Having been up all night (the ER visit for Elaine, see ATR) it’s not too difficult to fire brain cells jacked up on tea… We are sad that our expectation of 50+ dead, laid out in the Thursday column on word of the Hawaii fires was right. Maui wildfires death toll at 55 as warning … Read More

Let’s do the CPI report first – everyone is interested in that: “The Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) rose 0.2 percent in July on a seasonally adjusted basis, the same increase as in June, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.  Over the last 12 months, the all items index increased … Read More

While we await data, some reflection on where the notion of “five steps to a market move” may be rooted.  One of the most interesting notions in a while (lassoed from my office chair) is the one that says just as people handle Death Grieving with five stations, so too a deep psychological drama is … Read More

Recognize the Dates? The first date is easy.  It’s when the stock market blowdown in October of 1929 was initially OVER.  The market had peaked September 3, 1929.  Like ours did in this longwave economic cycle on November 8, 2021. The markets fell – worried about future prospects – until finally staging a good rally.  … Read More

Although the market has put on something of a rally for the early slog today, don’t hold your breath for the rest of the week.  Things could turn brutal as early as Tuesday when economic reports begin to drop. The granddaddy of them all is the CPI Thursday.  Despite the Siren song of Modern Monetary … Read More

The Radio Detective is in for the summer heat.  We’re in the a/c bubble until after Labor Day, so why not? Last Sunday we introduced the newcomer to electronics. We elected to repair a simple vacuum tube voltmeter (VTVM) because there are no tuned circuits as you’d find in a radio.  A couple of tubes, a … Read More

The market decline this week may have marked the end of Wave II.  Which would be, in Elliott Wave counts and trend channels be the rally lasting about 192 days from 2022 lows.  Which was preceded by Wave 1 down from November 8, 2021. Today, we consider our ChartPack and wonder how far down we … Read More

ho was it, just the other day, told me they’d finished Jared Diamond’s book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (20th Anniversary Edition).  They remarked it seemed a bit wordy.  “He said things that could have been 10-words or less, in a hundred…” Since I’m still carving out time to finish editing The … Read More

I’ve always found eating a couple of times a day a useful endeavor.  And what helps buy the bread is dough and that means a job.  So, yeah, jobs are changing around a bit. For example, in the JOLTS report this week, we learned that people who held onto their jobs got about a 6.2 … Read More

“You can’t take it with you” is a common saying as old age and Death approach late in Life.  But, economics argues that might not be the case. What seems more likely is that there is something we take and we propose that special “something” is what becomes our “currency” in (or if) there’s an … Read More

Early futures were pointing to a downer at the open this morning.  Not a major “falling out of bed” but after that pop up into the close Monday, a rebalancing before the jobs data (ADP) starts to pop tomorrow. Over the Shoulder:  In Monday’s column, we called it “Week on Rails” and said “…we would … Read More

The Weekly Dart Toss begins. With very little market-shifting news early, we would not be surprised to see the market edge up during the early session today.  But, then a day or two of downside as the markets MIGHT roll with “Sell the Rumor, Buy the News” as this is Jobs Week. That means we … Read More

The Radio Detective is back!  A VTVM is what? Vacuum Tube Volt Meter.  “But George, you idiot, I don’t HAVE a VTVM!” Totally get that.  But you see, it’s a nice, simple, way to dabble your toes into things electronic.  Thing of this as two weekends of “easy learning” a few things about how electronics … Read More