Well, all those warning signs I pointed out in the previous post haven't amounted to much. The stock market continues to push higher.
Did I mention that I suck at market timing? Yes... yes, I did. And I'll keep saying it, because it's true.
On an unrelated note, Kindle Vella is scheduled to go live in mid-to-late July. So at least three weeks away, I guess.
Things are finally starting to look toppy in the stock market. The Dow Transports has historically been something of a canary in the coal mine for the broader market, and it's been in decline for a few weeks.
The NASDAQ, meanwhile, has gone basically nowhere since February. Also, it looks to have made a triple top recently, a bearish signal. There's serious resistance at about 14,200, and it just can't punch through.
I estimate support to be somewhere in the 13,300-13,500 range. If it drops below that, well, it'll probably be a long way to the bottom.
The S&P has been in a bullish pattern all year. The past four sessions, though, have all been in the red, with the last one closing below the 50-DMA, so this may be the beginning of the end of the uptrend. Then again, it broke the 50-DMA back in March, too, and nothing became of it, so who knows...
Now, I should state for the record that I'm terrible at market timing. I've only successfully timed the market once in my life. So I'm probably wrong here, too, about the market having topped out. There might be weeks, months, or years of a bull market left to go.
But you might want to keep a close eye on your stops just the same.
I have no idea how Kindle Vella is going to play out. Maybe it'll be a huge success. Maybe it'll crash and burn. Maybe something in between.
But I'm intrigued with the idea. I'm toying around with a fantasy story right now. If I can write twenty episodes without writing myself into a corner or otherwise failing, then I'm going to give Vella a go.
I'm building a cart for my table saw. I built one for the miter saw in April, so this is the second such piece of furniture I've built this year.
One of the reasons to do this--besides the obvious fact that my saw needs a permanent home--is to practice my wood joinery. I decided to attempt this one with all drawbored mortise-and-tenon joints and no wood glue.
I've... somewhat succeeded.
I blew out two mortises, so I had to glue the splinters back in place, and it looks like that's actually going to work. I also buggered up a drawbore dowel and was unable to extract it, so it looks gross and may or not be sturdy. Those were my three major failures.
The rest of the joints, though, actually worked as planned. I ended up 17-for-20 on that, and that's a passing grade, so I'm begrudgingly pleased.
The next step is to paint. After that, I'll attach the table top with L-brackets. Last will be the retractable casters.
Then it'll be on to the next project.
I mentioned on a forum post that, when considering possible futuristic technologies, I always consider how it might be misused. After all, evil men have always existed, and there's no reason to think they won't continue to exist so long as humans remain human. And those evil men are attracted to power like moths to a flame, so any sufficiently powerful technology will be coveted by them.
This is something that many science fiction writers either don't understand or willfully choose not to understand. They write stories about highly advanced societies bereft of crime and vice and corruption. It's as if the technology itself provides atonement for us, making us all angels and saints in the process. And it's ridiculous. As Solzhenitsyn wrote, the line between good end evil runs down the center of every human heart. Machines and other technological advances are morally neutral. They are force multipliers, catalysts for human action and the will, nothing more.
I actually envy those with such a Pollyanna-like outlook. I wish I had their optimism. I'd be a much happier person, I suspect.
In summary, I try to consider the negative ramifications of new tech because I consider the alternative--the techno-utopian future--to be unrealistic and completely contrary to everything we know about humans. If a writer is going to open Pandora's Box, then I would hope he'd show all hell breaking loose.
