News

How Durable? Durable Goodfs orders dropped 6.3 percent in April: New Orders New orders for manufactured durable goods in April, down following four consecutive monthly increases, decreased $19.9 billion or 6.3 percent to $296.3 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau announced today. This followed a 7.6 percent March increase. Excluding transportation, new orders increased 0.2 percent. … Read More

“Holiday Monday Worth Getting Out Of Bed For…”  (What, you mean you didn’t get there from the headline?) With major T-storms passing over, we are between satellite unlinks in the woods today; Starlink works well except the “CenturyLate” email drops, so to get email, we get onto one of two flavors of the Viasat backup bird. Sometimes … Read More

Well, here it is, a few minutes before 5 AM on a holiday Sunday, and before heading out to the shop, a visit to the 3806 (LSB) ham radio group was in order.  There was “John-boy” (“coffee good!”) and a new fellow I hadn’t talked to before discussing the finer points of fly killing. With … Read More

Nothing like woo-woo research to sharpen the mind on a long holiday weekend.  So this morning, thanks to a major contribution from my consigliere and one of my odd “woo-woo” dreams, we will kick over a few rocks in psychic realms. Of course no morning is complete without a pass through headlines.  And in today’s … Read More

You can tell it’s quiet when… W9IMS is on 14,245 MHz USB at the moment.  Special events station for the Indy Motor Speedway – they will be on againt after this weekend third weekend in July… All work and now play makes George as a…uh….was that a DL calling him?

Tariff Wars are back – in spades.  Trump recommends 50% tariff on European Union starting June 1 and along with that?  Trump tariff Apple iPhones not made in the U.S.. Obviously, the stock market didn’t like hearing it.  Dow futures were down more than -500 and the S&P was down more than 80.  Techs were down … Read More

A couple of Economic releases to deal with.  And yes, our market call pre-open Wednesday on the Peoplenomics side was pretty good (so far). But a short column and a toothache are the highlights here “two out” from a long weekend…. CFNAI Chicago Fed National Activity Indicator.  The Illinois version of economic tea leaves. The … Read More

If we want something to “Memorialize” this coming weekend, buddy do we have the shiznit for ya’ll.  America hasn’t just lost it to China in major industrial categories (shipbuilding comes to mind) but the “rest of world” is kicking our “short of vacation” butts. U.S. Baseline: The U.S. has no federal mandate for paid vacation … Read More

Part of the market wants to jump in the crapper today (NASDAQ) and part is still playing pretend (DJIA).  But the real wager going on comes down to “How right is Ray Dalio?” Ray Dalio, who warned of 2008 market crash, fears ‘something worse’ than recession amid Trump tariffs. Yet the happy-talk choir continues to sing: … Read More

Just busy as hell around our joint in the woods of East Texas.  The “Junior Logging Badge” – raccoons jailbreaking the lean-to greenhouse, kicking out Outlook and moving to Thunderbird. Plus hours and hours in my search to finally prove or disprove to myself whether “scalar” is real or (like Bitcoin) all hype and nothing but … Read More

The new chainsaw arrived Wednesday. Counting the two “Chineseums” that failed this week (bought on sale two years ago), this makes my fifth electric. Best of the bunch remains the Oregon 16″—but it’s corded, and that’s a problem. One workaround is loading up the generator (plus fuel and cords), then tractoring everything down to the … Read More

This is where we look ahead and size up what we can about next week.  Because while the past is full of interesting ideas, those have already “locked” into history.  What seems like it would be more useful would be an in-depth summary of things that will likely impact us (large and small) before they … Read More

Don’t want to be tossed in your TL;DR pile, so we will keep today (and maybe future) columns shorter. World’s going to hell-in-a-handbasket, so who needs fluff, right? Ex-Im Follies We have an Export-Import prices report to deal with.  But, as I’ve been screaming for several decades now, such reports are akin to ‘driving via … Read More