Polaris Dawn is delayed again. 😞
Furthermore, SpaceX is grounded.
The Federal Aviation Administration temporarily grounded SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets on Wednesday after a booster failed to land upright and exploded following the successful launch of Starlink satellites.
Such are the frustrating realities of space missions.
Inflation has been a hot topic for a while now, but however bad or negligible one thinks it is, the fact of the matter is that gold is not fooled by any sort of rhetoric or hand-waving. It continues to charge ahead, breaching the $2500 mark recently. When governments and central banks stop trusting one another and get jittery about the future, they tend to stock up on gold, and we've certainly seen a little bit of that from various countries.
Strangely, oil hasn't really followed suit. You'd think it would, geopolitical considerations notwithstanding. But it's still in its tight trading channel between $70 and $84, the same place it's been for the last year. It's currently $77.38.
Silver is also lagging, currently at $29.83 per ounce, off its recent high of over $32 back in May. Gold has pushed higher in recent months, but silver has cooled off a bit. Granted, silver isn't hoarded by governments like gold is, but it's still weird.
The elephant in the room, of course, is the Fed. Jay Powell hinted about rate cuts last week, and the stock market responded positively. A September rate cut is now expected. I'm still not convinced. I think this is another "Lucy with the football" routine from Powell. Next Fed meeting is September 17-18, so we'll see then.
Polaris Dawn was due to launch Tuesday, but they had some kind of helium leak, so they pushed it back to Wednesday morning.
The historic part:
The highlight of the five-day mission is expected to come two days after launch, when the crew embarks on a 20-minute spacewalk 434 miles (700 km) from earth, in history's first such private spacewalk.
Add in the recent news about SpaceX having to step into Boeing's shoes due to the latter's seemingly recent inability to do anything right, and it's shaping up to be a banner month for SpaceX.
I hate it for Boeing, because it's a storied company with a history of amazing achievements. I really hope they get their problems sorted out. But until they do, it's nice to know that SpaceX is ready to stand in the gap.
Here's wishing for a successful launch on Wednesday and an incident-free mission.
Well, I didn't get the dead-cat bounce I thought we might get during Monday's trading action. Quite the opposite: stocks tanked. Volatility spiked. Almost everything was in the red.
It's starting to feel like 2008 again. Except with more wars and civil unrest.
On the other hand, we're only talking about the last couple of months worth of gains being wiped out, so we haven't actually seen much carnage yet. During the 2020 Covid crash, the S&P 500 lost about a third of its value. So far during this correction, the S&P hasn't even declined ten percent from its recent high. Not time to panic yet, nor is it time to buy.
This calendar year started out slow and dull, but it's shaping up to be a wild one down the stretch. Steel yourself accordingly.
It definitely looks as if the shine is coming off the AI bubble. Intel got quite the haircut on Friday, shaving off 26% of its stock price. Nvidia reports earnings at the end of August, and I'm sure the whole financial community will be holding its collective breath on that one.
It wasn't just AI-related stuff that took a cut on Friday, though. Almost everything was down to some degree or other. Japanese stocks were hit hard due to the Bank of Japan deciding to raise interest rates for the first time in what seems like forever. Commodities pulled back, too.
So what fared best? Well, in my own portfolio, it was bond funds and REITs. That stuff was in the green while everything else was in the red. What can we glean from that? Well, I don't really know. Bonds and real estate are both sectors that are highly sensitive to interest rates, so if those things are up, then that could be construed as a sign that investors think a rate cut is coming soon. We've already seen all sorts of chatter about a rate cut in September, but the Fed talks and chatter walks, right? At the end of the day, Jay Powell is driving this boat. I personally think he's being a tease. I think he has no intention of lowering rates soon, but he wants to dangle the possibility in front of everyone for reasons of his own. He's Lucy with the football. But I guess we'll see in due time.
I wouldn't be surprised to see a dead-cat bounce on Monday after Friday's sell-off. That's the thing about big moves on a Friday: the traders have the whole weekend to second-guess their decisions, and by the time Monday morning rolls around, they're itching to hedge a bit.
But there's a good chance that this AI stuff will spark the long-awaited correction. All the indicators say we're due for a pullback, and those indicators have been saying it for a long time now. I actually thought this would start last fall. I guess the AI bubble delayed everything a bit. But it looks like now it might actually be here, and if it is, y'all had better hold on tight, because the bottom is a long way down.
