Currency-Driven Monday – Invest in Insanity?

What We Said About Currency Early Futures on a ‘do-nothing’ Monday gave us an ideal example of how to discern whether Forex (foreign exchange/currency trading) was in the ‘drivers seat’ or whethere  value mattered any more. The answer is not particularly encouraging. We noted on the Euro to Dollar chart from Kitco that the dollar … Read More

Updated: Site Maintenance Done

Site Work Done — (Yes???) Done!!! (?)  OK, Frisbee – check it out.  UrbanSurvival should be loading a bit faster now and says on all the fancy software ‘meters’ it’s working.  Links seem to be there, people comments and remarks are appearing…and so forth. It will take a little time to move around the web, as … Read More

4Makers: Ultra-Make Site, Cardboard Art, Design Axioms

Odds of me getting the major speed increase, CMS platform change –  on UrbanSurvival done this weekend?  Zero. Reason?  Competing priorities which (frankly) are more fun. This morning we have three “topics from the heart.”  All centered around that which we do that makes us human.  Other than crows (and a few other animals) humans … Read More

Peoplenomics: The Book

Wednesday will be “Issue #1,000” of Peoplenomics.  Time to pull 20-odd years of study into something for posterity.  Or, was that posterior? The only thing to rival the insanity of the Digital Uprising and quickly emerging Digital Mob Rule is the political process.  Not much of a choice. If you haven’t taken the time to … Read More

Retail – And a Biden-Harris Nightmare

Retail Holds Up One thing about being at home:  People are changing their lifestyles around to cope with the still spiraling Covid-19. You can almost feel it around here:  More “chair time” means a new chair.  New chair?  Well, you need a new chair mat, right?  Long as we’re at it, new keyboard..new…well, you have … Read More

Data Dense Thursday – Social Media Censoring

Many Data Points Let’s go back to what we told our Peoplenomics.com subscribers Wednesday morning: “Options Week Slaughter?” Dow Futures already down 310.  On top of the Wednesday decline.  (I’ll try not to pull my shoulder patting myself on the back, lol.) With markets up 7% (in our Aggregated view – +225% annualized) we were … Read More

In Plain Sight

A change of pace today as we look at a couple of historical oddities. Feels like a fine time to “get unstuck” from the pre-election frenzy.  Because if you’re like us, this has become pretty sickening. Still, we stick to our long-term roots in cyclical economics as the ChartPack reveals some interesting information about what … Read More

Optimism Good – CPI Not So Much

Dueling Data Again Making Sense out of this ‘flipped out’ world is our fascination around here.  Because at every turn, there are red flags the Bull market ignores. After new economic data, the Dow futures were down half a percent, but with online fever going around, NASDAQ futures were up 8-10ths of a percent. The … Read More

A “Missable” Monday – Wonderful Woo-Woo

Stimulus – The “Reality Gap” We’ve been warning you for months not to expect a second economic stimulus until after the election.  Although the market is on pins and needles – waiting for a rally on any hint of breakthrough – we’re as sorely cynical as ever. CNBC’s been running with U.S. stock futures little … Read More

BBQ Review, Tree-Shooting, and the $50 Saw Project

Yes, Better BBQ! I promised a while back that I would write a review as soon as we got the new infrared BBQ rolling and I got some steaks under my belt.  (By the look of it, there’s a lot more than one there, already!) As you can see, the Master Chef snapped this after … Read More

“Can I Beat the Algo’s?”

Can we simple humans out trade the machines (made in our own image), anymore?  It’s far from a theoretical question in markets like these. By many measures (rational ones, like price to book and prices to dividends) markets are at “lifetime extremes.”  But, you wouldn’t know it.  Sadly, as we’ll see in charts this morning, … Read More

Elections on the Titanic

Are You Pulling My Lever? Mostly useless crap in the headlines today.  We will be interested to listen to Rush Limbaugh’s show today because word is president Trump will be doing a Town Hall. Trump was on Hannity Thursday.  As usual, the press doesn’t go over his content, or bother reporting his views.  Like “Pence … Read More

90 Wasted Minutes; Expiring Money is Coming

10 Things Better Than the Debate OK…I watched it.  What a freakin waste of time.  OMG!  What would have been better? Going to bed 90-minutes earlier.  That would have had health benefits. Listening to some smooth jazz and meditating.  Although, I would have been asleep in 5… Praying.  But that would still land me sleeping … Read More