Remember Our Pre-Holiday Rally?

The one I’ve been mentioning lately?

Well, here we is.

(Unless you have a Grammar Police badge, please don’t try to correct the error of my ways or you’ll miss the phun of the “voice” of the column here…)

The Dow and the S&P were up a shade over 1.8% Wednesday while the NASDAQ was up almost 2 1/2%.

That’s pretty good, but like I was telling Peter Pham (Forbes) yesterday, our U.S. Aggregate Index that we use on the Peoplenomics.com side for insights into the market may have its own version of the old Dogs of the Dow Theory.

Since 2013 the Dow is up about 7%, the S&P up 17.5%, and the NASDAQ up 34.5%.  Actually a little more since those were the numbers last weekend.

Point is, there are always laggards and leaders.  One of the tricks to making wheelbarrows full of money so you too can have a fabulous life and go on cruises is to buy laggards and ride them up to the leader position.

Rinse and repeat.

All of which would make for a fine profession in life, except we all end up in the icebox at some morgue, so I want to have as much fun as possible.  More on the Pham interview in Coping which follows the more rational look at the world.

The futures were up 70, but I’d be surprised if the market can hold those levels into the long weekend close.

China Fears Overblown?

Not, not necessarily…but maybe in a weird kind of way. 

Remember how the markets were getting all panicky about the Shanghai Exchange slipping on a banana peel?

Well the REAL thing to be looking at is how five CHINESE WAR SHIPS were sighted off Alaska.

Here’s where we revisit the problem of common sense versus money fixations: 

Which is worse:  Getting your butt handed to you in the SSE fall when our Global Index has been screaming be o u t of international  and our Aggregate Index has been short or neutral since the 4th of July, OR China flexing its muscles so when we get to the timeframe for our projected Manufacturer’s Resource Wars (2020-2026)?

I don’t know about you, but gee, gosh, I expect that war thing to be a savory mix of EMP, tactical nukes, DNA specific bioweapons, in a buttery glass sauce with a lead finish.  A delightful menu choice and, since robots are coming, we can have many sides of tossed bodies topped with crumbled retirement flakes. Yeah…..

In the meantime, what we need is a businessman (with vision) in  the White House and that’s been missing for 20+ years, so the whole thing sinks like Babylon, except that really means lost in the electronic noise here on the net, and it’s now spelled Babble On.

This is human progress, for you.

Consumer Alert:  I may have double dosed on my cynicism pills this mourning.  (No grammar badge, right?)

It’s still a ways off, though, since the WaPo reports China is cutting 300,000 .mil jobs.  At least someone is thinking balanced budget on the planet.  Just happens to be the wrong country.

Meanwhile, Back at the Rally:  Job Cuts

Death by a thousand cuts, then, is it?  Stand by to be disappointed: The Challenger Job Cuts report is hot off der press release.

“Monthly job cuts plunged by more than 60 percent in August after surging to a four-year high in July on massive cuts in military staffing, according to the report Thursday from global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc. Employers in the U.S. announced plans to shed 41,186 workers from payrolls last month, a 61 percent decline from the 105,696 layoffs in July. The July figure was the highest since September 2011, when monthly job cuts… – See more at: https://www.challengergray.com/press/press-releases#sthash.3Ac4AjEj.dpuf

With that, the market is looking to rally further this morning and then tomorrow, everyone in their right mind (there are only 37 of us left in the whole country) will exit to cash over the long weekend because you’d have to be crazy to be long that long, so to speak.

(When I grow up, I want to be the Spike Jones of finance.  (rim shot)) 

Say the Secret Woid…

And Rick Perry’s president bid falls out of the ceiling.

Stupidity in Politics

OMG, how stupid do the pols think We the People are?

Here we are reading stories like this one about whether The Don is right about plans to tax the rich.

It’ll never happen.  Why?  Think, dammit, think!

Grand Cayman, Cayman  Brac, Grand Turk, the ABC Islands, Channel Islands, Belize….

WTF?  Look up “local nominee” and offshore trusts…and get back to me.

Otherwise, you can just check your brain at the door with how many millions of others?

This is still some political unity left, how-some-ever: Trump, Cruz to share in rally against arrangement on Iran. 

This is shaping up like one of those relationships where it’s gonna be a race to see who dumps who as we read how Iran’s top leader: No nuclear deal unless sanctions lifted.  Which means?  Maybe  mullahs read Trump: The Art of the Deal and a constitutional scholar near you didn’t?

Knock Knock

Who’s there?

Invasion!

Invasion of where?

Oh, shit, let me count the where’s for you:

Hungary Defends Handling of Migrant Crisis Amid Chaos at Train Station

Guatemalan President Resigns Amid Scandal  (People don’t leave paradise, right?)

Boat carrying migrant workers capsizes off Malaysia; 14 dead

Refugees risk lives climbing onto trains, delay passengers at Chunnel

Mexican Man Convicted of Smuggling Illegal Crossers

See?  I’m not even getting into the Steinle family suit against San Francisco over their failure to enforce immigration laws or any of that.  Won’t even bring up the San Diego rape/murder…no, we’re too subtle for that kind of discourse.

Meantime,. the press is still backing the invasion of America by illegals (being behind the curve as they often are) with reports like:

Donald Trump’s Shaky Grasp on Immigration

Illegal Immigrants Don’t Lower Our Wages Or Take Our Jobs  (Labeled opinion, not fact, BTW and you know what opinions have with…oh you know that one.)

Which is why Nabisco and Ford are building $4-billion in plants where?  ViseGrips please!

My liberal friends hate it when I quote press releases from the Center for Immigration Studies like this one just out:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 2, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — A new study by the Center for Immigration Studies is the first in recent years to examine immigrant (legal and illegal) and native welfare use based on the Census Bureau’s Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP). The SIPP provides the most accurate picture of welfare participation. The survey shows immigrant households use welfare at significantly higher rates than native households, even higher than indicated by other Census surveys. Welfare includes Medicaid, cash, food, and housing programs.

Among the findings:

• In 2012, 51 percent of households headed by an immigrant (legal or illegal) reported that they used at least one welfare program during the year, compared to 30 percent of native households.
• Welfare use is high for both new arrivals and long-time residents. Of households headed by immigrants who have been in the country for more than two decades, 48 percent access welfare.
• No single program explains immigrants’ higher overall welfare use. For example, not counting subsidized school lunch, welfare use is still 46 percent for immigrants and 28 percent for natives. Not counting Medicaid, welfare use is 44 percent for immigrants and 26 percent for natives.

I’d point out to them that I’m not a “change the facts to fit my beliefs” kinda guy.  Yes, they get benefits because they are often ultra low income.  But it’s still a better life than in Mexico, which is where the problems are.  BUT don’t piss my money away solving MEXICO’S internal crooked shit.

And why American corporations stupidly backing the source of the problem is simple:  The same kind of slave labor exploitation that led to the unCivil War here.  D’uh.  Marx wasn’t wrong on everything…just the government part.  The exploitation by the ownership class?  Yep.

The only way to fix that is to cap incomes (like speed limits).  If a person can’t get by on $100 million, or so of net worth, WTF, right? 

That does it.  Enough. .  Only 2-more days and four computer crises till vacation!  I’m going to talk to our Amazon Echo for a while, thank you…  “Alexa, tell me a joke!”

“What do you call a fake Noodle?   An Impasta!”  (rim shot)