At least for a moment, maybe. But the early numbers didn’t look all that hot – 30+ by the Dow futures when I looked, but as Peoplenomics.com subscribers know, we’re laughing all the way to the bank on this latest slide. And tomorrow, we’ll be doing some work on answering the next question logically arising: “How far is down?”
But first the highlights: Dow dropped more than 300 points. Obviously, that East Coast bias against the AFC winning is more than just rumor. And, since the next wave down in the Long Wave is due any old time, why not now?
I mean, what could be more graceful than a nice Wave 1 (or macro 3 down) starting over Christmas, going into April/May, then having a Wave 2 bounce, and then things collapsing in a heap at the end of the year?
No, it’s not cast in concrete and your investment decisions are your own, it’s just that the reason we study history is to find out new and exciting ways to make money without breaking a sweat. Times like the present are what bears live for.
And when you look around, the reason for the decline is staring us all in the face: The Fed has added more than $3-trillion to its balance sheet (in the form of mortgage debt mostly) so they’re about out of silver bullets.
Then there’s the drop in consumer disposable income because of gunpoint healthcare. Which is not a criticism, except as one reader wrote during our recent healthcare poll:
Current policy is 5k deductible and 70% coverage with a few doctor visits (3 each) at copay of $30. Monthly premium is $550.
Under Obamacare, I will have a $7500 deductible, and premiums go to $1100/mo.
And that’s just one example of how one couple will be spending $550 a month less on things like dinner out, a movie, travel, and so forth.
Now, multiply that by a lot of people and what? (Bipity-bopity-boo!) The market drops.
Well, see, that wasn’t really so hard to see coming, was it?
And with all those people who got a one year stay of financial execution because they work for big companies that got the (crooked, illegal, but probably saving us from even larger, instant collapse) one year delay, we will be seeing even more downside over the next year.
You know, you don’t need to be a financial genius to navigate in the world. You just need to wake the F up and see what’s going on in your own neighborhood. As goes your income, so goes the country, if you have enough friends. (*I don’t have any, so I have to study the headlines.)
Speaking of the headlines, the NY Times is blaming poor auto sales last month on bad winter weather.
Reality check! Attention East Coast establishment media empire: It was not snowing in LA or much of the rest of the country and the real reason is collapsing disposable incomes! Hello? Anyone home? it snows last January, too, you know. It does it every year, in fact. Hello? Anyone there? FMTT
Another headline? Sure: Construction spending up. Yeah, I know, how can this happen if it’s snowing so much people can’t buy cars, right?
No! Another REALITY CHECK: Read the effing press release:
Residential construction in 2013 was $330.7 billion, 18.0 percent (±2.1%) above the 2012 figure
Yes, but when you read the detail the real hot sector is multi-family.
The good news? The firming in residential means all those construction workers are stepping up to buy trucks, which is why Chrysler did well. Ram tough…
There isn’t much in the way of news coming today until we get some factory order data in around 9 AM eastern. So the market will likely open up 50 on the Dow or better.
But remember, the Bears have (in football terms) plenty of opportunity to do a well-planned turnover, before they resume their drive down later in the week. next stops ought to be around 1,740 on the S&P with 1,640 and then 1,540 after that.
Whether we stop at any of those will be discussed in tomorrow’s Peoplenomics ChartPack. There really is an answer.
More after this…
(I still don’t understand this ad, but them I’m incredibly slow. Send gifts with friends where? Seriously, am I the only idiot in the room on this one? Why wouldn’t I deliver a gift myself, or ship direct from Amazon to whoever –use their gift wrap dealy? This just vexes the hell out of me….am I that stupid? What are they saying? I can read it…its just rolling around like a Zen koan…May if I had friends it would make sense…whatever….
Meantime, if it would help you make more sense out of UrbanSurvival, we’re pleased to report that you can buy True Texas Dirt on Amazon for just under $18-bucks.)
Roasted Earth Department
It’s not time to nose up to the dust bunnies under the bed yet, but we do note that a monster sunspot is turning around on the surface of old Sol and if it were to pop with an X-class flare then there might be some earthly impacts. Says as much over here at Slate.
Meantime, researcher Patrick Geryl tells us there are plenty of astronomical alignments that come into play about here:
So on February 8 – 9… there could be some serious happenings on the Earth…
February 6 – 8 , 2014: Opposition Venus – Neptune across the Sun
February 7 , 2014: Opposition Mercury – Pluto across the Sun
February 8 – 9, 2014: Conjunction Mercury – Jupiter and the Sun
It won’t end there, because there is a super line up on February 23…
Patrick Geryl
And, skeptical though I am about mega-quakes due to the sun chilling out, there is still this little matter of the volcanoes popping off in:
Indonesia (we haven’t heard from our Bureau down there, but the NY Daily snooze has coverage here.
And there’s the one popping off in Ecuador….BBC report on that here
And the Sarychev volcano looks nifty from space….
And National Geographic is rightly please with the electric blue flames they’ve picked up on their volcano snapping lately…
Still, we haven’t had anything above a 6.5 quake in seems like forever, so absent a quake-pumping X-class, or so, we’ll leave the dust bunnies in their solitude.
Yes, says the newest data, the sun woke up a bit, but still at 200 year lows (for this part of the cycle) in January data out now.
This little Presto Alert is likely no biggy:
A weak partial halo CME first appeared in the SOHO/LASCO C2 field of view today at 01:25 UT (after a data gap). It had the angular width of around 170 degrees and the plane-of-the-sky projected speed of around 700 km/s. The CME was most probably associated with an eruption in the western part of the Catania sunspot group 28 (NOAA AR 1967) accompanied with a weak and small coronal dimming and a post-eruption arcade. No flare was reported as the eruption seemed associated with one of the slow increases of the solar soft X-ray flux, with the above-mentioned (unrelated) M3.8 flare superposed on top of it. Due to the weakness of the partial halo and based on its morphology, we expect only the arrival of a CME-driven shock at the Earth, probably late on February 7, with weak geomagnetic consequences up to the active level (K = 4).
We shall see…
Seahawk Parade
Like you care. Someone does, I’m sure…
Also on My Who Cares List
Foreign Bugs
Likely from Belarus are suspected in the Obamacare computer nightmare, chapter…whatever we’re on with this now.
Makes me feel like I’m supporting script-kiddies with my income tax, you know?
Another One Bites the Dust
New Jersey democorp Rob Andrews is (reportedly)_ resigning from congress.
Lemme see: Under investigation by the House Ethics Committee…and going to work for a law firm… hmmm…
Gee, since when did taking the family to Scotland using campaign funds stop being a legit use of $30-large? Or sending a daughter to SoCal for music recording sessions, goes the rumor mill…
Still he leaves behind how many others that gotta go, too?
Congressoids took 1887 free trips in 2013, except they are never really FREE – it’s just a payoff that doesn’t get mentioned.
You can see who’s bought your congressoid over here… You should see how many congressoids “went Vegas” in January going to CES.