tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68580686266400721552024-03-20T23:04:30.385-07:00Jeff TanyardSpeculative Fiction AuthorJeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.comBlogger843125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-39517791390556067982024-03-20T23:03:00.000-07:002024-03-20T23:03:56.668-07:00Just sent my first Substack newsletter email<p>Hopefully I didn't screw it up too badly. Lol...</p><p>I'm subscribed to my own newsletter, and I got the email, so I know it went out. But everyone is on different devices and whatnot, and there's no telling how the newsletter might display on any given machine.</p><p>Anyway, at least I got the first one out of the way.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-56397424205065368802024-02-16T00:01:00.000-08:002024-02-16T00:01:24.956-08:00Miscellaneous stuff<p>I think I'm ready to start sending out my newsletter in Substack. TinyLetter is going away, so I had to find a replacement, and I decided to go with Substack. There will be some cosmetic differences in the emails, but hopefully there won't be any real snags.</p><p>SpaceX is heading for the moon. On the one hand, I'm not a fan of moon missions because I think it's just a useless rock with no real promise, but on the other hand, it's still a really cool thing to do. I even picked up some shares of Intuitive Machines as a result of the successful launch and in the hopes of a successful landing and mission. Which brings me to my next point...</p><p>I bought shares of a couple of stocks on Thursday. I did this in spite of the fact that I think markets are overbought and in need of a correction. My gut tells me that this purchase of mine can be considered a contrarian indicator; in other words, my finally giving in is what will signal the start of the decline. Will we see a correction within the next few weeks? I think the odds of it just got significantly better.</p><p>As part of the moon mission, the Columbia apparel company is using its Omni-Heat Infinity technology to shield the craft from the extreme temperatures of space. Here's a YouTube video about it:</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ON95YAS9g5s" width="320" youtube-src-id="ON95YAS9g5s"></iframe></div><br /><p>I like and sometimes wear Columbia's stuff, and I think this promotional venture of theirs, while admittedly a bit gimmicky, is nonetheless pretty darn cool. By modern marketing standards--by which I mean we live in an era in which corporate marketing departments seem to be purposefully trying to destroy their brands--it's downright genius. After I publish this blog post, I'm going to go over to Yahoo Finance and take a look at Columbia's stock info.</p><p>I've started gaining weight again. I'm about ten pounds heavier than where I'd like to be. I'll try to reduce that in the weeks ahead. My overall fitness level is really quite pathetic.</p><p>I finished <i>The Hour of the Dragon,</i> the only novel-length Conan story by Robert Howard. It was a serviceable enough book. I could have done without the "he ejaculated" dialog tags and other goofy devices, but it was still a Conan story, so it still had all the awesome stuff for which such stories are famous.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-3903088613698337342024-02-12T23:08:00.000-08:002024-02-12T23:08:48.558-08:00Charging ahead<p>I just can't get a handle on this stock market. Nothing seems to faze it, not even the usual technical indicators. RSI over 70? Doesn't matter, we're going higher. Low volatility? Doesn't matter, we're going higher. </p><p>Geopolitical unrest increasing in various places around the globe? Doesn't matter. Credit and mortgage problems on the rise? Doesn't matter. Chinese stock market falling to lowest levels since 2019? Doesn't--well, you get the idea.<br /></p><p>I think there's an inflation report coming out tomorrow, so maybe that will cause a ripple. But I doubt it.</p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-26958994682708829352024-02-01T01:04:00.000-08:002024-02-01T01:04:54.483-08:00Rates unchanged as expected<p>The Federal Reserve left rates unchanged, and that's no surprise. The question everyone is trying to figure out is when they'll start cutting. From what I can tell, no one is considering the possibility of zero rate cuts in 2024, and the notion of a rate increase is basically unthinkable. The market has priced in rate cuts, and any news that shakes that faith should have a bearish effect on stocks.</p><p>Meanwhile, the S&P 500 has charged ahead to new highs this year.</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hSSrWT_7RtMvYrdkwysL46aakIrBWacB0ikaKhNhwMHggTmR8jFRrw8jSPwAdCgQh1RCFn_LmMeg0mqnW_p-KtMgAxJl_-4LA46jVTPpRXlINmAFt4L3tZzD3CBixmWCMCBWHgvK2zWb7n0f0G0oDGRBL_3MxlGGGRdKvVLYlFjHi2wWEhtU4nMBCS8/s856/sp500.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="856" height="246" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2hSSrWT_7RtMvYrdkwysL46aakIrBWacB0ikaKhNhwMHggTmR8jFRrw8jSPwAdCgQh1RCFn_LmMeg0mqnW_p-KtMgAxJl_-4LA46jVTPpRXlINmAFt4L3tZzD3CBixmWCMCBWHgvK2zWb7n0f0G0oDGRBL_3MxlGGGRdKvVLYlFjHi2wWEhtU4nMBCS8/w400-h246/sp500.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>The chart is just a bit misleading, though. The S&P 500 is heavily weighted towards the Magnificent 7 stocks. Most of the gains have come from those stocks: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla. A significant part of those companies' gains are undoubtedly due to the A.I. craze of last year.</p><p>So, those companies aside, what does the market look like in general? For that, we look at the "equal weight" chart of the S&P 500. In this one, all of the components of the index are given equal weight. Here it is:</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaDu_3eW6quScvyndCup0fwUO3PppR6gllVp9GI57JLk3CgNEmLkV0z5evtjIUE_iPDGedYDv3h94qZTJqSGOk0N5PfUozLAaslKpGNaG2o-PcI2z62eLZPGzb3sObz6BwXQVTsnR2ygZ1otHBNziPdj3SKXStTI5ZJpvITz2e3ACldT2CPpDrMTUeFnc/s870/sp500ew.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="870" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaDu_3eW6quScvyndCup0fwUO3PppR6gllVp9GI57JLk3CgNEmLkV0z5evtjIUE_iPDGedYDv3h94qZTJqSGOk0N5PfUozLAaslKpGNaG2o-PcI2z62eLZPGzb3sObz6BwXQVTsnR2ygZ1otHBNziPdj3SKXStTI5ZJpvITz2e3ACldT2CPpDrMTUeFnc/w400-h240/sp500ew.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>As you can see, no new highs in 2024 for the equal-weight version.</p><p>In fact, the lack of gains is even more apparent when you broaden the timeline out to five years. Here's the normal (unequally weighted) chart for the index:</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-GLCQ92tGPIq1h5fofwWtZC03uBQy32cBm3WaBB-HmKCZeN1qoo7X8q0smARg1nsPPQ5SAxnVA2w54AL1veWVaTsqjdMAI7C6eU_w50hvzDeAUjSz0xiuQcdSpYkqaPmn44vKPlmJsEkwquxs8PyQzYujYRU0fUVGdLKBqDD0LOt6KZhpIDwUsUSVqaU/s862/spfive.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="524" data-original-width="862" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-GLCQ92tGPIq1h5fofwWtZC03uBQy32cBm3WaBB-HmKCZeN1qoo7X8q0smARg1nsPPQ5SAxnVA2w54AL1veWVaTsqjdMAI7C6eU_w50hvzDeAUjSz0xiuQcdSpYkqaPmn44vKPlmJsEkwquxs8PyQzYujYRU0fUVGdLKBqDD0LOt6KZhpIDwUsUSVqaU/w400-h244/spfive.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>And here's the equal-weight version over the same time period:</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZjP6T7ziUHTB7W0qImHFW0SQNEzeBZtifWY_-SCq-Gb6T7oXSe6rE9fyVFkxSE-lohZAd3REAaI1py7Vht_daHAQUuWUh3R1AjUOQ91XQohnKY-46KjIfggwkqEsFjLUQ1tcvGScB7ewc2_33rBOkaYpSnlgj8yLi3zyU_slIS9a5hN3LjC6FD2oQFmY/s866/spewfive.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="524" data-original-width="866" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZjP6T7ziUHTB7W0qImHFW0SQNEzeBZtifWY_-SCq-Gb6T7oXSe6rE9fyVFkxSE-lohZAd3REAaI1py7Vht_daHAQUuWUh3R1AjUOQ91XQohnKY-46KjIfggwkqEsFjLUQ1tcvGScB7ewc2_33rBOkaYpSnlgj8yLi3zyU_slIS9a5hN3LjC6FD2oQFmY/w400-h243/spewfive.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>In this second chart, the market peaked in January of 2022 and has yet to revisit that high. Take out the bias towards the Magnificent 7, and stocks have basically gone sideways for two years.<br /></p><p>I thought in December that we'd see a correction in the first quarter of this year, and I still think that. So far, though, all the would-be catalysts for market declines have amounted to nought. Red Sea traffic disruptions, Middle East conflicts, Russo-Ukrainian stuff, farmer protests in Europe, all of the myriad American domestic issues... none have succeeded in spooking the market. It seems highly irrational to me, but, as the saying goes, markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.</p><p>Just FYI, though... the VIX is about where it was in late 2019/early 2020. I expected a correction then, too, and we got an outright crash in February/March of 2020 as a result of the Covid panic. Here's the five-year chart of the VIX with the 2020 spike readily apparent:<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqcNsVvVabePIMhBbSlkvRwB1zBuUfs8R7_d584wW8wB5zkPaByeuAr3pDuz04nLNnYSgrSzXUelht6mFarTn7Xph1AEPVRUS1wQ66U-KkXxhynQUAq-DJ2gzIhqWsb9Kn1z-76OcC4N2ZofxRaHZFodyqWtqXveRWoNwucqsstXCGNoXrM2aXwq1SYtk/s884/vix.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="521" data-original-width="884" height="236" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqcNsVvVabePIMhBbSlkvRwB1zBuUfs8R7_d584wW8wB5zkPaByeuAr3pDuz04nLNnYSgrSzXUelht6mFarTn7Xph1AEPVRUS1wQ66U-KkXxhynQUAq-DJ2gzIhqWsb9Kn1z-76OcC4N2ZofxRaHZFodyqWtqXveRWoNwucqsstXCGNoXrM2aXwq1SYtk/w400-h236/vix.PNG" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The starter gun is cocked. All we need is some event to pull the trigger.</p><p>We'll see what February brings us.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-17600848547341301842024-01-01T01:07:00.000-08:002024-01-01T01:07:58.283-08:00Happy New Year!<p>The 2020s have been a difficult few years. I think we can all agree on that. But hope springs eternal, and for all things there is a time, and perhaps 2024 will see some positive things come into their own.</p><p>Best of luck in the coming year, folks, and take care. :)<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-27911975037277941792023-12-16T23:11:00.000-08:002023-12-16T23:11:48.797-08:00Higher prices inbound?<p>In a global economy, prices of goods are directly affected by the price of oceangoing shipping. If shipping is safe and cheap, then the prices of goods will also be cheaper than they would be if shipping was dangerous and expensive.</p><p>For a long time now, shipping has been relatively safe by historical standards. The U.S. Navy has ruled the waves for decades and has kept the sea lanes free and clear. <br /></p><p>Recent activity in the Red Sea threatens to disrupt that status quo.</p><p>After taking a hit from a missile to one of its container ships this week, Maersk has decided to avoid the Red Sea and the Suez Canal altogether and go the longer way around the Cape of Good Hope. A few other shipping companies have followed suit.</p><p><a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/maersk-hapag-lloyd-rethink-red-sea-voyages-after-attacks-on-ships-f117b471">https://www.wsj.com/articles/maersk-hapag-lloyd-rethink-red-sea-voyages-after-attacks-on-ships-f117b471</a></p><p>How long will the Red Sea be too dangerous for commercial traffic? How high will the prices of goods rise? How long will they stay high before coming back down? Those are good questions, and I don't have any answers. But here are a few things to consider:</p><p>1.) Egypt collects fees for use of the Suez Canal. Decreased traffic means a decrease in foreign currency revenue. I doubt the Egyptians will be very happy about this, and I'm sure they're currently trying to decide how to deal with the Houthis in a way that will restore Canal traffic to its usual level. They might resort to military action, but I think a diplomatic solution is far more likely. They may have already made their decision; who knows.</p><p>2.) The Chinese have a significant interest in the Canal. About 60% of their exports to Europe pass through it. Until their Belt & Road Initiative is up and running to a degree sufficient enough to allow them to bypass the Red Sea without suffering any inconvenience, they need the Canal. Like the Egyptians, the Chinese might pursue either a diplomatic or a military solution, but I think they're more likely than the Egyptians to pursue a military one. They have the muscle, and due to their status as the world's factory, they would almost certainly have the world's support if they went in and flattened the Houthis. Also, some Chinese companies own stakes in some Egyptian ports, so there's some added impetus for action. On the other side of the argument, the Chinese have a long history of making threats but not following through, so the prudent presumption is that they'll back down from conflict as usual.<br /></p><p>3.) After decades of off-shoring its manufacturing base, the U.S. is now dependent on China for manufactured goods. This dependency was predicated on the assumption that the sea lanes would remain free and clear. An increase in piracy and privateering changes that equation. I doubt anything short of the political dissolution of the U.S. will be enough to repatriate the manufacturing, but I can't rule it out. A quick-and-dirty solution to the Red Sea crisis would be to issue Letters of Marque and Reprisal and let bounty hunters take out the Houthis. That would be a radical step, and so unlikely that I'm embarrassed to even bring it up, but I think it might be the most politically palatable across the board. Official action by the Navy and/or Marines is possible, too, but doubtful due to the military's current state of decline and a general demoralization and enervation among the citizenry. We simply don't have the guts and vitality that Americans had in the days of President Jefferson and Stephen Decatur.<br /></p><p>4.) European nations need Chinese goods, but they don't have the military muscle to solve this problem, so they must go begging and horse trading. Perhaps the EU will make offers to Turkey or Iran in exchange for their assistance. I can easily see Erdogan seizing this opportunity to secure boons for his country in exchange for taking action against the Houthis. He has so far played East and West against each other quite expertly during the Ukraine conflict, so he's definitely clever enough.</p><p><br /></p><p>So those are my thoughts at the moment. The biggest loser here is Europe. They're the ones most directly affected by the disruption in Red Sea traffic. China doesn't need the Canal to ship stuff to the Americas or Australia, so supplies to those continents should be uninterrupted.<br /></p><p>Europe is already facing a cold, dark, expensive winter, and this Red Sea stuff is just piling on. Add in the various nations' preexisting domestic issues and conflicts between natives and foreigners, and the whole place seems ready to boil over. Might we see a for-real revolution or shooting war in Western Europe? I wouldn't put money on it, but I also won't rule it out.</p><p>2024 threatens to be exciting. Prepare accordingly.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-35527492253642343772023-12-12T01:52:00.000-08:002023-12-12T01:52:54.725-08:00New high for the year<p>The S&P 500 closed at a new high for the year after Monday's session. Gold, meanwhile, was down, a bit unusual in an environment where dollar strength or weakness is driving most of the action of both stocks and commodities.</p><p>There are still plenty of warning alarms going off. You can't raise interest rates the way Jay Powell has and not end up with a correction or a crash or something. Those chickens <i>will</i> come home to roost at some point. It's just a matter of when and how many.</p><p>There are rumors of a new disease on the way, another 2020-style pandemic. There are also rumors of other catastrophes, things like cyber attacks. I don't know how much credence to give those rumors, if any, but I know that a Presidential election year is a good time for something crazy to happen. Just as the stock market crashed in March of 2020, so might it do the same in 2024. And, as in 2020, there might be a nice buying opportunity when everyone panics and drives prices down to highly discounted levels. I missed the great buying opportunity of 2009 due to my own fear; I promised myself I would never make that mistake again.</p><p>As things currently stand, the market is making new highs, and that's a bullish signal. It's also overbought, though, according to oscillators like the RSI, and the MACD has turned slightly downward in what is usually considered a bearish signal.</p><p>I think the tiebreaker here is the matter of gaps. The sessions gapped up several times in recent weeks, and those gaps have yet to be filled. I think the market wants to consolidate recent gains, and I think it will, but I also think fundamentals and election-motivated media hysteria in the first quarter of 2024 might drive it down further than it currently wants to go.</p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-30913844107454700752023-12-12T01:25:00.000-08:002023-12-12T01:25:42.199-08:00R.I.P., David Drake<p>I admit I haven't read much of David Drake's work. I started one of his books years ago--I think it was <i>Redliners</i>--but just couldn't get into it. I abandoned it and never tried his stuff again.<br /></p><p>Nevertheless, Drake was an important part of the science fiction scene, particularly the mil-SF part. There's no denying his popularity, and he'll be missed.</p><p>And perhaps I'll give another of his books a chance some day. It's not really fair, after all, to judge an author by only one of that author's books.</p><p>But even though I'm not yet a fan, there are certainly plenty of others who are, and I sympathize with them now. Drake was a big name, and his absence leaves a big hole.<br /></p><p>R.I.P., man.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-72680723121058705332023-11-04T01:20:00.000-07:002023-11-04T01:20:36.045-07:00The stuff of dreams<p>A few nights ago, I had a strange dream. In my dream, I was talking to an old friend I haven't talked to in a number of years. He then mentioned a trip to Tokyo we had both taken years earlier and which I had completely forgotten about. Images from the trip flashed into my mind, including a party on the beach. Dream-me couldn't believe I had forgotten the trip.<br /></p><p>In real life, though, I've never been to Tokyo. I've never been anywhere in Asia. The trip and the memories of it were completely fabricated by my subconscious.</p><p>For a long time, I've thought of dreaming as a way for the subconscious to sort of expunge itself of clutter. It picks a few memories fed to it by conscious perception, and then it mixes them together and takes a little joy ride down the strange path it has created.</p><p>The Tokyo thing, though, doesn't make any sense in that regard. There are no memories from which the subconscious can draw. The only exceptions are movies and tv shows that take place there. Maybe my subconscious pulled something from there. But it's been years since I've seen anything set in Tokyo, so why would my dreaming brain call it up now when it usually draws from more recent imagery? What was the spark?</p><p>I don't have any answers to these questions. It's the fact that the questions themselves exist that I find interesting. I have no explanation for the thoughts in my own head, and that's really a mind-boggling thing to consider. The subconscious mind is truly an unexplored frontier. "Here be dragons," as the old saying goes. Or, in this case, here be a beach in Tokyo.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-17337929162916506032023-09-24T23:31:00.000-07:002023-09-24T23:31:04.445-07:00Farewell, little ones<p>I haven't seen a male hummingbird at the feeders since Wednesday or Thursday. I suspect they're already gone.</p><p>The females are still around, but I'm guessing they'll vanish within the next week.</p><p>I'll miss the little winged critters. They're cheap entertainment. It's a shame we only get to have them around for half the year.<br /></p><p>Good luck traversing the Gulf of Mexico, little ones, and I hope to see you again in March.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-21831625268761242852023-08-20T23:35:00.000-07:002023-08-20T23:35:23.895-07:00Luna-25 is down :(<p>The Russian lunar lander that was scheduled to prowl around the moon's south polar region has crashed.</p><p><a href="https://www.rt.com/russia/581531-russian-lunar-moon-probe/">https://www.rt.com/russia/581531-russian-lunar-moon-probe/</a></p><p>The Russian space agency Rocosmos stated, "According to the results of a preliminary analysis… the Luna-25 spacecraft switched to a non-designated orbit and ceased to operate due to a collision with the surface of the Moon."</p><p>It sucks for the Russians, but this is the reality of doing space stuff. Catastrophes happen from time to time. NASA and SpaceX have certainly had their share. There's nothing to do about it but learn what went wrong so you can do better next time.</p><p>Hopefully the Indian lander will have better luck. We'll see on Wednesday.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-56085159138727536062023-07-15T23:08:00.000-07:002023-07-15T23:08:32.047-07:00A familiar feeling<p>Friday was hot and humid, 96 degrees with 66% humidity for a heat index of 120 degrees. A pop-up thunderstorm appeared that night, dropped a lot of rain and lit up the sky with nonstop lightning and caused a brief power outage, and then just as quickly vanished from the Doppler radar.</p><p>This is a typical pattern for this region and this time of year.</p><p>However, there's something familiar about it. Not just one day's weather, but the pattern of the summer so far. It's not something I can explain. It's something the "lizard brain" part of my brain is keying on, some instinct that is trying to tell me that we've been here before. Sort of like deja vu, but not quite. More like history repeating itself in a way that's too subtle for me to pick up other than subconsciously.</p><p>It feels like the summer of 1996.</p><p>If that's the case--if history is repeating itself and 2023 is in the same part of the cycle as 1996--then a major drought is just around the corner. </p><p>The drought of 1998-2000 was almost Biblical in scale. By the time late July of 2000 arrived, mature oak trees were dropping their leaves. These were the trees with the deepest roots and which provide constant shade over the ground beneath them, and they can be stubborn about dropping their leaves to the point that some of them linger on the branches throughout winter. For them to start dropping leaves in July is simply unfathomable, but it happened.</p><p>For me, it felt like the end of the world. It was dismaying and demoralizing, and I was genuinely worried the region was going to become a desert.</p><p>In August of 2000, everything changed. It began to rain that month. Not the quick sprinkle that had occasionally happened during the drought and failed to provide any relief, but a serious rain. And it kept raining for the whole day. And the next day. And the next.</p><p>For a whole week, it basically rained nonstop. It would trail off to a drizzle at times, but it never stopped. By the end of that week, the yard was peppered with mushrooms and the whole outdoors smelled like mildew. The drought had broken good and hard, and it was obvious to me at the time. I'm no meteorologist, but I knew it instinctively. It's like when you have a fever and then you suddenly break out in a sweat. You're still weak and sickly feeling, but you know the fever has broken, and you know you've started down the road to normalcy. It was the same way with the drought.</p><p>Of course, the local news yokels continued to moan about the drought and the deficit and the lake level and all that. They would pretend the drought was still ongoing for a few more years, actually, even when the lake had reached full pool. But that's tv people for you, I guess.</p><p>So now my bones are telling me that this summer is an echo of 1996. If so, then a drought starting in 2025 is what one would expect.</p><p>I hope it doesn't happen. I hate droughts, and I loathe the idea of repeating anything from those horrible years of my life.</p><p>Add in my fears of economic woes coming to fruition at about the same time, and...</p><p>Well, let's just hope we get luckier than we deserve.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-87860675498160615432023-07-02T22:44:00.000-07:002023-07-02T22:44:06.621-07:00Smashwords July Sale!<p>I'm participating in the big Smashwords sale going on this month. </p><p><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw4n_UNlcmRTCmRss2tMwUA_JAvf7BYReBXwT1g-VQdi1qsf27EFnKMOMknA6uNUyAXRwfIoXX5u3HrY7XKS3gRdRr8f0IlRkcHVXFqPiw4aeq4FNH1-uymNzExaq6gLAretZ7Yi5rgg5dbYwQ-QYvdEGqEtkY3eyY8R80J5P-Zz-N1OwuE50fEyeGu3w/s2601/Smashwords%202023%20summer%20sale.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title=""><img border="0" data-original-height="597" data-original-width="2601" height="73" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgw4n_UNlcmRTCmRss2tMwUA_JAvf7BYReBXwT1g-VQdi1qsf27EFnKMOMknA6uNUyAXRwfIoXX5u3HrY7XKS3gRdRr8f0IlRkcHVXFqPiw4aeq4FNH1-uymNzExaq6gLAretZ7Yi5rgg5dbYwQ-QYvdEGqEtkY3eyY8R80J5P-Zz-N1OwuE50fEyeGu3w/s320/Smashwords%202023%20summer%20sale.png" title="" width="320" /></a></div> <p></p><p>All of my novels are <b>50% off</b> the usual price. My short stories are <b>FREE.</b></p><p>Here's the promotional link: </p><p><br /></p><p><a href="https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/">https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/</a></p><p><br /></p><p>Put my name in the search box at the top and you'll see my books.<br /></p><p><i>Clouds of Venus</i> is still permafree as usual.</p><p>Check it out. Tell your friends. :D<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-4804716261443368612023-06-18T23:24:00.002-07:002023-06-18T23:24:51.868-07:00The Fed blinked; now what?<p>The recent Fed meeting resulted in no rate increase. I was actually kind of surprised by that. I thought Jay Powell was going to keep raising rates and was simply playing it coy in the meantime.</p><p>The Fed also said it might raise rates later this year, so it's presumably not yet finished fighting inflation.</p><p>The stock market reacted with a strongly bullish next-day trading session. Friday's action saw a modest pullback.</p><p>So where do we go from here?</p><p>I'm not sure, so when in doubt, examine the price action. Let's see what the chart tells us.</p><p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdy8A_Z3-Ym0EzgCIo6_gnHsldT8r5nkk3dpeaODcdHMc9EaoBqSMrPEyph_W9_n0MVFZs2MNp1SEvPOFym067Lr-fOKGX0xQmZO3dDCzE_pNF-Ku51A1usR6PpUj3YIysyJr8m6m3YBXVXXANpYWVJ4bKNm1Fz-CBBiahTV_X1e42O8DNrMG02O5Wyc4/s861/chart1.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="861" height="244" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdy8A_Z3-Ym0EzgCIo6_gnHsldT8r5nkk3dpeaODcdHMc9EaoBqSMrPEyph_W9_n0MVFZs2MNp1SEvPOFym067Lr-fOKGX0xQmZO3dDCzE_pNF-Ku51A1usR6PpUj3YIysyJr8m6m3YBXVXXANpYWVJ4bKNm1Fz-CBBiahTV_X1e42O8DNrMG02O5Wyc4/w400-h244/chart1.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /> </p><p>The most recent candles have gone parabolic. Not only that, but RSI is clearly in "overbought" territory. And the VIX is at the lowest level it's been since before Covid. All these factors together suggest the stock market is ripe for a pullback.</p><p>That doesn't mean a bear market is imminent. It just means a consolidation is in order. We saw similar technical indicators in the summer of 2020. On two different occasions, the bull market became parabolic and the RSI indicated it was overbought. On both occasions, the market pulled back for a while. After a few weeks of consolidation, it continued up. The lull in the bull run was just that: a lull, not an end.<br /></p><p>So I'm expecting something similar this time: some whipsaw action for a few weeks. Then I think it will continue up, at least for a little while.<br /></p><p>Remember that there was a bull market for most of 2007 in spite of all the warning signs in the real estate and mortgage/finance industries. Stocks peaked that year in October.</p><p>In the meantime, global de-dollarization continues. Last I read, some African nations were jumping on the BRICS/yuan bandwagon.</p><p>And, of course, there's this whole Ukraine business. War is the ultimate x-factor.</p><p>Exciting times ahead, I fear. Prepare accordingly. <br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-54441022258218237862023-06-18T22:59:00.002-07:002023-06-18T22:59:16.425-07:00Had a nice Father's Day<p>I'm not a father, much to my eternal regret, but I did get together with the family for Father's Day, and it was a really nice time. I'm thankful for the people in my life.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-18395150773427848342023-05-20T00:54:00.001-07:002023-05-20T00:54:41.851-07:00Whiplash<p>Jay Powell and the Fed continue to send mixed signals in their hints of things to come, and traders don't know what to make of it. They must be getting whiplash by now.</p><p>I suspect we'll still be in the dark until the June meeting. They seem to be being cagey on purpose. What sort of hammer will fall in a few weeks? Beats me.</p><p>In the meantime, the 4200 level on the S&P 500 was briefly broken to the upside. We'll see next week if it's just a blip or if there's some actual bullish sentiment out there.</p><p>I can't help feeling, though, that there's a huge shoe about to drop somewhere. Just a feeling.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-73389352534508091532023-05-16T00:31:00.001-07:002023-05-16T00:31:58.592-07:00Waiting, but for what?<p>The last few weeks have seen an undecided stock market. There was a brief spike in volatility in late April and early May, but it soon settled down. The market has basically just gone sideways for the past month and a half.</p><p>It feels like everyone's waiting for something. But for what?</p><p>In <a href="https://jefftanyard.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-banality-of-paradigm-shift.html">a previous post,</a> I outlined a few things that had already happened, a few that were in the process of happening, and what I thought might happen in the future. I suspect many professional traders have thoughts and concerns similar to my own. I further suspect that they're reluctant to make any big moves until they get some more information. They're waiting for official government statistics to say XYZ, or they're waiting for the Fed to be more definitive about their intentions, or whatever.</p><p>In the meantime, we've continued to see some trouble in the banking sector. </p><p>Also, gold has broken through the $2000/oz barrier and has remained there. The longer it stays above $2000, the stronger that price becomes as a support line. The government can lie about inflation all it wants, but it can't lie about gold reaching new highs. And Jay Powell is presumably watching.</p><p>The Fed meets again in about a month. I suspect they might surprise some people, either with a rate hike or with hawkish language that suggests future rate hikes. Or both.<br /></p><p>We're in mid-May now, so the old axiom "Sell in May and go away" is now in effect, or at least it soon will be. The summer doldrums will be upon us. For those interested in bargain shopping for stocks, July will probably be a good time to do it. This will be especially true if the Fed hikes rates in June and sends stocks tumbling.</p><p>Volatility remains low at the moment at 17.12 on the $VIX. That's not "lower than ever" low, but it's lower than usual, and the $VIX is below both its 50-day and 200-day moving averages.<br /></p><p>I still think this fall is when we'll see something exciting happen.</p><p>As with the other post I made about this subject, none of this stuff should be considered personalized investment advice.</p><p>Take care not to let normalcy bias blind you to historical realities and potential future pitfalls. Currencies sometimes becomes worthless. Governments sometimes collapse. Economies sometimes break down. All these things have happened before within living memory, and all these things will happen again. Hope for the best, but prepare for the worst.</p><p>In the meantime, we're all waiting for... something.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-36814942859446896892023-04-21T00:00:00.000-07:002023-04-21T00:00:31.573-07:00Smell<p>I think my sense of smell is repairing itself.</p><p>I had covid in January of 2021. The actual illness lasted about two weeks, and it sucked, but it wasn't any sort of huge deal. The experience was about average for being sick.</p><p>The after-effects, though, lasted a lot longer. One of those effects was fatigue. I'd feel normal one moment, and then I'd be utterly spent the next moment. Exhaustion occurring suddenly and for no apparent reason, and multiple times a day; that was my life. It was quite debilitating. This went on for many months, and it's only now, in 2023, that I feel I'm finally over it.</p><p>Another after-effect was an alteration to my sense of smell. I noticed this the most when it came to pork products. I used to love the smell of bacon cooking; now it made me gag. Same thing with pork chops. Oddly enough, ham was unaffected, so I still enjoyed the smell of ham at Thanksgiving and Christmas.</p><p>Recently, though, I've noticed that my sense of smell seems to be going back to its old pre-covid self. I hope so; I hope it's actually happening and I'm not just imagining it.</p><p>I'd like to be a normal human for a while now, and preferably for the rest of my life. Hopefully the world will let me.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-3112928788538143342023-04-16T22:39:00.000-07:002023-04-16T22:39:57.314-07:00The banality of a paradigm shift<p></p><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><b>"History never repeats itself, but the Kaleidoscopic combinations of the pictured present often seem to be constructed out of the broken fragments of antique legends."</b></span></blockquote><blockquote><span style="font-size: large;"><b> - Mark Twain</b></span></blockquote><p></p><p><br /></p><p>***Disclaimer: Nothing in this blog post should be construed as personal financial advice. Do your own homework. If you want advice, hire a pro. This blog post is for entertainment purposes only.***<br /></p><p> </p><p>Once upon a time, back in early March of 2007, something very interesting happened.</p><p>The financial news channel CNBC ran its inaugural Million Dollar Portfolio Challenge, a stock market contest that anyone could enter for free and potentially go on to win a million bucks. Naturally, lots of people, including yours truly, signed up to play.</p><p>The first day of the contest was March 5th, a Monday. That was also the first day that traders could trade on the news from the weekend, news that had broken after the close of the previous Friday's trading session. One piece of such news was about a mortgage company called New Century.</p><p>Monday's stock market action saw New Century's stock lose somewhere in the neighborhood of 60% of its value. (I'm going by memory here, so don't quote me on that percentage.)<br /></p><p>The smart contestants went all in on New Century on the expectation that it would have a dead-cat bounce the following day. Indeed, that's what happened. New Century's stock price was up something like 25 or 30% the next day. Those contestants who loaded up on it leapfrogged ahead of the rest of the pack. The contest was ten weeks long, but the outcome was mostly decided on day one.</p><p>Needless to say, I was not one of those smart contestants. I didn't pile into New Century that day, nor did I go on to win the million bucks. However, one very important thing happened as a result of those first two days of the contest: I became aware of the subprime crisis. I began looking into it and keeping an eye on events. I quickly began to realize that the whole financial system was on the brink of utter collapse.</p><p>Obviously, it didn't collapse. There was some pain in in 2007-2009, to be sure, but not nearly as much as I expected. Basically, all the doom-and-gloom stuff I had read about had affected my mind to the point that I was essentially caught up in a mania. (Years later, when everything settled down and I was able to rationally evaluate everything, I was embarrassed and ashamed about how panicked and irrational I'd become. I swore then that I'd never let myself get swept up in a mania again. This experience would come in handy during the whole Covid thing, a mania in which many people are still firmly and unfortunately enthralled but in which I kept a pretty reasonable head throughout.)</p><p>The reason I bring all this up is because of the recent troubles suffered by Silicon Valley Bank and some other similarly-oriented banks. <b>It's all eerily familiar.</b> History isn't repeating itself, but as Mark Twain suggested, those broken fragments of 2000s-era legends are reconstituting themselves into a present-day reality.</p><p>So let's go over some of the similarities and differences, compare and contrast, and see what truths, if any, can be wrung from the whole mess.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">From tech to real estate</span></b></p><p>After the bursting of the tech bubble at the turn of the century, investors looked for a new place to put their money to work. The Federal Reserve had already come to the rescue by lowering rates to nearly nothing, and now it was the government's turn to join in. Specifically, Bush's "home ownership initiative" and the resulting regulatory framework. Let's take <a href="https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/achievement/chap7.html">a look at what it entailed</a>:</p><p> </p><ul><li> The US <i>homeownership rate reached a record 69.2 percent</i> in the second quarter
of 2004.
The number of homeowners in the United States reached 73.4 million, the most ever. And for
the first time, the majority of minority Americans own their own homes.
</li><li> The President set a goal to <i>increase the number of minority homeowners by 5.5
million
families by the end of the decade</i>. Through his homeownership challenge, the President
called on the private sector to help in this effort. More than two dozen companies and
organizations have made commitments to increase minority homeownership - including pledges
to provide more than $1.1 trillion in mortgage purchases for minority homebuyers this
decade.
</li><li> President Bush <i>signed the $200 million-per-year American Dream Downpayment
Act</i> which will
help approximately 40,000 families each year with their downpayment and closing costs.
</li><li> The Administration proposed the <i>Zero-Downpayment Initiative</i> to allow the
Federal Housing
Administration to insure mortgages for first-time homebuyers without a downpayment.
Projections indicate this could generate over 150,000 new homeowners in the first year
alone.
</li><li> President Bush proposed a new Single Family Affordable Housing Tax Credit to
<i>increase the
supply of affordable homes</i>.
</li><li> The President has proposed to <i>more than double funding for the Self-Help
Homeownership
Opportunity Program </i>(SHOP), where government and non-profit organizations work closely
together to increase homeownership opportunities.
</li><li> The President proposed $2.7 billion in USDA home loan guarantees to support rural
homeownership and $1.1 billion in direct loans for low-income borrowers unable to secure a
mortgage through a conventional lender. These loans are expected to <i>provide 42,800
homeownership opportunities to rural families across America</i>.</li></ul><p></p><p> </p><p>At the time, this all sounded like good news. It gave everyone the warm-and-fuzzies. Well, almost everyone. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/congressional-report/108th-congress/house-report/164/1">Congressman Ron Paul objected</a>:</p><p> </p><p></p><blockquote>H.R. 1276 takes resources away from private citizens, <br />through confiscatory taxation, and uses them for the <br />politically favored cause of expanding home ownership. <br />Government subsidization of housing leads to an excessive <br />allocation of resources to the housing market. Thus, thanks to <br />government policy, resources that would have been devoted to <br />education, transportation, or some other good desired by <br />consumers, will instead be devoted to housing. Proponents of <br />this bill ignore the socially beneficial uses the monies <br />devoted to housing might have been put to had those resources <br />been left in the hands of private citizens.</blockquote><br /><p></p><p>See that part about "excessive allocation of resources to the housing market"? He's predicting a real estate bubble. This wasn't the only time he would make that prediction. There was plenty of early warning, and not just from Ron Paul, that a real estate bubble was forming. Those warnings were simply ignored. People preferred to believe that real estate prices always go up, and they made financial decisions based on that belief.<br /></p><p>Reading through Bush's total initiative, it's easy to see how the bubble was inflated. The government essentially told lenders that they had to lend to anyone with a pulse or else they'd be punished. Lenders didn't want to be punished, so they gave out loans without regard to ability to repay. The federal government <i>forced</i> malinvestment into the real estate market.</p><p>In 2004, the Federal Reserve began raising rates, and that was the beginning of the end. <br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJJDnjZRkvAfqaJMQO-T5XAhPGorrESNXNqe0ZztoJATit7CcVXkv1PTIIJP7p9rMkSI0am0NaMYMCbMY1e4rJ4DRVYVtwxzgnYi3d0TJEurLgogZhTefbbmGMmo-oKNiUgJxoo55Nyuy_Z86zkKPBpu6QQ5pakvRniCcZzIF281qcrk6-YtJ3edf/s1190/fed%20rate%202004.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title=""><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="1190" height="144" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMJJDnjZRkvAfqaJMQO-T5XAhPGorrESNXNqe0ZztoJATit7CcVXkv1PTIIJP7p9rMkSI0am0NaMYMCbMY1e4rJ4DRVYVtwxzgnYi3d0TJEurLgogZhTefbbmGMmo-oKNiUgJxoo55Nyuy_Z86zkKPBpu6QQ5pakvRniCcZzIF281qcrk6-YtJ3edf/w400-h144/fed%20rate%202004.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><p><br /></p><p>It would take a couple of years for the results of those rate hikes
to percolate through the system, but there was no stopping things now.
It particularly affected those with adjustable-rate mortgages, and <b>over 90% of subprime borrowers in 2006 had ARMs. </b>Defaults were inevitable.<b><br /></b></p><p>The
collapse became apparent in 2006 when real estate prices peaked. Fast
profits made from "house flipping" were no longer easily available. The
music had stopped, and everyone was suddenly scrambling for a chair. <br /></p><p>So, just as the tech bubble of the 1990s had been inflated by easy credit and malinvestment and then just as quickly popped, so now the real estate market was going to suffer the same fate. This time, though, the contagion would spread to the banks. This resulted in the financial crisis of 2008-2009.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The stock market</b></span></p><p>Now, let's see how this affected the broader stock market. Here's the chart for the S&P 500.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ma_no4EjSTHARTdMA6eaKKKmMHZFRnMowmQEqCpQ8puY5bOpFH8mI4U1SeUK4-_FmdG4UnSfmbAy5atZBoJszu_2sUYj66EuUudsWzKWFOIbptrDMX1Ieao72ZSWK3kiAcohOM5v_NQNCd3Y1mpD3cZdWJNSoGmvAKjsus-4h0xN4aIg_YtHYvCK/s871/stock%20market%202004-2010.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title=""><img border="0" data-original-height="377" data-original-width="871" height="174" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4ma_no4EjSTHARTdMA6eaKKKmMHZFRnMowmQEqCpQ8puY5bOpFH8mI4U1SeUK4-_FmdG4UnSfmbAy5atZBoJszu_2sUYj66EuUudsWzKWFOIbptrDMX1Ieao72ZSWK3kiAcohOM5v_NQNCd3Y1mpD3cZdWJNSoGmvAKjsus-4h0xN4aIg_YtHYvCK/w400-h174/stock%20market%202004-2010.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>As you can see, the market kept going up until late 2007. The decline in real estate prices had already been going on for a year, and the collapse of New Century had happened months earlier. In fact, those first few dead canaries in the coal mine didn't really affect the stock market much at all. There was a big drop off in late February of 2007, but that was due to a 9% drop in the Chinese stock market the night before, not anything related to the American real estate market.</p><p>There was a brief correction and consolidation, but by mid-April, the market was making new highs.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtvSoaB2KEJd28L6zycq3IokpeghMooEPAgydb-RrccEr0BpDTZUKF999qRzwePzTQ76rXLjyCan46gsGxKR2jJsSnPLJS42l5e1harQqRbuoUUum0gUSLYyGQ7Se3nBP9O4B1AvoC8WIODgBE601qqTqU3imaTmoVndJw_p_N_eJSBwHqeEn9z3D9/s872/stock%20market%202007.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title=""><img border="0" data-original-height="372" data-original-width="872" height="171" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtvSoaB2KEJd28L6zycq3IokpeghMooEPAgydb-RrccEr0BpDTZUKF999qRzwePzTQ76rXLjyCan46gsGxKR2jJsSnPLJS42l5e1harQqRbuoUUum0gUSLYyGQ7Se3nBP9O4B1AvoC8WIODgBE601qqTqU3imaTmoVndJw_p_N_eJSBwHqeEn9z3D9/w400-h171/stock%20market%202007.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Everything was going to turn out okay, right? Well, not so much. That summer, there were other signs that things weren't quite right. There was a hard correction in late July and early August, but then the market headed back up and again made new highs. It peaked in October.</p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0tCbhDFJgZA-QOctFrf2gGkJ3pn0eFcYRvz40L0oWtaSvZZf_DNub24XYIRuVFBW-2AEtfZIxZSKAgbClebqRKMRHytWzBu_mEEI6AAU4HtcQx3E3wCcwItetcbdajCo1VYTQD71Ag1dKKxp7tfNvc1-Qd-jgJu-__aBVI9G-248D5BZ117EJQxZ3/s863/stock%20market%202007.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="373" data-original-width="863" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0tCbhDFJgZA-QOctFrf2gGkJ3pn0eFcYRvz40L0oWtaSvZZf_DNub24XYIRuVFBW-2AEtfZIxZSKAgbClebqRKMRHytWzBu_mEEI6AAU4HtcQx3E3wCcwItetcbdajCo1VYTQD71Ag1dKKxp7tfNvc1-Qd-jgJu-__aBVI9G-248D5BZ117EJQxZ3/w400-h173/stock%20market%202007.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><br /> <p></p><p>Then it began its long decline, not bottoming out until March of 2009, two years after the big New Century stock price crash.</p><p>The Federal Reserve lowered rates the whole way through the financial crisis, trying to soften the blow, but it didn't help. The damage was already done, and any easy money would now only fuel the next bubble, not re-inflate the previous one. <br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqyLuypdtBHmp6-MsCOZ-o339kyqne5at5WQezwiJf7YpSV2Hv0UNpvkbHuz74vvqK8DKnJpLVWszeGK7j7Ho0km5_PVESRkAcKXY_xHHCSgIjrZLqkNpy5oVkao15iMs3-KmF7Ot56yaZuHC5qZfiup2I2dXCiFOoXnx9XXBjZwBVjmTZ5ZdzoY5t/s1149/fed%20rate%202007-2009.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="496" data-original-width="1149" height="173" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiqyLuypdtBHmp6-MsCOZ-o339kyqne5at5WQezwiJf7YpSV2Hv0UNpvkbHuz74vvqK8DKnJpLVWszeGK7j7Ho0km5_PVESRkAcKXY_xHHCSgIjrZLqkNpy5oVkao15iMs3-KmF7Ot56yaZuHC5qZfiup2I2dXCiFOoXnx9XXBjZwBVjmTZ5ZdzoY5t/w400-h173/fed%20rate%202007-2009.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>The main point of all this, the one thing that is essential to understand, is that there was a significant time lag between the various stages of the collapse. A nation's economy is a big ship, and it takes a long time for that ship to change course, even when the change is inevitable. There can easily be conflicting signals in the interim.<br /></p><p>And that brings us back to the present and current issues. The stock market of 2023 might go up for the next few months, but don't let that lull you into thinking that Silicon Valley Bank and all the other dead canaries in the coal mine didn't amount to anything substantial. Keep the time lag in mind.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Inflation and the petrodollar</b></span><br /></p><p>The financial crisis of 2008-2009 spurred the federal government to engage in some overtly inflationary measures. There was plenty of outcry about this at the time. Those critics said the politicians were just kicking the can down the road, making the inevitable comeuppance even more drastic when it would eventually arrive. Those critics weren't ignored; they were shouted down on national television. It was a crazy time, and there was outright panic.<br /></p><p>So the government threw tons of money at the problem, the Federal Reserve kept rates close to zero, and everyone who identified with Hayek more than Keynes waited for the inflation to take root and grow into a tree made of Weimar Papiermarks. <br /></p><p>Throughout the whole saga, though, there was one thing working in favor of the dollar's strength, and that was its role as the world's reserve currency.<br /></p><p>Since 1974, the dollar has been quasi-backed by oil. We call this arrangement "the petrodollar." I don't want to wade into too much nitty-gritty, so I'll just stick to the salient points. Oil since the 1970s has been sold exclusively in dollars, and since the whole world needed oil, it also needed dollars in order to purchase that oil, and <i>that</i> provided the dollar with a demand floor that it wouldn't otherwise have had.<br /></p><p>There have been a few occasions where an oil-exporting country has tried to rebel against this arrangement by selling or threatening to sell its oil in some other currency. Those occasions are coincidentally--or not--often followed by regime change instigated by the U.S. government. The message, even if just implied rather than stated outright, is nevertheless clear: if you sell oil on the global market, you'd better give Uncle Sam his cut.<br /></p><p>So long as the U.S. military remained the dominant force on the planet, the government could coerce the whole world into the petrodollar arrangement. And as long as the dollar was a half-decent investment vehicle anyway, and at least as good as any other currency, it wasn't that much of a burden to be forced to use it. Both the carrot and the stick were in play here.<br /></p><p>But what if the world lost its fear of the U.S. military? And what if, at the same time, the government weaponized the dollar in a way that severely spooked other governments and caused them to lose faith in the safety of their dollar-denominated investments? What if there's no longer either a carrot or a stick?<br /></p><p>This is the "You are here" moment in the timeline.</p><p>Between the "helicopter leaving Saigon" moment from Afghanistan, the Ukrainian bluff being called by Russia, the U.S. military's lower recruiting standards and missed recruiting goals, and various other humiliations, the world has lost a lot of its fear of the American war machine. At the same time, the weaponization of the SWIFT system and the seizure of Russian assets has made the world wary of leaving any wealth in a place or format where the U.S. government can make it disappear on a whim.</p><p>The result, as we're seeing now in real time, is global de-dollarization. Here are a few examples from the past few months:<br /></p><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipUVhYl2Qt4KecRyrJGff5oQtVnib3tI18ap9Y-YyuG7zqG1bdc36TmWvQ7S0vc2KiiTa_mS1DCD7r8bh9FYFBIhP4SPAQYaQ633KIfQQdZBV1v1ieHTkIDvCGoYWBZU2Y0a6Fe7hq2jM54rWeUYrsxKfhGgW4hQdmZoRy5uSoo4ePDb9oBBcZaGeM/s1002/de-dollarization.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" title=""><img border="0" data-original-height="1002" data-original-width="800" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipUVhYl2Qt4KecRyrJGff5oQtVnib3tI18ap9Y-YyuG7zqG1bdc36TmWvQ7S0vc2KiiTa_mS1DCD7r8bh9FYFBIhP4SPAQYaQ633KIfQQdZBV1v1ieHTkIDvCGoYWBZU2Y0a6Fe7hq2jM54rWeUYrsxKfhGgW4hQdmZoRy5uSoo4ePDb9oBBcZaGeM/w510-h640/de-dollarization.jpg" title="" width="510" /></a></div><p></p><p><br /></p><p>When these countries reduce the amount of trade they perform in dollars, then they reduce their need to own dollars. Add in the uncertainty and risk involved with holding a currency that has been weaponized, and it's no surprise that other countries are now dropping dollars like they're hot potatoes.</p><p>So where do those dollars go now? They go to the only place they're still needed. They come home. They get repatriated into the American economy. The result, as one might easily guess, is a non-trivial amount of inflation.</p><p>These inflated dollars, by the way, include Treasury bonds. About ten percent of all U.S. Treasury debt owned by foreign governments was dumped in 2022.<br /></p><p><a href="https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt">https://ticdata.treasury.gov/Publish/mfh.txt</a></p><p>Surely hyperinflation is just a stone's throw away, right? We're all going to be wallpapering our homes with Benjamins, right?</p><p>Well, not so fast...<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">A challenger appears</span></b></p><p>The Federal Reserve, led by Jay Powell, has been increasing interest rates in recent months. Pretty steeply, too. Jay Powell is apparently channeling his inner Paul Volcker in an effort to combat inflation.<br /></p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4l1NwV-S5yUXCvsg736DDsrMbhVWuiB2yqcWcfUIGJQ0m__03LrLHMXubgLlDZfaaVmNC2ACk_1LZUbCtZrJze5mP6U8_BNRfDYxG7WUaT2tnLEb8TMdarcWab9UvjUgfokn9r1ni8cFnkWLeSxM00kRRAP1Jm1mhi3Ahkb39LSei_tUMcGHyHxTa/s1157/fed%20rate%202023.PNG" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="1157" height="153" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4l1NwV-S5yUXCvsg736DDsrMbhVWuiB2yqcWcfUIGJQ0m__03LrLHMXubgLlDZfaaVmNC2ACk_1LZUbCtZrJze5mP6U8_BNRfDYxG7WUaT2tnLEb8TMdarcWab9UvjUgfokn9r1ni8cFnkWLeSxM00kRRAP1Jm1mhi3Ahkb39LSei_tUMcGHyHxTa/w400-h153/fed%20rate%202023.PNG" title="" width="400" /></a></div><br /><p>Such a rapid rise in rates will be felt the most in sectors of the economy that are very rate-sensitive.</p><p>Like banks.</p><p>And that's exactly what we've seen with the recent bank collapses in California.</p>I suspect Jay Powell will continue to raise rates so long as inflationary forces--by which I mainly mean global de-dollarization forces--continue to be a factor.<br /><p>If we see the same time lag we saw in 2007-2009, then we can expect to see major banks--not just small, local ones--eliminate departments and positions, fire senior executives, beg for loans, and so on and so forth during the remainder of the year. We might see a bankruptcy or a buyout.</p><p>However, I think things might occur faster this time. Remember, back in 2007 and 2008, the Fed was <i>lowering</i> interest rates as the financial crisis unfolded. This time, I don't think that will happen. I think rates will continue to rise, and I think that will accelerate the big crunch of the financial sector.<br /></p><p>There was a lag of a year and a half between the collapse of New Century and the collapse of Lehman Brothers. I don't think today's big banks--the ones that are vulnerable, I mean--have that long. I think they have a year or less. Since stock market crashes like to happen in the early autumn, I'd place my bets on a September or October collapse.<br /></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Bread and circuses<br /></b></span></p><p>Naturally, few people are talking about any of this stuff. There are sports events to watch, politicians to rage about, and all sorts of other distractions. Economics is boring. The dollar is the world's reserve currency, and it's been that way for a long time. The experts say nothing will change any time soon, so why worry?</p><p>That's the problem with major paradigm shifts. Normalcy bias results in few people recognizing--and even fewer <i>admitting</i>--that the shift is actually happening. If the sun has risen in the east every day of your life, then you expect it to continue to do so for every subsequent day... until one day when you find yourself at the north pole in the middle of winter and the sun doesn't rise at all, and then your whole worldview is shaken to its core. Suddenly, the sun rising in the east isn't a permanent part of the human experience but rather a <i>subjective</i> thing wholly dependent on spherical geometry.</p><p>The popular phrase "banality of evil" refers to people who engage in evil deeds in a rote, workmanlike, dispassionate way. We're seeing the same banality right now with regards to this monetary paradigm shift. Very few people are treating the situation with the gravity it deserves, least of all the major media organizations <b>who should be sounding the alarm the loudest.</b></p><p>As for regular folks, they're just going about their lives. They're watching their favorite shows and taking their kids to ball games. They're grilling out and ordering stuff on Amazon. They simply don't care much about all this bank stuff. And frankly, they shouldn't have to. They didn't vote for or otherwise demand all the bad policies that got us into this mess. It's not their fault.<br /></p><p>Fault or no fault, though, here we are. We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how the world economy works. Unless something radical happens to jar us off the current path, the petrodollar is on the way out, and a good chunk of America's wealth will go with it.</p><p><br /></p><p><b><span style="font-size: large;">Conclusion</span></b></p><p>I'm reluctant to make predictions about this stuff. There are too many unknowns.<br /></p><p>It's entirely possible that Jay Powell's hawkishness on rates will save the dollar and cause all the Damoclean swords to simply evaporate.</p><p>It's also possible that the Fed's efforts won't be enough and we'll be using wheelbarrows full of cash to buy our groceries.</p><p>It's also possible that the government will take advantage of dollar instability to force us to use a CBDC.<br /></p><p>It's also possible that the government will erroneously conclude that getting into WWII saved the American economy in the 1940s, therefore getting into a major war in 2023 is just the solution to our problems. We're already seeing all sorts of belligerent talk from politicians on both sides of the aisle. The prospect of a global war is the biggest wild card of all.<br /></p><p>However things shake out, I don't think we'll avoid a stock market crash within the next year and a half. Keep a close eye on your stops, and be ready to buy stuff on sale after the crash. If you keep a cool head and plan wisely, you might still come out of this okay. Fortunes were made during the Great Depression, you know. All it takes is enough guts to run against the herd. If you had loaded up on stocks in March of 2009, then you would have made out like a bandit.<br /></p><p>To paraphrase R.E.M., it's the end of dollar hegemony as we know it, and those of us who are diversified outside the dollar and ready to buy stocks at deep discounts after the crash feel fine. :D<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-7583782502527403502023-03-13T00:47:00.001-07:002023-03-13T00:47:14.530-07:00Spring, we barely knew ye<p>It's supposed to get cold again here. Lows are predicted to be below freezing, so that should kill off all the flowers and new leaf growth that have occurred so far.</p><p>It sucks, but there's nothing to do about it.</p><p>In other outdoorsy news, I recently felled a small oak tree that was not in a good place and needed to go. I'm going to try to save the trunk, let it cure, and see what I can make of it.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-91943835762132661402023-03-02T01:06:00.000-08:002023-03-02T01:06:40.781-08:00Two roads diverged<p>Not in the woods, though. Sorry, Robert Frost. These roads are in the stock market.</p><p>I'm trying to figure out which way it's going to go, and I simply don't know. The signals are mixed.</p><p><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZMpglMHeC6EsYCdqyTbun_nFBHGDbKvf70RpW4gAH-A9tGLTexbA5Iuq9vRWyNbD6z3udlA0J0rCHCC38NzfMqsbJEy-6osS8S6LQ0DEeyfPZTxwWhMyeP5u3ulEFQH436XyJGlOPJDsQueSQeSpBfN_4c9eO6NyBiebMDf2wfo8zAL_hRmW40FIj/s555/market.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="555" data-original-width="360" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZMpglMHeC6EsYCdqyTbun_nFBHGDbKvf70RpW4gAH-A9tGLTexbA5Iuq9vRWyNbD6z3udlA0J0rCHCC38NzfMqsbJEy-6osS8S6LQ0DEeyfPZTxwWhMyeP5u3ulEFQH436XyJGlOPJDsQueSQeSpBfN_4c9eO6NyBiebMDf2wfo8zAL_hRmW40FIj/w416-h640/market.PNG" title="" width="416" /></a></div><br /><p>Let's look at those last few candlesticks. The last four trading sessions have all seen the market close at or below the fifty-day moving average. This suggests that the 50-DMA is acting as resistance.</p><p>On the bottom side, two of those candles have bounced off the 200-day moving average. This suggests the 200-DMA is acting as support.</p><p>The two DMA lines are awfully close together, and something will have to give way soon. There will either be a break out to the upside or one to the downside.</p><p>The RSI is around 40, so that's neither oversold nor overbought territory, so I can't glean much from it.</p><p>The spread on the MACD suggests that if there's a breakout this week, I'd bet on it being to the upside. However, there's also a long-term support line that has recently been broken, so maybe the market will continue down to the next support line.</p><p>If my calculations are correct, there was a 38.2% Fibonacci retracement line at about 3971, and the latest trading session closed well below that, so that line can be considered broken. The next retracement is the 50%, and that one's at around 3900.</p><p>Put it all together, and I'm not sure which way to go. I'm leaning bearish, though, at lest for the next couple of weeks.</p><p>Disclaimer: This is for entertainment only. Don't make any financial decisions based on this post or any other post.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-66684774131926192632023-02-25T00:49:00.000-08:002023-02-25T00:49:35.077-08:00Sometimes the sequel is better<p>Most of the time, sequels don't measure up to the original. The first <i>Tremors</i> movie is the best. The first <i>Jurassic Park</i> movie is the best. The first <i>Jaws</i> movie is the best. And so on and so forth.</p><p>Sometimes, though, a sequel manages to outshine the original. <i>Empire Strikes Back</i> is head-and-shoulders above its predecessor.</p><p><i>Aliens</i> is arguably better than <i>Alien,</i> though this is a close one, and I give the edge to <i>Aliens</i> mainly because of the goofy stuff from the first one: the Christmas-style landing lights, the "molecular acid" line, and the obviously rubber and animatronic alien props.</p><p><i>Terminator 2</i> is better than its predecessor, mainly due to the larger budget and the better visuals that allows, but I think it's a smoother-flowing film in general, too.</p><p><i>Mad Max 2</i> is better than the first one for basically the same reason: a bigger budget allowing for a better movie. It also flows better.</p><p>Long-running franchises can be a tougher call, because the law of averages suggests that there will eventually be a sequel that equals or betters the original. Which <i>Friday the 13th</i> movie is the best one? I honestly don't know. My knee-jerk response would be to say the first one, but that one doesn't feature the full-grown and hockey-masked Jason Vorhees who became the iconic villain of the franchise, so should it really count? And what about the <i>Police Academy</i> movies? If you think Bobcat Goldthwait steals the show--as I do--then you'd be inclined to vote for one of the sequels, not the original.</p><p>Of course, some sequels should never have been made. (I'm looking at you, <i>Highlander 2</i>.)</p><p>Anyway, just some random thoughts on a Friday night.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-77839896811413142412023-02-15T14:43:00.002-08:002023-02-15T14:43:49.836-08:00R.I.P., Raquel WelchHer charm and wit and beauty will be missed.<br /><p> </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/zLbTdfK4Xu8" width="320" youtube-src-id="zLbTdfK4Xu8"></iframe></div><br /><br /><p></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-24090433862781944932023-02-06T00:21:00.001-08:002023-02-06T00:21:32.476-08:00Julian Sands still missing<p>Actor Julian Sands went missing back in the middle of January. He was hiking in the mountains in California and disappeared. He still hasn't turned up, and the odds of his survival are grim.</p><p>I'd love for him to turn up safe and sound. This is the 2020s, and the strangest things imaginable--and some that defy imagination--have been happening with some regularity, so I'm not counting anything out. He might yet pop up with some crazy story. Perhaps he's holed up in a cave and is living off the meat from a bear he killed with his bare hands and waiting for the snow to melt so he can come back down to civilization. He's a highly skilled mountain hiker, so it's not impossible for him to pop back up. I really hope something like that happens.</p><p>I think I first saw him in <i>Warlock,</i> and I've been a fan of his ever since. He made an excellent villain. </p><p>I feel for his friends and family, and I hope they're dealing with this situation as best they can. It sucks all around.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6858068626640072155.post-520468821051557062023-01-18T13:29:00.001-08:002023-01-18T13:29:37.874-08:00Did some pushups today<p>I'm finally feeling well enough to try to get back into an exercise routine. I haven't been blowing gobs of phosphorescent yellow snot out for a couple of days now, so the sinus infection might be beat. I'm still coughing, but that's typical for me. After being sick, I often have a lingering cough that takes a few weeks to go away.</p><p>I did 51 pushups in a single set today. I usually shoot for 70, but these are the first pushups I've done in a couple of weeks, so I'm okay with 51. I should be back up to the usual amount in a few days.</p><p>I also need to get back into bicep curls with my rubber exercise band. I know my biceps are in a poorly state, and I've got to work on that if I ever want to lift any heavy objects. And I need to walk, too, because my legs are pitiful and my endurance practically non-existent.</p><p>Hopefully I won't have the setbacks I've had the past three years. Hopefully I can actually end 2023 in better shape than I began it.<br /></p>Jeff Tanyardhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/11414142510996295518noreply@blogger.com0