Tee-Time Tuesday

If you stand back a ways from the S&P 500 chart, like the ones you can still find on sites like Yahoo Finance, over here, you can almost make out what technical analysts call a “rounding top” formation.

Sure, the rally for a short time Monday was interesting, but at my friend Robin Landry points out, this didn’t really do much other than get us to the top of a trend channel. 

I won’t go into a long discussion here about what my trading plans are (that will be on the Peoplenomics.com site tomorrow morning), but I don’t plan to sit idly by and not make money.

In order to do that, however, you need to develop your own approach and get comfortable with making your own market calls.  Some of that will depend on data and this morning we have some price data to toss into the mixer:

“U.S. import prices increased 0.2 percent in March, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. The advance followed a 0.4-percent drop the previous month and was driven by an upturn in fuel prices which more than offset lower nonfuel prices.

Prices for U.S. exports recorded no change in March, after falling 0.5 percent in February. Imports All Imports: The price index for U.S. imports rose 0.2 percent in March, the first monthly increase for the index since a 0.1-percent uptick in June 2015.

The March advance was the largest 1-month rise since the index increased 1.1 percent in May 2015.

Despite the upturn, overall import prices remained down over the past year, falling 6.2 percent from March 2015 to March 2016.

Fuel Imports: Import fuel prices increased 4.9 percent in March following declines of 5.9 percent in February, 15.7 percent in January, and 10.0 percent in December. The March advance was the first monthly increase since the index rose 1.5 percent in June 2015 and the largest advance since a 10.8-percent increase in May 2015. The March rise was led by a 6.5-percent advance in petroleum prices that more than offset a 16.1-percent drop in natural gas prices.

Fuel prices decreased 38.3 percent over the past 12 months; a 39.5- percent decline in petroleum prices and a 37.7-percent fall in natural gas prices each contributed to the overall drop. All Imports Excluding Fuel:

Prices for nonfuel imports in March fell 0.1 percent for a third consecutive month. Nonfuel import prices have not recorded an increase since the index advanced 0.1 percent in July 2014.

In March, falling prices for consumer goods; foods, feeds, and beverages; and capital goods more than countered rising prices for nonfuel industrial supplies and materials, and automotive vehicles. Nonfuel import prices declined 2.5 percent for the year ended in March.

The biggest data gob for the week will come Thursday with the CPI data and then we don’t really expect things till see the bottom drop out until….oops.  Save that,. too.

But here’s a hint:  UK inflation rate rises to 0.5% in March.  That compounds out to a 6% inflation rate and that screams REIT’s and metals to me, but do your own diligence because I can be thick-headed at times.

Part of your study should include the Triple A Fuel Gauge Report, but that will be dissed in the CPI data because the Fed looks mainly at core (no food of energy which is plain loco-nomics).

National average today is $2.05.7.  Month ago was $1.91 and at some point that’s got to work it’s way into inflation indications.  Unless you don’t need food or energy…which apparently monetary policymakers don’t.

Gold and silver seem to be doing fine.  The key thing to keep an eye on will continue to be the wanton money printing in order to make up an economy on the fly.\

I’m pleased to report my Brother in Law and his new bride have found a home – so it looks like they will get in right around the bottom of interest rates and well before the eventual massive inflation we should see on the backside of the Second Depression.

As Goes Oil…

…so go OPECer bonds as Fitch downgrades Saudi paper (bonds) a bit.

Voting Time Draws Nigh

Everyone has a poll, it seems.  Here’s one for you to consider:  Poll: Voters Split Between Clinton and Trump in Hypothetical November Matchup.

Not that it matters what people really want.  It’s clear the corporate operators of both parties have no interesting in pure democracy in action.  Instead, they are cooking up all kinds of convoluted “rules” to make sure you will be choice-limited in your decision this fall.

In a way, it’s like going through a buffet line, only to discover the only food you’re allowed to take is the dried-out ham and overcooked eggs.  Everything else that looks fresh and inviting has only been put up on display for show.  It’s not really a menu choice.  That’s how this election shapes up.

Not going too far out on a limb here, I would think that a restaurant like that would soon be out of business, but it seems to stay open, although at an ever-increasing operating deficit.  Like the customer’s aren’t supposed to notice…

Stories reveal “the fix” is in – see Politico’s Billionaires fund anti-Trump delegate push, if the facts staring you in the face aren’t clear enough.

When you finally come to your senses,  the French Revolution will make a lot more sense.  So will contemporary events in Brazil, where a presidential impeachment is moving along.  Gee: Imagine a government lying to cover up financial problems…why who’d have thought?

And even that voter backlash here will ramp up as the non-candidacy of Paul Ryan as the ultimate insider’s candidate comes clear:  Paul Ryan for president? is worth some study.

Damn shame we used to have two semi-legitimate parties in the country and we’re down to just one now – the Corporate Nanny State Party.

What you hear how Donald Trump rages against the machine, the whole thing is looking evermore like a “rip-off.”  Which it seems to be…

Great Book title for an aspiring author might be:  “None Dare Call It Elections.”

No Free-Thinking Allowed, Either

I’ve told you that the “climate SWAT teams” are coming for people who don’t swallow the pill on climate change.  Sure enough:

“Michael E. Kraft: Climate-change deniers deserve punishment.”

As I have said repeatedly, show me “unadjusted” data and model realistic heat islanding in big cities and then let’s talk. 

No, that’s not denial.  It’s called Reality Checking.  So is counting volcanoes.

Speaking of Thought Control

Try this one on:  Al Sharpton: Bill Clinton ‘Lecturing’ Black Lives Matter Protesters Was ‘Inappropriate’.

Seems to believe “All Lives Matter” is now grounds to be labeled a racist, huh?  Which is why we live in the Divided States of America.  And to the Republic which once here stood.

The Worker’s Paradise

But if it is, why do Defections Continue to Rock North Korea?

Let me see here:  Socialism/Communism didn’t work in Russia, Cuba, it’s failing in China except they have moved to the corporate communism model, and it won’t work in the DPRNK, either.  It just takes time and usually bloodshed for the facts to emerge – again.

Dicks and Dictators Need Enemies

Distasteful as it is, Boko Haram Increasingly Using Children In ‘Suicide’ Attacks, UNICEF Says.

And it doesn’t stop there, all this extremist crap. Taliban suicide attack kills around 12 Afghan army recruits.

Everywhere you look, you see organizations that – on their own merit would quickly fall.  But if they come up with a Big Enough Enemy, they can perpetuate the lack of human progress forever.

If you want to be successful, work on making vulnerable enemies.  Works in the corporate world, too.  That is, if you don’t mind backstabbing your way to money and power…which seems the quickest course.

Terrible commentary, that.

Syria is Not Over, BTW

Yeah, we have to wonder if those Clinton-Bush-Obama neocon war-promoters embedded in State are still working their “leak magic.”

See the story Weeks after ‘pullout’ from Syria, Russian military is as busy as ever,. and see what you think.

If the U.S. economy is to avoid tanking, we need a big strong defense industry and at least some number of wars going.  Without those, the defense cuts begin and there are no real jobs, other than doing each other’s nails at the strip mall.

A Chicken and Egg Deal?

Interesting story out about how men with prostate cancer  and get treatment, may be more prone to depression.  This may be causing depression, and men don’t even know it.

We’ll keep an eye on this since it could be drug-related, or, hell, who knows how much of the depression is from having a serious onboard plumbing issue?

Pass the Windowpane

Or, if dropping acid for breakfast isn’t going to work with your Tuesday schedule, go read This is your brain on LSD, literally.

But it’s not quite the same, o’course.