Over the past month, we’ve been talking a lot about the “Computational Bolsheviks” who are threatening to overwhelm a hundred-fifty years of management science by short-cutting outcomes (like Business Process Re-Engineering on steroids) as well as by removing or redefining such traditional management concepts as span of control.

As someone who looks to the future much of the time, we can project the arrival of the “comprehension industry” as similar to other macro-trends in play now.  Some of these include climate shift (which it is doing all the time anyway…), the coming protein shortage (and cost increases) that we covered a half-dozen years back (see the archives), as Peak Oil/Peak Energy which will come along about the time of Peak Population…challenging problems all for the long-term investor.

But the “comprehension industry” will increase human potential so we can keep up with our robots and AI, so we’ll delve into its make-up right after coffee, a few outlook oriented headlines, and a check on how our Trading Model is doing after its impressive performance this week that kept us from an outright short.

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So we start this morning with the futures up – but not much – considering the 265-point downer on Thursday.  But it is playing out just as laid out in Peoplenomics on Wednesday.

A couple of days of closing below the 1,965 level on the S&P would send us into short positions and waiting for the world to end, but the flip side is that there is so much money floating around (from the central banks, anxious to flood with liquidity) that there may be no other investment choices to speak of, at least for a while.

Former Regan Budget Director David Stockman was on Bloomberg yesterday arguing the quick collapse case against a Wharton economics prof who believes that we’re going to go higher.  Fischer made similar arguments as the Wharton dude in 1929.  Colin Seymour’s classic chart of 2001 is worthy of study as you mull over who to follow…

Most people try to forget that Keynes said in 1927 there would be no more crashes…and it’s a testament to public gullibility that he was hailed as a sage by the time the Crash was dragging out.  A fine example of stupsheepidy. 

The unfortunate reality could be that both Stockman and this Wharton fellow could be right.  Maybe a massive experiment at CERN has gone wrong and we can now crash lifestyles while the market goes both up and down.  Say, that’s progress, ain’t it?

When the central banks are passing out what amounts to free loans to banks, the banks will put the money wherever they can…and stocks happen to be one such place.  It’s convenient and easier to move than gold or silver…and Lord knows the banks own enough housing stock (super low rates from the Fed are keeping those homes off the market) that they don’t need more.

BUT when the rates rise and the banks need to sell some assets off to cover their costs, then the size of the resultant market decline scales geometrically (or better).  We’re not too old to be patient.

It’s not a pleasant investment environment, but it’s the one we have, so expect today to be like another day of calling the play-by-play at a funeral.

“It’s still alive…wait, wait…THERE!  A tiny breath!  How long will that keep this dying market in the game?  Stepping up to mound the Fed’s best are tossing in a free throw from the cash line….up it goes…and it’s…it’s… IN!  And that market rallies again…”

Yeah, well, whatever….

The next Live or Die level will be the new trading range floor around 1,900 on the S&P and if that goes…1,815 and then 1,740.

We may be poor in cash, but we have a place to live for five-years or longer that needn’t cost us a cent.  Toss in the garden and maybe we’re better off than most of the coop dwellers in town.

Gross Domestic Product

Remember that monthly news release that is the most circularly reference work of modern times?  You know it as the Gross Domestic Product report and it has more percents than the 99’ers.  See if this makes sense to you:

“Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 4.6 percent in the second quarter of 2014, according to the “third” estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the first quarter, real GDP decreased 2.1 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the “second” estimate issued last month. In the second estimate, the increase in real GDP was 4.2 percent.

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In case you didn’t drop by the website during the day Thursday, there were a bunch of experimental changes going on in order to keep UrbanSurvival at the “head of class” in a numbers of areas.

There is – if no one has ever talked to your before – a huge battlefield for your mind that’s based on such subtle things as how fast a web page loads.

For example, if you want the fastest experience with UrbanSurvival, you should use the https://urbansurvival.com address.  That’s because if you put in the https://urbansurvival.com address (the www address) it is slower by a small fraction of a second.

When I got up this morning (3:30 AM) and was standing in the shower (negative ion junkie), I thought you might be interested in how some of this stuff works behind the scene.

I won’t go into the whole “battle plan” of how to move UrbanSurvival’s rankings up, but one on-page thing you may notice in the upper right-hand corner is that I now have a simple, easy-to-use link to our Facebook, Google Plus, and LinkedIn social media pages.

I’m no fan of social media, but it’s there because as things have evolved the major search engines are now penalizing sites without social media.  It’s like a bad idea has just gotten institutionalized.

So we play along with the game – reluctantly.

For a brief time yesterday, I have a fancy link to the Google+ page up, but after the head-clearing shower this morning it went away:  It was eating up too many milliseconds of page loading time.

Now to the point of my explaining all this:  In the grand Battle For Your Mind, there are some very subtle factors in your behavior that you’re likely not even conscious of.  So let’s take three of the top news websites at random and see how their page-loading time works.

For the purposes of this discussion, let’s agree to use www.gtmetrix.com which offers a dandy – first class – web analytics suite.

I ran three page load speeds and here’s the fastest page load times for each of our samples:

• CNN:  13.32 seconds
• Fox News:  5.90 seconds
• NY Times:  8.47 seconds
• UrbanSurvival:  1.30 seconds

There are a million technical details that will change your performance.  For example, all of these tests were without the www.prefix.  Why anyone would type the www. anymore is just a damn mystery to me.

Then there’s the matter of where you are located and what kind of home or work internet speeds you have.  A 50 MB connection will have a different view of the world from a dial-up user.  While the NY Times shows 8.47 in the test above, I rank it on some other speed test sites and it was down in the 5-second category.

There’s a general lesson here, if you look:

Humans are creatures of convenience – they will oftentimes take the “easy” or “fast” solutions tin life.  And that is a very big deal because most people don’t consciously think-through their decisions when it comes to media inputs.

Next time you hit the web and notice a “breaking news” story, pay attention to your “choicing” of which website to focus on.  Thjen ask yourself:  “Am I on this website because of the quality of information?”  Or “Am I using it because it loads fast?”

This human bent toward impatience is why people in sales are always trying to start clocks on you, too:  “Hurry!  Offer Ends Tomorrow!”  “Order now, supplies are limited!”

That’s why the Goolge+ poster has been replaced with simple text links: 530 milliseconds of added page load time was in the “Are you kidding me?” category.

What it all comes down to his this:  There usually is no clock on most decisions in Life although if you’re a serious Type A,  be assured that I got up early this morning to do a little “Screaming at the milliseconds” for you, on your behalf.

You aren’t just what you think, but when you think, as well…

Who Do You Work For?

Since this is Friday (for most people) I’d remind you that what you do between quitting time Friday and “getting up time” Monday is what hugely defines the quality of your life.

Peoplenomics this weekend looks at work hours…a topic of great interest.  If it isn’t today, wait until Monday…

Digging Out, Day 2

I got through bills and banks and voicemails yesterday…though a couple of voicemails were dropped, so if I owe you a call, please call again today.

Today’s project list includes processing Peoplenomics subscriptions (both, lol) and then writing Peoplenomics.  After that it’s on to monitor repairs… *(gee what fun, huh?)

Waiting for me was a note from chief www.nostracodeus.com programmer Grady:

Folks are beginning to be impressed by the bullseyes we’ve been getting with Nostra.  Reader comments are increasing. But Alexa still says we’re. # 9,942,987 (up 4,694,905)

While you were in GIG Harbour I was in Sidney on Vancouver Island – A short 102 miles away. I went down to the beach and shouted a ‘hello’ to the south but no one answered.  ;-)

Must have been that south wind.

Several friends in the Seattle area called or left hate-mail because on the way out of town last Thursday I told the Tacoma Narrows Bridge toll-taker that we were taking the Sun hostage and we would be holding it for ransom until next summer.

Serious rains and storms up there ever since…But I did warn on this, right?

Cat Heaven

I raised the intriguing question yesterday when I asked about whether there could be a “Cat Heaven”” because that would be a “Mouse Hell.”

Long-time reader Bill is  Johnny-on-the-Spot with the answer, although Johnny would like his clothes back:

Since you seem so genuinely perplexed about the subject here is what the Saints (real spiritual Masters who are Godmen of which there are only 1, 2 or maybe 3 at any time) say about it:
Animals do not go to heavens or hells.  They are immediately reborn in a new body the next step up the evolutionary ladder.  They are not held responsible like humans for their actions, those are pre-programmed in each life.
So now you know, take it or leave it.  I heard it first hand from the current Godman.
Glad you are back home.  The ranch needs your looking after.

I’m not sure just who the “current Godman” is, since no name was given, but I’d love to tip a few with him…got some questions..

The War Against “The People?”

Speaking of interesting reads, Atom was wondering about this development:

“My coin dealer stated he has had to hire an attorney to attempt to get back $100,000 the government took from his bank account because they did not like his deposit pattern.

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(Palestine, Texas)  Just when I was beginning to think that our return to the ranch in the East Texas Outback couldn’t possibly be stranger, along comes and email from  reader Bob ujp in the square state of Kansas:

This is in the news in Kansas. The Journal World. Lawrence Ks. On 9-24-14

Gov. Brownback to proclaim Zombie Preparedness Month.

Kansas are being encouraged to prepare for an  invasion of the  living dead, with Gov. Sam Brownback scheduled to sign

A proclamation later this week declaring October Zombie Preparedness Month.

The state Division of Emergency Management says if residents are prepared for a zombie attack, they’re prepared for anything.

Deputy director Angee Morgan says the idea is to make people aware of the need to be ready for emergency situation like natural disasters, catastrophic storms, fires even a SWARM OF ZOMLIE.

Brownback is slated to sign the proclamation at 11:00 am Friday in his ceremonial office in the Statehouse.

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(Amarillo, TX)  We dispense with the usual Focus piece this morning to zoom in on our core-value:  Making and keeping your hard-earned money. 

There are multiple reasons for concern about market today and through Friday: everything from a terrorism strike to disease making it out of Africa, to things going badly in Iraq.  But the one that is the highest probability (for the moment) is of a major market downturn.  Signs and portents are mounting, so how do we play it?

After the short look at headlines, we review what our trading model and workflow approach then explore the options before us in terms any seasoned gambler can understand.

The River Card is about to be turned.

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(Albuquerque, NM)  You may notice that we didn’t make it to Amarillo on our return trip to Texas.  The simple reason is plain tired and swamped.  And when that happens, there’s nothing like 7-8 hours of sleep and a good meal.

Therefore, we abandoned our “casino highway” plans (we’ve been to the ones from west of hear eastwards in recent years, anyway.

So today we will make Amarillo, for sure, and with any luck even score an early check-in so I can get to work on Peoplenomics.

The topic this week is sizing up how global collapse will look as all the “sand in the gears” tries to grind the machinery of humans to junk.

The question posed on Monday as to when markets would come down with Ebola is a critical one.  A grand inflection point may be nearing…of the sort that will be in history books, that is, if anyone is left with time to read and write within just five short years.

The latest communiqué from my consigliore is cause for concern because the projected numbers which we had put on Peoplenomics recently for subscribers to consider planning around as “worst case” are quickly turning into “most likely” case.

The Ebola news is NOT getting better, just getting worse by the day as the CDC finally pulls it’s head out of the sand and starts looking at the problem realistically:
CDC doubles the number of estimated current cases … which moves the case projection of infections forward by one month to about 1 million by the end of January (would indicate 500,000 by end of Dec, NOT January).
———————————-

“DC scientists conclude there may be as many as 21,000 reported and unreported cases in just those two countries as soon as the end of this month, according to a draft version of the report obtained by The Associated Press. They also predict that the two countries could have a staggering 550,000 to 1.4 million cases by late January.”

Nominally, the decline in markets Monday was blamed on the Chinese who are standing back from additional economic stimulus at this time.

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This is not a moot question to be asking.  First US forces are in Africa now.

Oh, sure, the epidemiologists have been writing up the propagation math and the RO is still too high and the response is just entering ramp-up, but to me the fascinating question which we raised a while back might be stated something like this:

“If the Black Plague were to show up today, how many deaths (distributed in what geographical manner) would be required for the disease to trigger a “kindling point” beyond which market collapse occurs as people flee for their lives and don’t want to be the “last ones out?”

I don’t believe humans have had to think in these terms, before.  About the closest example I could think of was the Italian Plague which was temporally near the blow-off Tulip[mania event in Holland in the 1630s?  From Wikipedia:

The Italian Plague of 1629–31 was a series of outbreaks of bubonic plague which occurred from 1629 through 1631 in northern Italy. This epidemic, often referred to as Great Plague of Milan, claimed the lives of approximately 280,000 people, with the cities of the Lombardy and Veneto regions experiencing particularly high death rates. This episode is considered one of the later outbreaks of the centuries-long pandemic of bubonic plague which began with the Black Death.

OK, Tulip mania doesn’t fit.  But the Kipper und Wipper of the 30-Years War most certainly does and it may hold some instruction on how counties handle their affairs when there’s a plague going on contemporaneously with major warfare.  Sound familiar?

Starting around 1621, city-states in the Holy Roman Empire (based in what plague-ridden country? –GU)  began to heavily debase currency in order to raise revenue for the Thirty Years’ War, as effective taxation did not exist.

The name refers to the use of tipping scales to identify not-yet-debased coins, which were then taken out of circulation, melted, mixed with baser metals such as lead, copper or tin, and re-issued. Often the states did not debase their own currency, but instead manufactured low-value imitations of coins from other territories and then spent them in yet other territories as far as possible from their own lands, hoping that the resulting damage would then occur to the economy of those other regions rather than their own.

Which really has a nice rhyme to it, since even now, we see how the Federal Reserve has increased the amount of money in circulation in the past year by 6.5% while the cost of living and the GDP are going up at nowhere near these rates.

And we’re in a marvelous stock bubble due in part to the cost of money being essentially zero for the big fund drivers.  So what’s not to love?

As my consigliore advised me Sunday:

The Washington Post Sunday said the CDC is now saying maybe 500,000 by end of January.  It shows up elsewhere, too.

If you roll my projections below forward from December it comes out to 495,000 at the end of January … which is 500,000+- as you round out the numbers.  Of course if that many are infected we will NOT be getting good numbers out of the HOT ZONE at all since people will be fleeing for their lives, NOT keeping statistics.

REMEMBER …. People at risk, even those already exposed WILL LIE LIE LIE  to get out of the HOT ZONE go to somewhere where they have a chance to get decent  medical care if they have been exposed, or to avoid being exposed at all …

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(Reno, NV)  Peoplenomics reports are always a joy to write – and unlike the UrbanSurvival columns, they have a serious-as-a-heart-attack angle to them because it’s where we get to nail down key aspects of the future and work out strategies for dealing with it.  This morning we put down four “corner posts”  that define our future.

This morning we offers two key insights:  One is a further discussion of Peak Oil, which as I’ve hinted in previous columns, and what’s really going on when you lift the covers of Ukraine, Syria, ISIS, Africa, and many other “hot spots” around the world.  If you remember our “thinking-framework” of the Manufacturer’s Resource Wars, there’s much to be relearned and  applied to this moment.

Beyond that, we assess the new revolution by the programmers from the 99% who are in the process of overturning the One Percent in a gloriously subtle way…and a way that will lead us in future weeks to redefine some investment criteria for stock screens and other investment vehicles.  Oh – and my buddy Rick Ackerman (of www.rickspicks.com ) lays out where gold could be going.  (If you’re not a subscriber, it’s similar to Robin Landry’s worst case, which is none too reassuring.  When smart guys with differing background begin to line up…)

So sit back, load the bean, and we’ll launch into “What It All Means...” written (somewhat appropriately) in our overnight suite upstairs from a Reno casino; where unlike markets or Washington pronouncements, we can at least see honest odds being posted.

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(Canyonville, OR)  The drive from Purdy, WA (a western outpost of Gig Harbor, an outpost of Tacoma that’s in turn an outpost of Seattle, that’s a subset of Washington State) down to our first night out on the long road back to Texas, was punctuated mostly by looking at how branded Americans are.

Take their vacation travel trailers, for example:  Elaine collected a bunch of names:

Hide Out

Polar Bear

Cougar

Koala

Toy Box

Big Foot…

And the list went on. 

As we were remarking on people’s propensity to self-brand (like we need to go Mark of the Beasting, right?)  along about Roseburg, OR. we saw a truly individualized brand.

Pulled by a classic Ford Econoline Van was a self-painted trailer which has been attacked by mad men with fluorescent paints.  It was actually done quite nicely.  But it was the message that was so cool:

Imagine Chillin

We loved it. 

Obviously (to us, anyway) the person pulling what was underlying it all, what looked like a 20-year old Shasta, had looked at some of the wildlife named rigs and come up with a far cooler message that conveyed their purpose in retreating to nature.

But it just goes to show you how deeply embedded this “urge to brand stuff” has become.

Far Beyond Trailers, too…

If it was only a matter of a compulsion to mark up trailers, that would be fine.  But it’s not.

Because Seattle has been somewhat successful in football, as of late, there are so many 12th Man flags flying on cars that it would make you think there’s been a military occupation of the region by the 12th Infantry, or some such.

Understand that it’s the little stuff that you don’t think about that embeds this branding tribalism in your head.

How many cars that passed us on the road carried advertisements for various car dealers, on them?  Virtually all of them.

Am I the only guy who (when buying a car) says “I will do my own license plate frame (plain, no wording) and don’t even think about putting some BS dealer badging on the back of my car!

If someone forks over $30-thousand (and more) to buy a car, they need to be thinking about all possible revenue streams to pay for that puppy.  And selling ad space to the dealer is one possible source of revenue.

“If you want your dealer decal on the back of my car, knock another $1,000 pretax off the price.  If you want to put one of your stickers on the factory paint job, you can buy a placement from $650 for that.

If you won’t strip off all the crap, I can buy a car anywhere and most people will take my money rather than lose a sale over free billboards…”

It’s a matter of being circumspect, I believe. 

It doesn’t stop at cars…there are alligators and taverns and heaven knows what else on clothing, too.  It just doesn’t stop.  I make an exception for Elaine’s Hooters T-shirt, so I can’t claim perfection.

Kids are jammed into the game from preschool and once they start packing a lunch, it will be in some rock and roll band’s lunch box.

Their shoes will have Abdias’ name, or a Nike checkmark on it.  But not Elaine, or me.  A Coach purse is a look for women and Johnson-Murphy loafers don’t require a stencil.  Jessica Simpson clothing is more a look than a logo, too, methinks.

But does it really mean anything what brand is on a pair of sweats, for crying out loud?

My distain doesn’t seem widespread.  But I think there are a lot of us who are 60-somethings who can see this thanks to car designer George Barris.  One of the hallmarks of his work was de-chromed, clean lines and no, the Bat Mobile didn’t have a dealer decal on it, at least last time I saw it, which was years ago. But then again, the Bat Man logo has come to life on its own – and on lunch boxes…

Next time you buy a product, look at the logo size in relation to the product.  Size of logo has mostly nothing to do with how an item performs.  What it really indicates in the level of mental and social-economic  acuity of the product owner, as much as anything else.

The one car that we admired yesterday (just outside of Portland) was a black 7-series Beamer that was devoid of advertising…and, we though, “Ah, a truly smart fellow…” which may have something to do with why he could afford a brand new 7-series.

Sign Posts Up Ahead

Elaine’s always looking at proximity of signs to one another.

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