digital and Peabody Energy. I felt there would be a panic out of Peabody, then investors would go hunting for hard asset alternatives. I'm out. I don't have much money to trade with as it's almost all tied up in shorts.

[Cool Breeze]

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the same year the natural rate of increase of the population fell to zero. About 5 years before that happened, the death rate started to rise slowly and the birth rate started to decline (the chart below shows the raw numbers rather than the rates).




In the US, around 2007, the death rate started to rise slowly and the birth rate started to decline (the chart below shows the rates). As of 2019, the natural rate of increase of the population was still well above zero.




In 2020:

Deaths Exceeded Births in a Record Number of States in 2020

May 5, 2021
by: Kenneth Johnson

Many more deaths, fewer births, and less immigration produced the United States’ smallest percentage population gain in at least 100 years.

In 2020, the impact of COVID-19 contributed to a record 3,376,000 deaths in the United States: 18 percent more than in 2019. In addition, births diminished by 4 percent to 3,605,000 in 2020. Because U.S. population growth depends on a surplus of births over deaths, this slowed U.S. population growth in 2020. The surplus of births over deaths added just 229,000 to the population in 2020 compared to 892,000 in 2019: a decline of 74 percent. This decline coupled with diminished immigration produced the United States’ smallest annual percentage population gain in at least 100 years.

https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/snap ... -of-states

It's likely the natural rate of increase of the population in the US will fall to zero in 2021.

Though I don't have the numbers in front of me, many smaller countries (Japan being one obvious example) likely hit zero population growth with no obvious signs of collapse.

This is a great post Higgy. Very interesting. I extrapolate from it that technology provides a buffer for the future a bit, but the realities of this clown economy and centralized hokey pokey economically are a real challenge that even technology can't defeat.

America's natural resource and geographic advantages (ideal) are why guys like Peter Zeihan think "we can't screw this up - we've tried" but I have always focused on how internal identity issues and cultural rot can easily bury countries. The problem is that materialists don't understand this, they think everything is based on economy, when in reality the productive capacity of a a people (the real economy) is 100% dependent on the culture of that people.

[Cool Breeze]

Bitcoin is down 30% this morning to 31,000.

I'm nibbling a little bit on the miners for a trade. I think the institutions will come in this morning and support Bitcoin at this support level, as they have a lot at stake.

The miners just bounced about 3% and I am already out.

Smart move. Institutions are going to gobble this up. It won't go down much further. It'll still be 80k plus by the end of the year, btw. You should actually just hold.

[Higgenbotham]

Bitcoin is down 30% this morning to 31,000.

I'm nibbling a little bit on the miners for a trade. I think the institutions will come in this morning and support Bitcoin at this support level, as they have a lot at stake.

The miners just bounced about 3% and I am already out.

Smart move. Institutions are going to gobble this up. It won't go down much further. It'll still be 80k plus by the end of the year, btw. You should actually just hold.

Institutions were almost certain to support it at 30K. Now that it's back to 37K it gets harder to know where it's going.

[vincecate]

Smart move. Institutions are going to gobble this up. It won't go down much further. It'll still be 80k plus by the end of the year, btw. You should actually just hold.

Institutions were almost certain to support it at 30K. Now that it's back to 37K it gets harder to know where it's going.

If the market really crashes, Bitcoin will crash too.

I wrote up something to try to explain to friends and family why a huge crash can happen.

https://howfiatdies.blogspot.com/2021/0 ... ouble.html

-- Vince

[John]

** 19-May-2021 World View: Velocity of Money

Responding to an idiotic post by Cool Breeze in another thread
made me aware of how much the velocity of money has fallen in
the last year.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

It has REALLY, SIGNIFICANTLY crashed. I hadn't realized that.

[vincecate]

** 19-May-2021 World View: Velocity of Money

Responding to an idiotic post by Cool Breeze in another thread
made me aware of how much the velocity of money has fallen in
the last year.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V

It has REALLY, SIGNIFICANTLY crashed. I hadn't realized that.

If interest rates are near zero there is not much "time value of money" issue to hurry it along.

[Higgenbotham]

Here is my Collapse Anecdote of the Day!

I don't have to look for them nowadays - they just pop up - everywhere!

Alternatively, with the US government planning to pour a trillion
dollars into the economy in various ways, how do I get some of that
money?

You don't have a chance. The most in demand skill in America is not nursing, computer programming, or any of the other things typically cited. The most in demand skill in America is knowing how to waddle up to the window for a bailout. You will need to hire a professional waddler and given the current high demand situation that will be impossible.

Your best bet might be to fake a disability. That's the poor man's waddle.

Today I found the answer.

Hundreds of PPP Loans Went to Fake Farms in Absurd Places

An online lending platform called Kabbage sent 378 pandemic loans worth $7 million to fake companies (mostly farms) with names like “Deely Nuts” and “Beefy King.”


The shoreline communities of Ocean County, New Jersey, are a summertime getaway for throngs of urbanites, lined with vacation homes and ice cream parlors. Not exactly pastoral — which is odd, considering dozens of Paycheck Protection Program loans to supposed farms that flowed into the beach towns last year.

As the first round of the federal government’s relief program for small businesses wound down last summer, “Ritter Wheat Club” and “Deely Nuts,” ostensibly a wheat farm and a tree nut farm, each got $20,833, the maximum amount available for sole proprietorships. “Tomato Cramber,” up the coast in Brielle, got $12,739, while “Seaweed Bleiman” in Manahawkin got $19,957.

None of these entities exist in New Jersey’s business records, and the owners of the homes at which they are purportedly located expressed surprise when contacted by ProPublica. One entity categorized as a cattle ranch, “Beefy King,” was registered in PPP records to the home address of Joe Mancini, the mayor of Long Beach Township.

https://www.propublica.org/article/ppp-farms

[Cool Breeze]

Smart move. Institutions are going to gobble this up. It won't go down much further. It'll still be 80k plus by the end of the year, btw. You should actually just hold.

Institutions were almost certain to support it at 30K. Now that it's back to 37K it gets harder to know where it's going.

If the market really crashes, Bitcoin will crash too.

I wrote up something to try to explain to friends and family why a huge crash can happen.

https://howfiatdies.blogspot.com/2021/0 ... ouble.html

-- Vince

Great write up, Vince.