(Gig Harbor, WA) Hit the snooze button Oh, sure, you think the markets are opening this morning and they may be – on paper – but with the Dow flopping between positive and flat-line, it’ll be like rigor tradeus until we get some data rolling in. Not that we don’t have some suspicions…
My friend Roger Reynolds offered his email readers this gem:
Friday the dow and SNP both gave weekly broadening top sell signals. Since they had given opne before and the markets did not go down some folks might ignore the signals. IMO that is a mistake. WHY??? because they both gave similar signals at the 2007 top. Also, some other reasons—-Friday there were more new 52 week lows on the nyse than new highs. Raymond James brokerage says that to omit the dow and big cap stocks of nasdaq then the average stock in the russell 2000 is already down 23 percent from it’s high. In other words, the army is in retreat while the generals are fight the averages war.
There are two Fed-ly things this morning: Empire State Manufacturing is just out:
“The September 2014 Empire State Manufacturing Survey indicates that business activity expanded at a robust pace for New York manufacturers. The headline general business conditions index rose thirteen points to 27.5, a multiyear high. The new orders index moved up three points to 16.9, and the shipments index advanced two points to 27.1. The unfilled orders index fell three points to -10.9. The prices paid index declined three points to 23.9, indicating a slower pace of input price increases, while the prices received index climbed nine points to 17.4, suggesting a pickup in the pace of selling price increases. Employment indexes showed a slight increase in employment levels and hours worked. Indexes for the six-month outlook conveyed a high degree of optimism about future business conditions.”
The balance of the report is over here (with graphs and such) and it’s possibly good enough to for some to wonder if the Fed might be talking more hawkish about rates.
And in about 45-minutes (with me back in pillow-check mode I hope) the Industrial Production and Excuses report is due.
The Fed begins two days of meetings tomorrow (again, forgetting to invite me) but no point in setting the alarm on that because it’s Wednesday before they will announce their decision to do nothing. And then we will get the paper-flurry and ever Tom, Dick, and Jane tries to impute when the money-renters will raise rates.
The biggest number of the week will come Wednesday morning with the Consumer Price Index numbers…and then we all pop coffee until quadruple-witching Friday.
Cali Fire Burst?
With things so tinder-dry in California we have to wonder if the Oakhurst blaze may be the start of a fall ramp of fire problems in the Golden/Browning (baste while turning) State.
Reassuring for the pool set is that swimming pools are less of a drought issue than once thought. I wouldn’t be thrilled to drink the water from a pool (especially if used by children…ahem…) but it is a 25,000 gallon back-up…
Meantime, a big storm is hitting Baja…which has us wondering about SoCal rain prospects.
The drought continuers in parts of Texas, although Panama reports from the ranch that we’ve got an unusually green growing season dragging out in the Piney Woods.
More after this…
Is There Some Point?
Sorry to roll with the sour-puss mode this morning, but the Big Headlines about how scientists have picked a landing spot on a comet where the plan to land a probe later this year seems as foul a waste of effort as we’ll find.
Short of finding a hidden hieroglyph that explains how to live in peace and harmony, or how to hack Bitcoin, I’m having a hard time getting worked up over this story.
So far, the cost of this puppy is $1.68 billion dollars, plus or minus a cheeseburger. That enough to create nearly 1,700 new millionaires in the world, and done in places like Ferguson or Greece, seems to me the payoff for humans might be a lot higher than landing on an icy rock that’s too far away to mine, and next to useless…too big for a paperweight.
I’m in a mighty generous mood this morning: if you send me $40, not only will I email you a picture of a rock when were get back to our spaceport in Texas, but I’ll toss in a year’s access to our Peoplenomics.com website.
When ordering, please specify granite or a basaltic mix and with, or without, ice. Remember, though, our government rate is $1.68 billion…
Next, we’ll be counting rings around Uranus and planning where to land the Charmin mission. I you-knoew-what-you not….well, sort of….
No…better, gimme a James Brown “Help Me! Help me Now!” (You wonder why my power breakfast is Pepto and decaf?) I can think of a lot of things $1.68 billion could buy besides rock dust and telemetry data. But you have to be either a Luddite or New Minimalist to get it…the Gen-Xer’s won’t have a clue. But the Rosetta rock?
One born every minute…and over time they form Agencies.
ISIS Relevance
The headlines are flying hot and heavy this morning about the anti-ISIS meetings going on this week.
But given how effective Washington has been at closing the Mexico border, I (sadly) think the only worry ISIS has is world governments talking them to death.
Readers seem to get that:
George.
The u s military needs to hire an Islamic scholar who is not sympathetic to Islam. The object being to find ways to make sure that ISIS insurgents know that when we kill them their souls will be killed also. Kill the soul then the body.
There is a problem with a surplus of feral pigs. Surely there is a way to make a business of transferring feral pigs to various locations in the middle east. Give ISIS something else to do rather than make war.
It seems our military and other leaders have forgotten some military history. If we are going to war let’s do it with some vigor like we did to Dresden, Hamburg, Tokyo Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I seem to recall Patton saying something about places whose names he could not pronounce but whose places he had removed.
[redacted] long time reader in the Florida Keys
I thought that was MacArthur’s deal, but the point is sound: The problem (same as last week) is that news events are not managed for outcomes but rather for effect. Otherwise we would have pools of glass and plenty of pigs in the region.
We have a way of bringing a Band-Aid to a gunfight…know what I mean?
Same on Ebola
I can guarantee you the same principle at play on Ebola, too.
Lock down Africa and the spread goes to zero. Of course, so do corporate profits in the region but again, the Small Changer promising “…major Ebola offensive…” is that like the major solving the Border problem?
This is like bringing cornflakes to a gunfight. May leave a politically correct fine taste, even some crunch, but it doesn’t stop the disease… Like ISIS, Ebola and the Border can’t be talked to death or they wouldn’t be headlines, capisch?
Totally Amazing
Speaking of “talked to death…”
If I hear one more person say “Totally amazing” on this trip… I’m gonna puke. We’re trying to get people to say “Startlingly” but with little result, so far.
Which I find, in itself…er….totally amazing.
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Our field research has found why couples text back and forth at dinner: Gen-Xers are the loudest group of humans ever. Get more than 10 in any one place, add 10-ounces of booze and you’re got a guaranteed 95 dB environment. Enough to cause ear damage, ifs not brain issues. Which was totally…uh….hmmm….startling!
Show me the restaurant with an ambient noise meter on the wall instead of a big screen…My ears are still ringing from Saturday…