A Blissfully Quiet Week

(Canyonville, OR) – I don’t need to say a word about politics this morning.

Trump is under fire for things said about a Muslim U.S. soldier, File under “Open Mouth, insert foot.”

Hillary still has her little clouds going. 

For example, Julian Assange says the further Hillary emails to come detail Hil’s arming of ISIS…Remember our discussion back when of where those new Toyota pickup trucks were coming from?  The nasty nest of neocons at State is generous on  your behalf.

And, as always, the worrywarts are pointing at third-parties in the election process and projecting all kinds of unlikely outcomes; like they could conceivably matter. 

They won’t.

Except for the dilution and spoiler potential, it’s a non-story.

On the other hand, I suppose that kind of pap is better than the latest Kardashian filler in a country which can’t wrap itself around real news.

While 80% of news is “scripted” (meaning it comes as a press release not Act of God as we are not on His press release list) we can still find a bit of real news in random tragedy – like the flash flooding in Maryland, for example.

Floods do happen – and extreme weather is nothing to scoff.  But in the meantime, go read the story quickly.  I figure you’ll have about 20-minutes before it’s blamed on global warming as the effort to monetize the weather continues.

That said, and if you’d like some of the global warming Kool-Aid for breakfast, we’d encourage you to see the mantra going over here.  Yes, floods being blamed on Al Gore’s monetization baby.

On the other side – and for those of high mental acuity – we notice the headline about El Nino disappearing.  Except — Wait! — there is still a blob of hot water present.  Which sounds suspiciously like El Nino has declined by not completely expired.  To paraphrase Mark Twain, “Reports of its death may be slightly exaggerated…”

All this means what to students of the Ure University Total Reality School of News Discernment?

I have never paid Bill Clinton a dime and none of our graduates have sued.

– – – –

It is summer.    (Oh dah filler begins like this)

Reporters get to take time off (including Ures truly and the missus who is having a miserable time fleeing the news flow.  The lights go on and coffee is IV’ed in starting at 5 AM Texas Time. 

But that’s OK – I we still have a modest short position to be looked after this week.  S&P 2,175 is a kind of line in the sand I keep eying nervously.

Meantime, as we wait for the markets to open, the futures were nearly flat and the RoW (rest of world) was indecisive as well.  Japan was up 4/10ths percent over night, China up 1%, but in Europe things have gone flat. 

Perhaps the world is waiting for this week’s major statistic which is Friday’s unemployment rate?

PMI data this morning, personal income and expense tomorrow, ADP jobs Wednesday, Challenger job cuts Thursday and then we get The Number on jobs Friday.

After the close Friday the Fed will roll out this month’;s Consumer Debt report (they call it “credit” as in “creditors” coming to look for you…).

All in all, not a bad day to “climb the hills” east of Oregon and Kalifornia up to Reno.

I just wish I could do as well in the market every day as we did at the slots last night:  Up 20%+ for the evening.  Playing with chump change, that’s about enough for parking valet and bag tips…

It’s the percentages that matter.  Ever compound out what 20% daily over a year would be?

Start with $100 and 365 days later you would be at?

I stopped on Day 2 at $120.

I have to go to breakfast blindfolded.

Could such a streak go 55 days unbroken you’d  be at $2.246 million.  At 100 days?  $9.936 billion.

At 180 days:  $17,890,574,572,849,900.

It was while running out numbers like these that I decided to step away from the Casino floor.  I have no intention of paying off the national debt with my gambling winnings, so I took the $20 profit and will give it back to the staff on the way out the door.

And if you’re wondering about a full year of perfect 20% returns?  It’s the magic of compound interest come to life:

$7,964,431,977,149,340,000,000,000,000,000

Now, the only problem is avoiding that next to last roll that takes it all away….as it usually seems to do…

Silver this morning has a nice pop of almost 1% but other than reporting futures to be around flat, this is an excellent day for a drive in the mountains or to take an extended lunch.

The monetizers of death, doom, and destruction are mostly on vacation…where we wish them a good long rest.

The “breaking news” about a Russian chopper down in Syria has some potential…but only if it can be demonstrated that the U.S. had something to do with it.

If that were to be the case…well then some of the handwringing might be worthwhile.  Until then?  Have a blissfully quiet week but clean the flash goggles.

Back to sorting out the difference between weekly S&P options and slot machines.  Haven’t found too much difference so far, except I’ve done better on the slots.