George Ure

So let me ask you something:

If you knew that one of the keys to future economic success for your country was oil, would you think the stock market should be going up, or down?

Hint:  Oil is going up.

Second Question:  If there was a regional war going on where cruise missiles were being tossed around and your country was on the wrong side of the conflict and had just pissed away a multi-billion dollar program of making up enemies in order to effect regime change, should the stock market of that country be going up, or down?

Hint:  See last story in this morning’s column.

Yet here we are, barely an hour and a half from the opening of the market and the futures are pointing to a tiny gain come the open of trading.

You need ViseGrips to pinch yourself and a hookah to self-medicates in markets like this one.  Although to me it has a kind of air of the Friday before Black Monday back in 1987…

The drivers are all there for vicious downside action:  futures have run up hugely since the last options expiration, and Wall Street doesn’t like paying gamblers.

Then there’s the fact of Brent Crude oil which is over $53 a barrel this morning.  And as if that is not inflationary enough, have you been watching the price of gold and silver in the past couple of weeks? 

Silver is over $16 and Gold is holding above $1,150.

Now let’s toss into the equation that the US dollar is falling relative to the Euro as well.

To me?  It’s a case for rapidly escalating prices – and that would/ought to be trashing the Bond market in here.  But, no, the 10-year Treasury Note is holding about 2.11 percent – which is way below where it should be, given all the gathering forces of future inflation to come.

All of this is incredibly mysterious to me:  the market should be in the crapper – we’re losing a war in Syria.  The price of oil is climbing, and while that will be good for US oil companies, it will mean hell on Houston’s freeways is likely to become a permanent feature of life.

New import and export price data:

Prices for U.S. imports edged down 0.1 percent in September, after a 1.6-percent decrease in August, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.

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Things are becoming surreal, these days.

We have Russia kicking the butts of ISIS, a feat the U.S. hasn’t been able to do with all of our [purported] might and which the Putin shock troops seem to have accomplished in a month.

The main problem created is what?

The U.S. public – common folks like you and me – might begin to see through the global Kabuki of it all and figure out that what we are fed is not what we should eat.

But how does a security state-framed West go about defusing a serious story like Syria, especially when it is one that could go theater nuclear as early as this weekend?

Well, the answer, strange as it may seem, is to press the restart button on some older conspiracies.

It’s psychological control.  Consider fighting forest fires, think of it as a “back fire” – a little fire, or three – set to deny the larger fire fuel.

Fuel, in the case of U.S.

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WW III is on, at least in part:  The Russian-backed Syria government has launched another massive attack on ISIS this morning.  Later today, the U.S. markets may wake up to the fact we’re been flanked and fooled and Iran may taken Iraq.

Over on the www.peoplenomics.com side of the house, we’ve been chasing down a crackpot theory about how the market of today has a curious resonance with an earlier period.

In this highly experimental work, we are considering the period that would match today with September of 2011.  That was a period of marked decline, just as today is, or should be shortly.

This is terribly important stuff to watch for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that it demonstrates the “Manufacturer’s Resource Wars” which should put the 30-years War to shame.

Since we suspect this fall of 2011 period, I went looking for more details about how the U.S. was doing with its “foreign entanglements” back then:  And from a BBC website page:

2011 August – Violence escalates, with more than 40 apparently co-ordinated nationwide attacks in one day.

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I haven’t done this for a while, but it is one of those things that should be on your list of things to do periodically around the house, particularly if you are extremely sensitive to radio frequency noise.

“Yeah, yeah…sounds like engineering crap to me…”

Maybe because it is.  But it doesn’t make it unimportant. 

Granted, if you listen to FM radio and streaming only, chasing down AM radio noise is a time sink.  But, with winter coming, there’s a certain magic in being able to tune the dial and mentally transport yourself to a different city. 

Up in Seattle, as a young whippersnapper, I listen to Ira Blue on KGO – first of the talk radio greats. 

I can categorically state that I sleep better when two conditions are met in my surroundings.

First, I like to sleep grounded.  We have been enjoying our “earthing half sheet” for months now and consider it a worthwhile experiment.

Secondly, I don’t do well when there is electrical noise around.  For someone who has spent half his life around AM and FM radio stations, that might seem paradoxical.

But there are radio signals (which are not terribly disturbing to my energy) and there are audio signals superimposed on those carriers.

That ain’t noise.

No sir, what I’m talking about is the broadband hash that comes of line-frequency switched mode power supplies.  This are simply god-awful things to hear.

The Test Tool

I have a cheap AM/FM radio of the sort you can get for $20-bucks. I keep it next to the bed and when I wake up in the middle of the night (see Brain on Fire) and can’t get back to sleep, I will tune around the AM radio band and unless there is a big geomagnetic disturbance, either Ground Zero or Coast to Coast AM will be coming in from WOAI down in San Antonio.

I haven’t been listening much to the radio lately because I have been so damn busy.  Flight plans, travel plans, reservations, cruise, writing, novel, finishing up projects around the house – there’s a daily list that never gets down.  You know how that rolls.

But the other morning, I happened to wake up and there went the brain…not on fire yet, but definitely smoldering.

The quickest way to zone out, I figured would be a dose of AM radio.  So I turned on the radio and @#$%T^&*BZZZZTTTTT!!!   Static. 

From one end of the AM  dial to the other…static.  Horrible whining generator noise broadband power supply noise.  I have a pretty good ear for signal strength and in most positions, the noise on the little radio would have been 40 to 60 over S-9 on a real communications receiver…

….except…  There was one position where if I held the radio absolutely steady and not letting it move more than an eighth of an inch, the static would be off to the side of the built-in AM ferrite bar antenna (which is very directional) and I could hear the station.

Hell of it was that each time I was about to snooze out, my hand would move, thus the radio and I’d get another earful of @#$%T^&*BZZZZTTTTT!!!   Static.

Knowing the only tool I would need would be this AM radio, tuned between stations around 700 on the dial, I swore that before the day was out, I would find the source of this damn electrical  PITA and solve it once and for good.

The first thing I did was wander around the house.  AM radio on.  Seemed like the noise was louder in the bathrooms and the kitchen, but couldn’t be sure.

OK, step two then:  I killed all the power to the house.

Whoosh…….just nice normal atmospheric noise.  Please.

Next:  Turn the big stuff back on: 

Stove, hot water heat, dryer.  Blissful Whoosh….as quiet radio bands are supposed to sound.

One by one the breakers went on…until finally, next to last breaker on the right side of the panel was flipped on.  Care to guess?

@#$%T^&*BZZZZTTTTT!!!   Static.

OK…now all I needed to do was wander around the house and find that circuit and begin to manually unplug things.

There, in the kitchen, I found my culprit.

Our Foodsaver!.  What the hell?

So I grabbed an AC line filter and threw it on thinking that ought to cure the problem.

Wrong.

Actually made the noise worse.

The simple remedial action was to unplug the Foodsaver.  There was something else about this outlet that was interesting:  Even plugging in the lame $15 Wal-Mart toaster increased the noise level a  bit.

Damn odd, curious, and confounding. 

Now I have another project on the list:  Dig out my outlet checker and find out what’s going on with that outlet.  Is the ground off it? Are the hot and cold wires reversed on the plug?  Or, WTF is going on with it?

That’s as far as I got on it…there are more pressing items.  But sure as hell, this was a strange one and while I love my Foodsaver, the idea of this outlet being noisy leads to all kinds of other suppositions.

Might a GFI protector be in the process of failing and somehow that’s figuring into how things on this circuit are working?  Is the neutral and ground touching?

Or, is the Foodsaver power supply in this particular unit really noisy (electronically) for reasons that aren’t clear to me, except there would have to be a solid-state switch to turn the sealing element on and maybe that somehow is connected to the AC line?

Hell of a fine adventure.

By the way, when you find a problem (like this one) where you can narrow down the source of noise (which went completely away when the Foodsaver was unplugged) you can use the noise source to “calibrate the null” on your AM portable radio.

This is a true story:  When I was young I learned that with a cheap AM radio like this, and a $5-compass, that you could steal a boat in any harbor in the world and go anywhere you want with nothing more than an AM radio and some stations that identify themselves often.

By daylight, it’s more useful to follow jet contrails, but you get the idea there, right?

If you’re not tracking yet, go watch this video about how Ira Blue on KGO brought fishermen home through the notorious fogs off the Golden Gate:

Have fun…I sure did, and it was a dandy 15-minute break from not getting the rest of the stuff on my list done on Wednesday.

I have been chasing noise sources this way for more than half a century.  Most common culprits are fluorescent light fixtures, silicon-controller rectifier based dimmers (SCRs) and Triacs plus switched mode power supplies.

In the event of a real serious EMP type event, the good news is that the AM radio band should be exceptionally clear of manmade noise like this.  The only downside is you may die in the ensuing violence.  But the DX’ing (distance listening)_ should be superb.

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Want to know where Bitcoin will be in 40-years or so?

That’s one of the topics we cover in this morning’s report. So is Ben’s new book.

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The headline in the Monday column here was pretty simple to follow:  We were due for a major tick up in the market (remember my telling you about the Big Rally long before this one?).

While a goodly number of doomporn types have been calling for the end of globalism and such,t he reality is that it is extremely unlikely to happen with a presidential election coming.  People will be fine taking their anger out at the polls, as long as that process is working.

Today’s close should (by my crazy method of analysis) be around S&P 1,958 and change.

The shocking part is where we could take out the 1,850 level by the close o

n Friday…which our Peoplenomics readers by now – if testing this latest crackpot theory of mine – are already positioned in trades, or have gone to cash, just in case.

If 1,850 sounds bad, there’s a chance of 1,750 the week after next:  October 20-22 if the system works out.

The real question is this:  When  does such a system stop being “crackpot” and become something more respectable? 

If you see a column around October 23-24 titled R.E.S.P.E.C.T.  it will have nothing to do with Aretha Franklin, but it will have to do with transitioning from crackpot to profitable.

But then  again, we won’t know until then.

Pacific Trade Sell-Out as the Left Field Event

Traitorous bastards is too nice a term for people who vote for “secret laws” like this Trans-Pacific Partnership crap that the Obamanation has shoved down our throats.  People in congress who voted for it all need to go.  Daylight democracy is what this country is founded on…not back office deals and corporate/lobbyist buy-offs. 

Mainstream Media like the NY Times are today peddling the corporatist view that this Trade disaster is a way to “keep a check on China.”

Remember how many times I have told you an honest socialist is better than the lying right-wing scum that sold out the country in the trade deal? Or the under-cover socialist in the WH?

Well, here’s Bernie Sanders calling it right – a quote from the Politico story here:

“I am disappointed but not surprised by the decision to move forward on the disastrous Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement that will hurt consumers and cost American jobs,” Sanders said in a statement Monday morning shortly after the deal was announced. “Wall Street and other big corporations have won again.

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As a kid, there were certain family stories passed down from father to son that ensure the continuation of the “Ure attitude.”

Many of these were fire house tales…the kind of stories that working men tell one another while grueling physical work is going on. 

Sure, firemen get the rush of going into combat at a house or apartment fire.  But the downside of the profession is the hard work that few get to see:  The endless drill evolutions – so everything can be done in the dark, bad weather, and whatever else may come.  Then there’s the washing of hose, and (in the old days) hanging it all up to dry in the hose tower.

One such story in particular has stood out in my mind for better than 50-years. A father-son lesson of inestimable value.

It begins with my late father who was stationed at Pearl Harbor as a fire alarm office operator during World War II.  While Americans were falling on unnamed beaches around the globe, my dad – through no effort of his own – had landed a job  in one of the very few bomb-proof and air conditioned buildings on Hawaii…the Ure family has always been lucky that way and the luck continues through today.

It turns out that the “boss” of the Alarm  Office was a salty old Navy Chief.

It helps to understand that people back then didn’t go out to lunch very often – most packed a sandwich, or two, from home, maybe an apple or some non-refrigerated treat, and that was it.

Day after day, come lunchtime in the Alarm Office this old Chief would get out his lunch.

Every single day – without variation – was a cheese sandwich. Day after day after day.

“I hate these goddamn cheese sandwiches…” the old salt would complain.  The air would turn blue for anywhere from 15-minutes to two hours, depending on the old chief’s mood.

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The futures were up this morning when I looked and in our odd work over on the www.peoplenomics.com side of the house, we anticipate the market high this week should come in right around….no, let’s save that for our Peoplenomics subscribers.  I showed them how to build the spreadsheet already…

Let’s just say this:  the market has another day (or two) of this rally to go.  But from there, we should be lined up on this year’s scariest of all market drops…but that will be over by the end of the month, or shortly after, so don’t go getting yourself all worked up about it.

A close today around 1,970 would be fine with me…let’s see how it plays.  But if it comes in at 1,973, or so, I will be screaming “I told you so” tomorrow.  Even 1,.967 will get Mr. Smug-face going.

Meantime, Roger Reynolds, a fellow who does an email list I have mentioned many times, as a similar view about the present rally:

Friday’s surge??? The move down from mid sept to the recent low is likely being called a successful “test” of the low—-hence Friday’s rally.

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The alarm clock didn’t matter today.

The brain went off first…waking me at 2:50 AM due to the hugely exciting events on this week’s to-do list.

For one, I am likely to drop back into “trading mode” this week and that excites the hell out of me.  Wall Street is a casino you don’t have to travel to play.

For another, I had a really useful insight into the future of Bitcoin, so that’s now a whole Peoplenomics report for Wednesday.

Then there’s the matter of the weather turning cooler here. The heat pump kicked on for the first time this season.

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Yeah, I look really stupid doing the happy dance, but since our report on  Wednesday in which I outlined a new approach to forecasting market action at two very specific places in the Elliott Wave structure, I was totally blown away by the Market’s behavior.

As Friday began, I was pouty and snippy – my system seemed (momentarily) like it would eat my lunch.  But the pure absolute magic happened at mid session and the S&P ended up over the 1,950 level for the week – as expected and forecast right here.

Halla-freaking-lujah!

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(Deep in the Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa Triangle)

We find ourselves this morning wondering if someone would be kind enough to prescribe some major league anti-psychotics for this market.

The problem is this morning’s Job Report which we will get to in a moment.

It’s the set-up of market psychology, however, that causes us concern.  You know markets are in a precarious state when news “flips.”

In other words, when “Good” news is taken as bad, and “Bad” news is taken as good, then trying to make sense and reasonably investments using other than purely technical trading tools because something of a mind-eff.

Here is how the Job report looking from the “flipped” perspective.

Say the Jobs report comes in stronger than expected.

In as normal (non-psychotic) world, this would be good news and the market would go up.

What’s not to love?  After all, more people working means more tax revenues for government, so pressure comes off there.  Fewer people would be “on  the dole” and we would have an increase in savings and investment, which could get us thinking in terms of the Virtuous Cycle in economics, once again.

But that may not work out this way.

Instead, the market could be thinking:  “With more people working, the Fed would be more likely to raise rates in the coming months.  This would increase business costs because money would be less free…and that, in turn, would mean less money available to shareholders as dividends.  So that means that when the Fed raises rates, we would see stock prices come down, and we would not make as much money…”

Oh, and let’s not leave out that a recovering economy is press oil back up…

It’s wrong-headed, of course.  The fact is that a slow, rounding bottom to interest rates is coming, like it or not, and the fact that a return of the “I” word (inflation) would kick sales (buy before prices go up) and give a major boost to Housing (buy before rates do up) is completely missed.

So too the impetus for some of the dark pools of capital to edge out of bonds, which would then drop in price, and into stocks, which should rocket moonward, is also missed.

The battle between the factions – believers on both sides – is what makes a market.

Markets are only rational in a limited sense, and only some of the time.

This may not be one of those.

The Jobs Data

Which gets us to the Hot off the Press Release:

“Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 142,000 in September, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 5.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Job gains occurred in health care and information, while mining employment fell.

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(From within the Iowa-Wisconsin-Illinois Triangle)   We have arrived for the annual assembly of “good looking Beeches” here west of Chicago with the market looking pretty good (maybe through today and early next week) but going into options expiration, we expect things will hit the crapper.

Maybe it will be more Glencore revelations or some other foundation-shaker, but we still hold to the view that the S&P will drop below the 1,800 level within the next two’ish months.  After that, the Rally Before the End ought to be here.

It is likely to be your last chance to prep for Depression II.  Like 2009, but worse, by the look of it and we all know how much fund that was.

Other than the employment numbers being a driver, another factor which we have been pounding on is the problem of long wave economic  “trough wars.”

You see, in these 40-90-year economic long waves – and there’s more to it than the Kondratieff Wave – wars tend to cluster around the peaks of and valleys of economic activity.

There are only three “powers” in the world who have to be eyed in the same context as the aggressor Germany was in WW II when it comes to kicking off WW III.

One is China – which is building an island in the South China Sea to project a bit of power around itself, but also we notice that Chinese war ships have come into the Syrian theater, as well.

That Russia has been operating out of the naval facilities at Tartus has been an on-going talking point for me, for several years when this matter of “Where does the War come from?” arises.

In a way, the pending Russian and Chinese operation is vastly different from the pre-WW II alliances between Germany, Italy, and Japan.

Unlike the Germans, the Russians are mostly self-sufficient should those choose to be – and the Chinese have been better students of warfare than the Italians, without a doubt.  Sun Tzu is only one example.  When  a nation has 2,500 years of history, the style of thinking becomes a bit different.

Maybe I worry too much (almost certainly true) but I would summarize the thinking processes of these potential antagonists by simply looking at the most popular “board games” of the parties.

Here in the USA, of course, the two most widely played games among the young (*not electronic) would be checkers and Monopoly.  Good games and a fair bit of fun.

When comes to articulating mental acuity and learning the arts of advanced thinking, however, seems to me the Russian idolatry of chess speaks volumes.

The Chinese may (or may not) actually play Chinese checkers, but that game is more instructive in many ways than the single-front American board games.

On the other hand, there may be a migration path from Monopoly to the White House, at least if Donald Trump continues his ways.

As often stated, I figure we have on the low side 18-months more before this phase of rally and market recovery will end.  Ideally early 2017.

That’s time when America could be regrouping and rethinking how we “wage peace.”  But the reality is we don’t do that well.  We tend to go waging peace that turns into projectiles and bases…but haven’t I warned you “The Magic of America is that we monetize EVERYTHING”??

How closely the Chinese will interoperate with the Russians is not clear.  Reports this week have been fuzzy at best, although this summer of things is pretty good

A note from our oak-leaf cluster source, warhammer points out something else of interest:

George,

Some claim the recently announced Russian draft of 150,000 men is a mere coincidence, happening just as Russia begins prosecuting attacks against Syrian Rebels and/or ISIS.

<http://www.hngn.com/articles/135738/20151001/putin-oks-drafting-150-000-conscripts-russian-military.htm>

I don’t believe in coincidence. That’s a word often used when we can’t see who’s pulling the strings from behind the curtain.

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