Notes on the AoMM

“The What?” Art of Making Money, of course! Since we are still in the lazy part of summer – and we expect the market to be screaming to new highs in the coming few weeks, we will focus  – as all natural-born gamblers would – on the art of taking money from the house. After … Read More

Prepping: Yes, You Need a Business Plan

Short course in business:  6 P’s. Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance. If you are new to the idea of “prepping” rest assured the field is infinitely large and totally overloaded with mostly useless crap – especially on the web.  I say this, having started UrbanSurvival in 1997.  In the 20+ years I have been writing … Read More

Jobs Report: It’s ALL About Manufacturing

One of the things beaten into my head in grad school back-in-the-day was to always look at Standard Accounting Ratios (SARs). A fine example is when looking at long-term data, you don’t go back and look at how many people were working last month, or even last year.  You go back and pencil out the … Read More

Market Stalls as Social War Rages

We find ourselves in an interesting kettle of fish today with the markets taking the Fed decision Wednesday NOT to move rates as a negative.  Forget the fact that most experts were predicting no move.  That doesn’t matter to a world “on edge” about the Middle East, trade discussions, and, oh yeah, the ongoing left-wing … Read More

Two Deep Thoughts

Both involve making money. One has to do with our “heartbeat of the market” that we discovered hidden in the data recently.  Not perfectly regular, but close enough for trading. So one deep though this morning deals with a new finding in the “heartbeat.”The second is how we plan to play the Fed announcement today. … Read More

Prepping: The Old Man’s Comforts

There is  an art to living that doesn’t get enough attention, as we see it:  People don’t focus enough on effectively spending their money. You see, once you have a roof over your head, the difference – particularly when asleep – between living in a MacMansion or a double-wide trailer is approximately zero given the … Read More

Housing: Beginning of the Roll-Over?

Case-Shiller, S&P, CoreLogic Press Release being with the headline “RISE IN HOME PRICES REMAINS STEADY AT 6.4% ACCORDING TO S&P CORELOGIC CASE-SHILLER INDEX ”  which – since we’ve seen lumber futures fall 7% in the last two sessions, we truncated to a more believable ” HOME PRICES REMAINS STEADY.” No one likes to consider a … Read More

Could the Fed Pull a Deep State Surprise?

It is common-consensus in the media today that the Fed – which gavels in this morning and announces rates tomorrow at 2 PM Eastern  – will not move to change interest rates.  But we see a rather intriguing possibility now peeking out of our charts – namely they could. First, it’s axiomatic (around here, anyway) that … Read More

Fed Week & the Near Future

There is a mighty dance underway – somewhere between a waltz, the boogaloo with a side of the twist – and behind it, a major debate.  Seems about half the smart people think news drives markets.  The rest believe that’s wrong because any damn-fool can tell markets drive news. This week, we’ll be watching the … Read More

Prepping: Why Business Models Matter

The story of how Elaine and I ended up here in the Piney Woods of East Texas is a book’s worth.  Three or four if we count all the lessons learned (from mistakes made) along the way.  With this weekend’s return of reports on UrbanSurvival we’ll be taking a more holistic view of prepping – … Read More

Vacuum Tubes to Ecosystems

In one of our “let the mind wander” deep-thinking pieces, we today look at the history of radio technology as an analog to development of modern digital platforms. Somehow, from there, we end up considering computational ecosystems and which companies need to buy what in order to “own more future.” After headlines and charts, we … Read More

Inventing in Your SLEEP?

Maybe not everyone, but most people can live an additional life if they put their minds to it:  One life in the waking-state and one in the dream Realms., I’ve told you about this before and how I am wading through the error-correction process with my next book Psychocartography… But a fresh dream Wednesday morning is a … Read More

GDP: Message in Over-Hype?

Well, here we go again:  The daily attacks on Donald Trump, the miserable coverage by pseudo-journos, and again, none of it will make you any richer, but it sure feeds the ad machines that keeps network news co-opted since everything has a price. Easy to manipulate if you know how to do it.  Just get some … Read More