Higgenbotham's Dark Age Hovel

[vincecate]

I am thinking maybe not too much happens tomorrow but over the weekend average joe investor looks things over and decides he should reduce his risk a bit, and next week could be serious. What do others think?

[Higgenbotham]

I am thinking maybe not too much happens tomorrow but over the weekend average joe investor looks things over and decides he should reduce his risk a bit, and next week could be serious. What do others think?

Some are watching for the employment report to trigger something big.

[Higgenbotham]

Back to 100 percent of my account short.

Was wondering.

Just covered 8 percent of my short position near 5130 on the S&P. Still have 92 percent of my account in SDS. Maybe the 5100 area will hold for awhile or maybe the market will cut right through it or gap below it on Monday. Three hours until the close can seem like forever in a market like this and a lot can happen. It doesn't feel like there's been a panic washout yet. But I want to have room to trade a bit in the event the S&P tries to form a head and shoulders on the daily, which would imply a rally back to about 5600.

Covered another 2 percent after the cash close; 90 percent in SDS.

[vincecate]

It doesn't feel like there's been a panic washout yet.

It is only 2 days really. I expect most people don't even know yet. I think that most people have part of their pay automatically going into the S&P500 in their 401k or IRA account and does not really think about it much at all, nor follow the markets, and certainly does not login to their brokerage account every day. So it is too short a time yet for most people to react. I am thinking they will be thinking about it this weekend and maybe do something next week. So I think it could go down even more next week.

[Higgenbotham]

This will be my next project in this Dark Age Hovel: to go through all 214 pages of this hovel and summarize the factual information regarding the outputs that the managerial elite class overseeing the United States has actually generated.

Outputs Related to Toxic Exposures, Reproductive/Children's Health and Transgenerational Effects

12. "Studies show that age-specific testosterone levels in men have been in a slow and consistent decline for several decades. Researchers call the changes “alarming” from an evolutionary point of view."

viewtopic.php?p=87659#p87659

This building could be seen from the Home Depot parking lot Friday where I was loading some supplies for a project at the Dark Age Hovel.

[Higgenbotham]

President Donald Trump said Thursday that his administration would not consider stock market reaction when hammering out the details of its tariff policy.

When asked whether the decision to pause tariffs on many products from Canada and Mexico for one month was due to the stock market, Trump said the decision had “nothing to do with the market. I’m not even looking at the market, because long term the United States will be very strong with what is happening here.”

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/06/trump-s ... arket.html

Trump is probably right that continuing to pump the bubble and all that entails is no longer in the best interests of the country, and hasn't been since the early 2000s or maybe even the early 1980s, as some have said. So take your pick as to where the bubble has to deflate back to, or should deflate back to, in order to reclaim the country.

Trump made the remarks in the Oval Office on Thursday at an event for signing executive orders. Trump was later asked again about the market sell-off and blamed “globalists,” a term he had used to describe companies and countries earlier in the event.

“I think it’s globalists that see how rich our country’s going to be and they don’t like it. Big market out there. But again, they’ve been ripping off this country for years. And they’re going to do great — everyone’s going to do great. But we can’t let this continue to happen to America. Otherwise we’re not going to have a country any longer,” the president said.

Globalization started in earnest in the early 1990s.

Last night, I went through a bag of old hardware from the late 80s and early 90s. Nowadays, most everything is stamped Made in China, so I was curious as to whether I would find such a stamp on any of this old hardware. I did not. Most of the hardware items in the bag were not the type to be stamped (things like bolts) but of the ones that were stamped, all were Made in USA. They are shown below.

Dalio says we can't manufacture here again. We sure as hell can but there will be a price to be paid. It won't be a price that the hedge fund industry will like, though.

Atilla reposted a tweet that he wrote in November 2024.

xTrends
@xtrends

Nov 23, 2024

Trump's new Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent:

"We are going to decide whether we are going to grow our way out of this debt burden, and I think we can, through deregulation, energy independence & dominance in the US, and a growth mindset. I feel very strongly that this is the last chance to grow ourselves out of this."

Sounds great for future America but not for risk assets overall... Say bye bye to deficit and gov spending that created this decades long enormous bubble.

There will be a transition period which may take year(s) and risk assets will suffer greatly. Undoing decades long policy mistakes will have a price. And remember outliers revert with velocity.

Did market know what was coming? I absolutely think so. Otherwise why growth stocks would suffer since Trump's lead in polls.

You see, Bessent talks about bringing growth back but ironically growth stocks are underperforming. Why? Because the market knows that without deficit spending, bubble will burst. And as always hot money / smart money is now leaving high beta growth names before major market turn. They always lead.

While I have doubts that Trump administration and new Treasury Secretary do as they say, if they do, it will be great for the future America but during the transition period, the bubble will burst with velocity.

https://x.com/xtrends/status/1860374806912225502

Trump is doing the right thing, no doubt about it. The problem is the wrong thing was done for decades too long and the price to correct those mistakes I think will be more enormous than all but a very few realize, including me (John probably did realize it).

Where Atilla says, "Say bye bye to deficit and gov spending that created this decades long enormous bubble," and "Undoing decades long policy mistakes will have a price," this chart below does a pretty good job of showing what that looked like. It would be better if it extended further back in time.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN#

The second graph shows the log of the ratio of debt to GDP. Hopefully that's a better way to show the magnitude of the debt. One thing that's interesting is the log of the ratio of debt to GDP used to mostly fall during non recessionary periods. There was an exception to that during the 1980s. Since the year 2000, it seems the log of the ratio of debt to GDP can do nothing except hold steady or rise under any circumstances. But the other thing it shows is that since about 2013 the rise hasn't been so exponential.

"Trump is probably right that continuing to pump the bubble and all that entails is no longer in the best interests of the country, and hasn't been since the early 2000s or maybe even the early 1980s, as some have said. So take your pick as to where the bubble has to deflate back to, or should deflate back to, in order to reclaim the country."

[Higgenbotham]

My take on the stock market tends to be too bearish.

I think there will be several more days, somewhere between 5 and 10, of large losses before there is anything more than a one day relief rally. The S&P could be cut more than half from the all time high during that time, maybe to 2800.

Probably this will be wrong. If it's right, I may quote it, but nobody should take it seriously. Several times I have said the stock market would collapse massively by 2016.

Every dog has its day.

[vincecate]

My take on the stock market tends to be too bearish.

I think there will be several more days, somewhere between 5 and 10, of large losses before there is anything more than a one day relief rally. The S&P could be cut more than half from the all time high during that time, maybe to 2800.

Probably this will be wrong. If it's right, I may quote it, but nobody should take it seriously. Several times I have said the stock market would collapse massively by 2016.

Every dog has its day.

Ya, I have been too bearish in the past too. But I also think below 3000 could happen this month and even 2000 later this year. We will see.
Premarket the S&P500 has been down 3.5% to 4.5% when I checked several times this evening so far.

[Higgenbotham]

The UN estimated the North Korean IT worker scam has generated $250 million to $600 million every year since 2018. As a result, cybersecurity experts of all stripes have banded together to share information about the strategies, profiles, VPNs, and signs to watch for. But AI has emboldened the North Korean scheme, allowing the IT workers to develop scripts so they can hold down as many as six or seven jobs at a time, disguise their appearance, and even alter their voices so they don’t have an accent—or so they sound like a woman instead of a man. Experts predict the scope and scale will expand in 2025, moving across Europe and Asia with well-honed social engineering tactics paired with more aggressive job hunting at European defense and government companies.

Michael Barnhart, an intelligence leader at Google Cloud who has been tracking North Korean threats for years, explained the scheme this way: North Korean engineers, deployed to locations in China and Russia, use AI to create bios with eye-catching company experience highlighted. They work in teams to apply for jobs en masse, using stolen American identities, or with the help of facilitators in the U.S. or abroad. Some IT workers have even created front companies to pose as legitimate recruiting firms or web-design agencies, for instance, that larger Fortune 500 companies then hire—not realizing it’s a North Korean front, said Barnhart.

“Right now, we have North Korean IT workers adapting so much that they’re not even doing IT work anymore,” he told Fortune.

Among global companies, security teams have implemented different systems and strategies for rooting out North Korean IT workers seeking jobs as well as those already employed and working at companies, Barnhart said. And the stakes couldn’t be higher. The FBI reported the money funds nuclear weapons and operations, and the intelligence and data the IT workers illegally pilfer from companies is directed toward extortion, espionage, and data theft.

https://fortune.com/2025/04/07/north-ko ... companies/

Always remember that the world runs at approximately the 97th percentile (in terms of ability).

Yes, the smartest people on average are at the centers of power. But just on average.

The absolute ablest individuals always exist on the periphery. Attila the Hun for example. Some of these individuals will rise to the top when the center collapses and the bailouts are no longer possible.

Divide and conquer has been the strategy employed by The 97th Percentile to hold onto power. By whatever means necessary regardless of the economic and social destruction it leaves in its wake.

It's a new dark age.

They wanted a "diverse" workforce so they could screw American workers. Now they've got one. How did that work out?

The Rise of Never-Ending Job Interviews

Some companies are asking candidates to attend multiple interviews. But too many rounds could be a red flag – and even drive candidates away.
BBC Worklife

Mark Johanson

Every jobseeker welcomes an invitation to a second interview, because it signals a company’s interest. A third interview might feel even more positive, or even be the precursor to an offer. But what happens when the process drags on to a fourth, fifth or sixth round – and it’s not even clear how close you are to the ‘final’ interview?

That’s a question Mike Conley, 49, grappled with. The software engineering manager, based in Indiana, US, had been seeking a new role after losing his job during the pandemic. Five companies told him they had to delay hiring because of Covid-19 – but only after he’d done the final round of interviews. Another three invited him for several rounds of interviews until it was time to make an offer, at which point they decided to promote internally. Then, he made it through three rounds of interviews for a director-level position at a company he really liked, only to receive an email to co-ordinate six more rounds.

“When I responded to the internal HR, I even asked, ‘Are these the final rounds?’,” he says. “The answer I got back was: ‘We don’t know yet’.”

That’s when Conley made the tough decision to pull out. He shared his experience in a LinkedIn post that’s touched a nerve with fellow job-seekers, who’ve viewed it 2.6 million times as of this writing. Conley says he’s received about 4,000 public comments of support, and “four times that in private comments” from those who feared being tracked by current or prospective employers.

“So many people told me that, when they found out it was going to be six or seven interviews, they pulled out, so it was a bigger thing than I ever thought it was,” he says. Of course, Conley never expected his post would go viral, “but I thought that for people who had been on similar paths, it was good to put it out there and let them know that they’re not alone”.

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the- ... wtab-en-us

Maybe Joon Kyung Park (alias Marvin Bidwell) signed up for interview number 8 and got the job. The Corporate America HR zombies probably characterized him as having just the right level of tenaciousness with a generous helping of Puritan work ethic.

[Higgenbotham]

Below is Wynn-Williams' draft opening statement she plans to give before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee:
Chairman Hawley, Ranking Member Durbin and distinguished members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. My name is Sarah Wynn-Williams, and I served as Director of Global Public Policy at Facebook, now Meta, for nearly seven years starting in 2011. Throughout those seven years, I saw Meta executives repeatedly undermine US national security and betray American values. They did these things in secret to win favor with Beijing and build an $18 billion dollar business in China. We are engaged in a high-stakes AI arms race against China. And during my time at Meta, company executives lied about what they were doing with the Chinese Communist Party to employees, shareholders, Congress, and the American public. I sit before this Committee today to set the record straight about these illegal and dangerous activities.

Large corporations in the US have a lot of problems and need to keep a lot of secrets. Part of their vetting process for hiring involves how well a prospective employee can make problems go away and keep secrets. Demonstrated skill in actually solving problems is not what's required.

Probably Joon Kyung Park (alias Marvin Bidwell) has this figured out too.

I can solve technical software-engineering interview questions for top companies like Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft and Amazon quite easily. But I can't manage to actually get an interview. How do I get an interview with a top-tier tech company?

As an Amazon employee that sees a lot of resumes let me tell you why yours will end up in the trash and you will never get a chance to prove yourself to me. The interview process at these large companies is heavily biased toward weeding out potential good candidates on accident, just to make sure we never end up with a bad hire. One red flag alone COULD be looked over by someone reviewing your resume as long as you have a lot of other good points. The second red flag, I stop reading and dump the resume in the trash. My time is too valuable to waste on a bad resume.

First, change your resume so the major red flags I pointed out above are a little less obvious. If you need help with this, there are lots of online resources for writing quality resumes. Second, you should consider getting a job with a real software company.

https://www.quora.com/I-can-solve-techn ... ch-company

And this.

They made sure they never got a bad hire. They got Marvin Bidwell. Good job.