We have a strange way of looking at markets. Theory I cobbled-up called Aggregate Market Theory (AMT).
The thinking is very simple (with me, it would have to be, right?) If you have 10-dollars on you, it doesn’t matter whether you have a five in your left pocket and a five in your right. Or, if you have all $10-bucks in your back pocket. It’s still just $10-bucks.
Likewise, it doesn’t matter where the Dow, S&P 500, or NASDAQ Composite like. What matters in our way of looking at markets (which evolved and is tracked twice-weekly on our Peoplenomics.com side) is the aggregate movement.
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Let me explain how this has been a “nothing year” so far.
As the year began, the Dow was about 24,922.68 (closing basis, January 3). The S&P 500 was 2,713.06 while the NASDAQ was hovering about 7,065.03. Apply our equal-dollar weighting (basis 2000) and it looks like 22,574 and change.
Monday closed with the Dow 23,573.04, the S&P at 2,677.84 and the NASDAQ ended at 7,145.28. But again, applying our equal-dollar weighting, we come up with 22,649.5.
When we look at the Aggregate market (for the year to date), it looks like the Aggregate has improved only 3-10th’s of one percent in 3-1/2 months. Repeated for the balance of the year, it offers the gloomy prospect of very small gains for serious, long-term, buy and hold investors.
Sadly, picture is even worse when we add in an adjustment for monetary inflation; that is, printing like hell at the Federal Reserve is still committed to “printing through” the second Depression.
Since January 1, M1 (cash and equivalents) has increased at an annualized rate of 5.3 percent while M2 (a broader measure) is up 2.5%. You can check my figures (through April 2) in the Fed’s week H.6 Money Stocks report here, if you can’t believe it.
Immigration Deleveraging
As you know, the economic press in ‘Merica ain’t the brightest bulbs in the house. They are trained to report minutia (footnotes in financial statements are meaningful, don’t get me wrong) but they are lost in the woods on macro factors.
One of these is immigration.
We have the prototypes in Europe, though, where even though the mass migration from north Africa and the Middle East brought tons of social change (and one that will cost governments of Europe terribly in the longer term due to native versus migrant birth rates and such), the fact is that immigration is one way to “grow a country.” Or, at least, seem to on the surface.
The problem for the US today is that while we are nominally doing “better” at border controls, the effect of higher entry barriers seems to have been an upward monetization of crossings led by coyote-like people, and that has meant more black tar heroin coming in that way.
Just in the past week, we were reading how black tar was behind a major increase in wound botulism in the San Diego region. More border pressure may actually increase drug flow.
Authoritatively, the UN reports (data here) that the biggest heroin poppy growing country is still Afghanistan. 201,000 hectares of growing fields…which pencils out to 766 square miles.
With US policy otherwise nonsensical, we find it’s a sad-to-sick line to connect US foreign policy with dominance in drugs. But, as we’re always reminding, Everything’s a Business Model…border crossings, black tar, and the corrupt political system of America.
Toss in Mexico’s own poppy operations (100 square miles) and it’s easy to see there are no easy answers to relations with our narco-state neighbors to the south. The Lao People’s Democratic Republic (which ain’t) anjd Myanmar, round out the picture, save a few plots in Colombia and such.
A Big Economic View
Which may bring the world into clearer focus for you, goes something like this:
- The Deep State is at war with Trump
- The Deep State is highly invested in the narco-business model.
- At a practical level, a wall would lead to a period of “withdrawal hell” that no one seems to be writing about.
- Tightening immigration won’t reduce Mexico’s poppy oppies.
- Farm labor rates may rise of reduced seasonal labor.
- And all of the ends with the continuing reduction of white Americans who are being out-screwed by recently arrived replacement citizens who will be 90% democrat.
- And so, with Social Justice as their “cause” the take-down of America is moving right along…
- Our money’s becoming worth less, and we expect Scott Pruitt at EPA will be next to do having shaken the regulatocracy at EPA.
See how simple this all is?
People made fun of old Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, who successfully (if you can call it that) navigated his country through a massive hyperinflation. Like it, or not, the US fed is using Modern Monetary Theory to push the economic shell of a country forward while we have, to use a boatyard term, the social version of “rot below decks.”
Toss in what we think of as “digital lynchings” by the SJW snowflakes, and it’s comedic at best.
On to Housing Starts
Just out from Census….but WAIT!
Remember Rod Stewart? Said it best: “Every Picture Tells a Story…” which appeals to our graphical mindset at the moment. Here, let me save a thousand words:
“Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”
Industrial Production and Utilization from the Fed around 9:15 (Eastern) this morning could change things…we shall see, but no upsets are priced in to thge market by the look of things. Dow futures up 200.
On the wires?
Goldman profit up 27 percent as trading surges.
Tesla says Model 3 production shut down temporarily.
Meanwhile, at the Circus
No Immediate Ruling on the FBI’s Raid of President Trump’s Lawyer Michael Cohen.
Register Knives?
The mayor of London’s agenda to ban certain knives is being adopted by media as the liberal grab for everything continues. I’m thinking the story Knife crime: What’s it like to be stabbed? is part of the media’s new party line.
The real pain my be in the hospital bills, but they didn’t seem to get into that. Not part of the narrative?
When we see an pseudo-gov outfit like BBC, we think in psyop terms of a “shaping operation.”
Latter-Day Hobos?
Homeless encampments increasingly affecting California train traffic.
Say What?
Scientists hope new enzyme will ‘eat’ plastic.
Am I the only one who remembers the problem when a virus evolved that could eat rubber? Quick! Go read “The Andromeda Strain!”
This is Award-Winning?
NYT and New Yorker win joint Pulitzer for Weinstein exposé.
Sheesh.
Well, world is still crazy…so off to work on Peoplenomics and to tear up the floor in the master bath. Water leak…chance to redo, redecorate and upgrade.
Pass me the Sawzall ?
George, I urge you and your readers to watch this very rare/ unknown movie from 1970. Its called
BROTHERHOOD OF THE BELL, and it describes the deep state / TPTB and how they control things thru venues of IRS, media, tv, business, law enforcement, etc. This is the type of film that requires repeated viewing to catch hidden messages. Put on a pair of headphones and listen to the dialog and enjoy this film. There isn’t 1 weak actor in this . Towards the end of the film, they have a seen where Henry Ford goes on a tv talk show , and the talk show is kinda like JERRY SPRINGER STYLED talk show, but the jerry springer platform of talk shows did not take hold on tv, for decades after this film…proving once again how TPTB are so far ahead of us all. This movie gets taken down off utube alot..so watch it now if you can.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIyndyIX5EQ&t=9s
Oh yeah, great movie made for TV, which may be why it’s so hard to find. Dean Jagger (the General from ‘White Christmas’) is great as the nefarious Brotherhood nemesis of Glenn (not Henry) Ford. Reminds one of Yale’s ‘Skull and Bones,’ which claims George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush and John Kerry as Bonesmen. The fictional Brotherhood and entities like them are ‘Hotel California’ organizations – “you can check in, but you can’t check out.”
Warhammer…there is 1 or 2 scenes in this film that I think are overlooked and may have hidden meanings that may seem unbelievable but could be true. The one scene is at 42:02 mark where he says ” I NEVER TOOK YOU TO SEE, ANY MAN” …and then towards the end of the film when Henry Ford tells his wife : their blood is different” ….to me, these are slight references concerning the top blood lines of TPTB, and how they may not be regular mammalian humans at all. Rosemarys Baby is another film that suggests this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIyndyIX5EQ&t=63s
There appears to have been a television broadcast on January 6, 1958 with CBS by Studio One of Hollywood also titled “The Brotherhood of the Bell”. Its plot allegedly was a secret society overthrow of government.
I don’t believe the episode has been saved to the Internet Archive site. Perhaps the teleplay is held by the University of Wisconsin?
It would be interesting to find out for sure..I was to young to know or care about the masons.. But my grandpa was an upper level templar mason.. My guess is the skull and bones was nothing more than a circle jerk for college boys. Back in the day the different societies masons odd fellows etc. Was like a church for social gatherings. All of them have done many wondrous things for our communities and country. My thoughts are the mysterious conspiracy fears is nothing more than that.
I personally support them whenever they have a fund raiser.
Comparable to some of those colleve fraternities like imacumlouder
What a great movie.. I haven’t ever seen this one.
why eat the plastic when it can be turned into a road?
https://www.plasticroad.eu/en/
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qPIHJRIpLRk
George. Love the Andromeda reference. But — The ‘Deep State’ stalking Trump? Really? Isn’t that what John Gotti (and his attorney) said, repeatedly, when they caught up to him? All Trump had to do was to shut up, just long enough for his corruption to show just a little less blatantly, so Mueller (the Republican) could give him a pass. Instead, we all have to twist ourselves into pretzels trying to say up is down. Not to mention inventing all new Attorney – Client legal theory. And now Hannity trashing ethics. Talk about Fake News. Ridiculous. Best, Mike.
There is no “Deep State”, it’s Adam Smith’s Invisible hand that we see.
If we look at just the first quarter of this year, you are correct, not much as far as impressive gains…but that is a short term outlook and not very useful overall.
If we look at the performance since the election, the gains are there. I thin we can look at it from another perspective in the short term though…and that is, we shoulda seen a significant correction in the past few months due to all the possible negative things going on. Syria, fed raising rates multiple times , North Korea, Russia, the endless corruption and law breaking being exposed in our government, trade war ,etc.
All these negative things, SHOULD have had a huge negative impact on the markets in the last few months. The fact that the markets are shrugging it off, may be proof that we wont see the real correction this spring, and we may see new all time highs in the markets by years end.
Im trying to stick to my promise to stay out of the market , and wait for a big correction to happen by middle of MAY 2018, but I am now thinking the big correction aint coming. If all this recent bad news cant correct the markets, then just imagine when some regular good news starts piling in { tax breaks taking effects, more jobs, more growth, trade war settled, Syria calms down, etc}
Yes, im afraid DOW 30,000 is more likely to happen before DOW 21,000.
Anon: Good points. I think George is right that this market is going to implode like 1929. The way the markets are acting, this crash could happen tomorrow (especially with the way these crazy polititions are acting) or next year. Since I am mostly fully invested in FANG, oil, & restaurant stocks, it makes me nervous every day. By waiting for the market to crash, you will be ready to make a large profit in the future, because when the crash happens, there will be bargains galore. AAPL is my favorite stock and with it earnings and cash hoard, it will always do well.
They say it’s going to crash but I think it’ll be negligible the banksters decide to crash the dollar Trump will come in and say bye you’re fired now we’ll open our own electric John F Kennedy tried to do and we’re going to be successful at it.
That’s what the new cryptocurrency Bitcoin is about with all the alternate coins is there’s a coin for each thing that you can think of some will take off but most will fail.
For instance if the dollar fails I can still buy things because my Bitcoin or Litecoin or Bitcoin cash will have value around the world to the point when the banksters do allow they’re fiat currency to go way way down and it takes a wheelbarrow load of it to buy a loaf of bread all I have to do is swipe or hold my phone up against a barcode or a scan code and the item will be delivered.
But I don’t for see them doing that yeah they’re going to bring everything down like they normally do so that they can buy in when you sell that’s the whole thing about It breaking down to a low prices hey now they can buy and if they do that with Bitcoin or Litecoin hey great opportunity for me to buy two solar counteracting what the bankers are doing they don’t like that because.
It empowers the people not the bankers.
I haven’t made no big investment in the cryptocurrencies but I’m still steadily puting in my 50 bucks a week in there guess what it’s starting to break even.
And I wager by the end of September my money will have doubled and I wager by December my money will be at least 20 times what it is now.
Yeah I’m foolish but I can afford to lose it .can you?
I have a roof over my head I have spring water I have electricity I have some backup solar I have over a Year’s worth of food and I have neighbors.
But most of all I have seeds .
I’m still able to get a woman pregnant and I have enough seeds in my freezer to get my garden pregnant.
And my chicken eggs can be hibernated with a covering for over a year and then incubated to produce young chicks, to make more chicks with a minimum of solar power .
Enzyme that eats plastic, eh? Oh, the mess we create with well intentioned efforts that lead to undesired consequences.
What happened to the algae that eats oil? It turned into Corexit.
“22,574 Monday we came up with 22,649”
It’s a NEW high, and today’s “crash” avoided, we’ll be going to Dow 35,000? Tine will tell.
I think you should be referring to “Mutant 59, The Plastic Eaters”. https://www.amazon.com/Mutant-59-Plastic-Eaters-Kit-Pedler/dp/0670496626
A really good book from 1971
Unlike the raw and leveraged 10% margin dynamics of 1929, whose era had little to no established federal social support and established welfare system, the 2018 Asset-Debt March 2009 Macroeconomic System’s saturated area is, nevertheless, producing a fractal decay series replica of 1929 …
Part of the pharma business plan is gaming the welfare(tax) system. Worked fairly well in Canada til Hillary’s greed and impatience exposed the “plan”
Whenever you hear someone make any kind of argument with a premise based on the “deep state”, you can safely dismiss everything that was said before and after 100.0% of the time.
Right. Oh,wrong. Left.
It’s not a nothing year for some investors. I am someone who likes to sell out of the money Puts. They are premium on put options. They deteriorate and the seller cashes in. it’s great to sell options when the volatility rises during these short V-bottom dips and then you let them erode over time. I love flat markets.
Never lose track of Rockefeller’s allopathic medicine Business Model of never prevent or cure only allow treatment of secondary symptoms. This was instituted when he agreed to finance medicine research in universities in 1923 and systematically infiltrated their boards of directors while taking over medical education and accreditation. My own lab rat and internet research into mercury toxins has made a direct connect to every symptom, disease, and cancer known to man. When mercury buildup in ones soft tissues (fat) reaches near saturation level it depletes selenium(nerve end control connections) and at the same time depletes magnesium(the most essential element for muscle relaxation and magnesium calcium chemistry and pancreatic immune system function. A simple Medline abstract search using “magnesium depletion” gives overwhelming justification for what I am stating above.
My conclusion is that big pharma is almost totally dependent on mercury toxins for its trillions of global profits. In terms of recent history enhancements I am adding aluminum, fluoride and bromine.
Also see Goldman Sacks about cures that work being a bad business mod el.
Sorry Glyphosate shoud be first of the additions.