Luna-25 is down :(

The Russian lunar lander that was scheduled to prowl around the moon's south polar region has crashed.

https://www.rt.com/russia/581531-russian-lunar-moon-probe/

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."

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.

Hopefully the Indian lander will have better luck.  We'll see on Wednesday.

A familiar feeling

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.

This is a typical pattern for this region and this time of year.

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.

It feels like the summer of 1996.

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.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I hope it doesn't happen.  I hate droughts, and I loathe the idea of repeating anything from those horrible years of my life.

Add in my fears of economic woes coming to fruition at about the same time, and...

Well, let's just hope we get luckier than we deserve.

Smashwords July Sale!

I'm participating in the big Smashwords sale going on this month.  

 

All of my novels are 50% off the usual price.  My short stories are FREE.

Here's the promotional link: 

https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos/

Put my name in the search box at the top and you'll see my books.

Clouds of Venus is still permafree as usual.

Check it out.  Tell your friends.  :D

The Fed blinked; now what?

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.

The Fed also said it might raise rates later this year, so it's presumably not yet finished fighting inflation.

The stock market reacted with a strongly bullish next-day trading session.  Friday's action saw a modest pullback.

So where do we go from here?

I'm not sure, so when in doubt, examine the price action.  Let's see what the chart tells us.

 

 

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.

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.

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.

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.

In the meantime, global de-dollarization continues.  Last I read, some African nations were jumping on the BRICS/yuan bandwagon.

And, of course, there's this whole Ukraine business.  War is the ultimate x-factor.

Exciting times ahead, I fear.  Prepare accordingly.

Had a nice Father's Day

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.

Whiplash

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.

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.

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.

I can't help feeling, though, that there's a huge shoe about to drop somewhere.  Just a feeling.

Waiting, but for what?

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.

It feels like everyone's waiting for something.  But for what?

In a previous post, 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.

In the meantime, we've continued to see some trouble in the banking sector.  

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.

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.

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.

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.

I still think this fall is when we'll see something exciting happen.

As with the other post I made about this subject, none of this stuff should be considered personalized investment advice.

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.

In the meantime, we're all waiting for... something.