Miscellaneous stuff

Thanks for everyone who bought my books that were in the recent Kobo promotion.  I hope you enjoy them.

If you live in the south like me, then keep an eye on the weather, because it's been violent.

I still don't have the energy I had in early January.  My illness from that month knocked me down a bit, and I'm still trying to climb out.  I'm hoping the warm weather of spring will help energize me.

Bought some lumber to make a cart for my miter saw.  Lumber prices are insane, and the supply is small and of dubious quality.  I hope the sawmills are running 24/7 to make up for lost time from last year's lockdowns.

I'm still keeping an eye on the Gamestop saga.  I've heard that the April 16 option expiration is going to be an important milestone.  I don't know how credible that rumor is, but I'm watching the stock price just the same.  That whole phenomenon is fascinating.

Life is tough for a lot of people.  Take care of yourselves, folks, and be kind to others.

Trilogy books on sale at Kobo

My Caverns of Mercury and Cities of Mars are 40% off at Kobo.  This sale ends March 29th.  Get 'em while the gettin's good!  :D

Severe weather

It's tornado season now, and trouble is brewing all over the Doppler radar.  

Y'all batten down the hatches out there and stay safe!

Thanks

Just wanted to publicly thank Jay Toney and Carolynn Gockel for organizing their group promotions.  Indie publishing has a number of unsung heroes, and they're a couple of them.

Cheers, you two!  :)

This market is spooking me

Valuations are high, and long-term charts are looking parabolic; these suggest things are too hot.  Stimulus bill should already be baked into the prices, so I'm not sure what else is left to drive stocks higher.  I'm not very good at timing the market, so take my words with a grain of salt, but I'm getting a bad feeling here.

Wednesday's action saw the S&P close right at the 50-DMA, a support line.  It's already tested that line a couple of times in recent weeks.  If it falls through that line tomorrow, then look out below.

 

Even if it bounces up, though, the last several sessions are still in a converging triangle, which means a breakout in one direction or the other is coming, likely within the next two weeks.  My bet is on a breakout lower.  Next support after that is the 200-DMA (currently at 3462).

In unrelated news (or is it a portent?) I watched a rocket blow up today.

 

The launch was still a success, though, and I love-love-love these SpaceX events.  Daddy Musk is gonna take us all to Mars.  :D

UPDATE:  Market sell-off today.  I didn't know some Fed guy was going to have an announcement, but that's what happened, and that sparked the sell-off.  Assuming there's not a miraculous rally in the next twenty minutes, support at the 50-DMA is broken.  I don't know where the Fibonacci support lines are, but due to the parabolic nature of the chart, I'm guessing they're way down below the 200-DMA, so that's the next support line.

 

 

I'm not convinced this is a new bear market, though.  It could just be a two-week correction.  We could easily bounce right off the 200-DMA and head higher as the economy opens back up from the lockdowns.  But whatever happens, the 200-DMA is now the level to watch.  It'll continue to creep up a little, so it'll probably be at around 3500 by the time it meets the candlesticks.

 

 

UPDATE 2:  Stocks rebounded on Friday.  A small rebound wouldn't have surprised me, but I would have expected the 50-DMA to act as resistance, and it didn't.  Friday's close was higher than Wednesday's close.

So I'm not sure what to think.  I'm still wary of this market, but that doesn't mean it can't go higher in the near term.  We'll just have to see, I guess. 

Dell updated

I still can't really believe it, but my laptop successfully installed the updates from Dell today.  It hasn't done this for about a year and a half.

Apparently, the automatic update program had a bug in it that prevented updates from working.  There's a way to do them manually, but I'd kept putting that off.

Now, though, Dell seems to have fixed the issue.  So that's good, especially since it means I don't have to try to do this stuff manually and risk screwing something up.

In other news, I'm back to working on Wheel of Fire #5.  This book has taken forever, and I hate that, but there have been... ahem... extenuating circumstances.  Barring any further health issues, though, or other personal/family distractions, I hope to make a lot of progress on it in the coming weeks.