News

“What’s a PWoP?”  [ PWoP, N. pronounced pee-wop] That’s shorthand around here for People (or Person) Without Purpose.  And, it’s a mighty-fine topic to take up on a Monday morning when so much of the daily news-flow, here in the summer doldrums, is like reading an amateur’s attempt to re-write the always-entertaining Hints from Heloise.  … Read More

We’re coming up to the time of year when people begin to unload motorhomes – cheap.  Fair-weather RV’ers look at depreciation and the cost of insurance and maintenance in winter.  Best deals?  Likely after deer season.  First week of January, or shortly after in many states. I have been watching the prices of them closely … Read More

“The What?” Art of Making Money, of course! Since we are still in the lazy part of summer – and we expect the market to be screaming to new highs in the coming few weeks, we will focus  – as all natural-born gamblers would – on the art of taking money from the house. After … Read More

Short course in business:  6 P’s. Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. If you are new to the idea of “prepping” rest assured the field is infinitely large and totally overloaded with mostly useless crap – especially on the web.  I say this, having started UrbanSurvival in 1997.  In the 20+ years I have been writing … Read More

One of the things beaten into my head in grad school back-in-the-day was to always look at Standard Accounting Ratios (SARs). A fine example is when looking at long-term data, you don’t go back and look at how many people were working last month, or even last year.  You go back and pencil out the … Read More

We find ourselves in an interesting kettle of fish today with the markets taking the Fed decision Wednesday NOT to move rates as a negative.  Forget the fact that most experts were predicting no move.  That doesn’t matter to a world “on edge” about the Middle East, trade discussions, and, oh yeah, the ongoing left-wing … Read More

Both involve making money. One has to do with our “heartbeat of the market” that we discovered hidden in the data recently.  Not perfectly regular, but close enough for trading. So one deep though this morning deals with a new finding in the “heartbeat.”The second is how we plan to play the Fed announcement today. … Read More

There is  an art to living that doesn’t get enough attention, as we see it:  People don’t focus enough on effectively spending their money. You see, once you have a roof over your head, the difference – particularly when asleep – between living in a MacMansion or a double-wide trailer is approximately zero given the … Read More

Case-Shiller, S&P, CoreLogic Press Release being with the headline “RISE IN HOME PRICES REMAINS STEADY AT 6.4% ACCORDING TO S&P CORELOGIC CASE-SHILLER INDEX ”  which – since we’ve seen lumber futures fall 7% in the last two sessions, we truncated to a more believable ” HOME PRICES REMAINS STEADY.” No one likes to consider a … Read More

It is common-consensus in the media today that the Fed – which gavels in this morning and announces rates tomorrow at 2 PM Eastern  – will not move to change interest rates.  But we see a rather intriguing possibility now peeking out of our charts – namely they could. First, it’s axiomatic (around here, anyway) that … Read More

There is a mighty dance underway – somewhere between a waltz, the boogaloo with a side of the twist – and behind it, a major debate.  Seems about half the smart people think news drives markets.  The rest believe that’s wrong because any damn-fool can tell markets drive news. This week, we’ll be watching the … Read More

The story of how Elaine and I ended up here in the Piney Woods of East Texas is a book’s worth.  Three or four if we count all the lessons learned (from mistakes made) along the way.  With this weekend’s return of reports on UrbanSurvival we’ll be taking a more holistic view of prepping – … Read More

In one of our “let the mind wander” deep-thinking pieces, we today look at the history of radio technology as an analog to development of modern digital platforms. Somehow, from there, we end up considering computational ecosystems and which companies need to buy what in order to “own more future.” After headlines and charts, we … Read More