Ramblings

[chieftain]

I still think derivatives, a la credit default swaps, are the biggest threat to the whole Ponzi scheme.

 

[jimswift]

so much fiat created it has wiped out scarcity and the churn or velocity,
fiat piling up everywhere, stock accounts, balance sheets, .gov budgets and so on
but again, piling up, not on the move, too much of it to keep it all on the go so it sits

Give me a few trillion to do something with. Won't be piling up and definitely on the move.

Shit, scarcity is real in my accounts.

 

[Uglytruth]

Anyone thinking a 900 point down day followed by a 550 up day is manipulation to make things happen so they can skim both ways?
Create a huge drop to force the PPT to act. Then go the other way the next day? I'm sure they know when and where the PPT buys come from so they front run than and steal at will. Just another form of theft.

 

[chieftain]

Hourly shorts and longs?

 

[chieftain]

There's a KC-10A out of Travis AFB circling around the military's new favourite haunt off Tijuana right now:

 

[Scorpio]

as a fyi, dollar index went over 93 this am,

been awhile, but it continues to try to move up and thru resistance,

 

[chieftain]

The bullshit associated with running the Olympics aside, the actual event was pretty much completely apolitical (with notable exceptions being the boycotts of the 1980 and 1984 games). It was about the competition and the best athlete winning.

This current shitshow has as a primary objective, gender equality.

YOU FUCKING MORONS, THE GENDERS ARE NOT EQUAL. There are tasks and activities that men do better than women, there are task and activities where the opposite is true.

As much of a waste of resources the Games have become, leave it be as a sporting contest.

 

[Scorpio]

as a fyi, dollar climbed over 93 very briefly and has been rolling off since,

this has helped metals and possibly crypts

the cross of 50 above the 200 is typically considered bullish, so does that hold or is it going to continue to sink, negating that signal?

on the weekly you can see it looks like it is range bound in that 89.50 to 93 area, and will need something to shake it above or below that

 

[Scorpio]

we were talking metal stocks, and they are pretty consistent,
they were mostly all hitting deep oversold levels,
and now we are getting a pop,
time to see if there is any legs to this or if it is just taking a breather from the selling,

just putting up a few so you can see how consistent it is,

 

[JayDubya]

The chip shortage is getting worse​

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/8/5...ctronics-automakers-gm-tesla-playstation-xbox

The semiconductor supply crunch came for cars and phones. Now consumers are facing higher prices.

By Rebecca Heilweil Aug 5, 2021, 12:20pm EDT

New trucks sit next to a race track at the Kentucky Speedway as Ford waits for more semiconductor shipments to arrive.
Jeffrey Scott Dean/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Starting next week, General Motors is again halting the assembly linesof several pickup truck plants because the company doesn’t have enough computer chips. The plants had been back up and running for just a week following a shutdown in July, which was also caused by the chip shortage.

These production halts may not stop anytime soon. “I do think we’ll continue to see impact this year, and it will have a tail into next year,” warned CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday. And Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger similarly predicted last month that things won’t get back to normal for at least a year or two.

Now, the impact of the supply crunch is spreading to consumer tech. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned last week that a limited supply of semiconductors would hurt sales of iPhones. Microsoft is struggling to make enough Xbox consoles and Surface laptops. Elon Musk told a court last month that the chip shortage meant Tesla would only be able to manufacture about half as many Powerwall home batteries as it thinks it can sell. One San Francisco sex toy company even stockpiled microcontrollers to fend off future supply chain problems.

It’s clear that the global chip shortage shows no sign of abating anytime soon. In fact, it seems to be getting worse. While the White House is racing to expand chip manufacturing in the US to avoid future shortages, it could be years before that government investment actually pays off for consumers. So for now, the chip industry will continue to be hampered by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, as products ship with missing features and higher prices — often after long delays.

“The administration is saying, ‘Well, this is temporary,’” Willy Shih, a management practice professor at Harvard Business School, told Recode. “People are spending a lot of money to expedite things, and somebody’s going to have to pay for it.”

In an effort to measure the scope of the chip shortage, Recode reached out to nearly 30 companies that use, design, and make chips, including General Motors, Qualcomm, and Hewlett-Packard. All of the companies that responded said they were affected by the shortage.

The electronics maker Toshiba told Recode it’s stuck paying higher prices for components while Toyota said the company’s supply chain issues continue to affect production at its North American facilities. BSH, which makes Bosch appliances, said some products have lead times as long as six months.

While companies are adapting in their own ways, most didn’t anticipate a resolution anytime soon. Instead, companies see the chip shortage as an industry-wide problem that could go unresolved until at least next year and quite possibly into 2023.

The chip shortage is still wreaking havoc on auto production

Almost every major automaker has been affected by the chip shortage. Last month, Ford Motors announced that its second-quarter profits had fallen by 50 percent, more than half a billion dollars, largely due to the lack of semiconductors. Stellantis, the Dutch automotive conglomerate, stalled production of its Jeep Gladiator pickup in July because the company couldn’t secure enough chips. And Subaru’s chief financial officer, Katsuyuki Mizuma, recently said that, thanks to the chip shortage, the company has just seven days worth of inventory on hand, compared to the 45-day supply of cars the automaker normally has.

These supply chain woes began in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns worldwide shuttered manufacturing plants, disrupting the supply of semiconductors while simultaneously driving a surge in demand for devices like laptops and gaming consoles. Sensing an economic slowdown, many car companies jumped off the line for chips. Semiconductors can take up to six months to make, so when automakers canceled their orders, consumer tech companies were able to swoop in and buy those chips. When car demand returned and automakers needed semiconductors again, there weren’t enough to go around.

Why a global chip shortage is screwing up America’s pickup trucks

Car buyers are now feeling the consequences of the difficult-to-predict pandemic in the form of vehicles missing features, higher prices, and a scarcity of options. GM has sold some of its newest pickups and SUVs without advanced gas management systems or wireless charging features. Renault stopped installing the large screens that sit behind the wheel of its Arkana SUV models, while Nissan left navigation systems out of thousands of cars.

Tesla even turned to rewriting its vehicles’ code so that the company could make use of the chips it did have at its disposal. But even that hasn’t completely spared the company from the shortage’s impact. CEO Elon Musk told investors in July that the company was finding it particularly difficult to secure chips needed for its airbags and seatbelts, essential features for a car.

All of these problems combined are affecting price tags, too. Some 13 percent of people buying a car in April paid above sticker price, compared to 8 percent in 2020, one analyst told The Verge. In fact, the chip shortage has now gotten so dire that it’s not just fueling high prices for new cars, but higher prices for older vehicles, too. This means consumers looking to buy a new car have three limited choices, Consumer Reports wrote in July: “Look at models you weren’t previously considering, hold off on buying, or fix your old car if it’s in rough shape.”

There’s no quick fix to the semiconductor shortage​

Demand for chips is still incredibly high, and there’s no reason to expect a sudden surplus of semiconductors to arrive in the next few weeks. Right now, there are only a small number of chipmakers across the globe, and much of the world’s supply of semiconductors come from a single company based in Taiwan: TSMC.

Chipmakers are already producing chips at their maximum capacity, according to Falan Yinug of the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade and lobbying group that represents the chip industry. “Chip production has, in fact, increased substantially, and more chips have shipped in recent months than ever before,” Yinug told Recode.

Again, making a single chip takes an incredibly long time. At the same time, building more chip manufacturing plants, sometimes called fabs, requires years of engineering and construction and billions of dollars.

The White House is still trying to offer some short-term relief. Biden administration officials have already brokered negotiations between semiconductor makers and car companies, helping push more chips back into the hands of automakers. That’s made the auto giants happy while frustrating others. Medical device makers, who use chips for everything from patient monitoring systems to assistive robots for surgery, urged Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to avoid “prioritizing one industry over another.”

The Commerce Department recently concluded a 100-day review of the US semiconductor supply chain, which the White House said resulted in collaboration with the chip industry and a task force to identify potential disruptions in the supply chain. The agency is also pushing for a $52 billion program to incentivize more chip manufacturing in the US, a plan that will need congressional approval.

“It’s not like you can just build a plant in 30 days. It takes roughly about 2.5 years,” Patrick Penfield, a supply chain management professor at Syracuse University, told Recode. “We’ve got Intel. We’ve got a couple of smaller fab manufacturers, but it’s gonna take time — and I think there needs to be more of an investment.”

The shortage has come for consumer tech​

Although they scooped up the chips that automakers abandoned earlier in the pandemic, consumer tech companies are now running out of semiconductors as well. This is causing the price of laptops and TVs to rise and delays in orders for smartphones and gaming consoles.

The market research firm Strategy Analytics estimated that, on average, the global wholesale price for phones grew 5 percent between April and June. Laptop, TV, and accessory prices have also spiked. One investment research firm told the Wall Street Journal that HP alone had raised the price of printers by more than 20 percent over the course of a year. At least one phone maker, China-based electronics company Xiaomi, delayed the shipment of a new device model in India. Sony also warned customers in May that there won’t be a large supply of the PlayStation 5 until at least 2022.

The problem has gotten so bad some chip shipments are being stolen by smugglers. Fraudsters have even started selling counterfeit chips to dupe smaller electronics makers. Now, there are growing sales for special X-ray machines to identify those counterfeit parts, according to the Journal.

Though the latest devices often tout their highly advanced chips, they also need simple semiconductors, too. And right now, it’s these basic chips that are in the shortest supply. This category of components includes “commodity chips that do these mundane things like display drivers or timers or microcontrollers or power management chips,” Shih, the Harvard professor, told Recode.

In announcing how chip shortages would impact iPhones, Tim Cook told analysts that it was “legacy nodes” — simpler chips that can be manufactured using older techniques — that were hindering production. Whirlpool similarly struggled with the sparsity of microcontrollers, which are also relatively uncomplicated chips, in manufacturing its washing machines, microwaves, and refrigerators.

As the chip shortage has hit consumer tech, chip designers and makers have promised to boost supplies and manufacturing capacity. A spokesperson for Qualcomm, which makes chip processors for devices like smartphones, told Recode that the company is making a lot of adjustments and said that it ”continue to see strong demand in every single business outpacing supply.”

Intel told Recode that the company boosted its central processing unit by double digits compared to last year, bolstered by the high demand for new electronics. It is also expanding its manufacturing capacity, and in March, the company announced that it would invest $20 billion to build two new chip-making fabs in Arizona. Still, Intel says the high demand for semiconductors is a challenge, and that the shortage could stretch into 2023.

As the chip shortage continues to rattle car and laptop makers, consumers are all but certain to feel the consequences, possibly in price hikes as high as 10 to 15 percent, Penfield, the supply chain expert at Syracuse, told Recode. So for now, whether you’re hoping to snag a pickup truck or a laptop for back-to-(virtual)-school shopping, it’s best to buy as early as possible. As Penfield warns: “It’s going to be a difficult holiday season.”

 

[the_shootist]

The chip shortage is getting worse​

https://www.vox.com/recode/2021/8/5...ctronics-automakers-gm-tesla-playstation-xbox

The semiconductor supply crunch came for cars and phones. Now consumers are facing higher prices.

By Rebecca Heilweil Aug 5, 2021, 12:20pm EDT

New trucks sit next to a race track at the Kentucky Speedway as Ford waits for more semiconductor shipments to arrive.
Jeffrey Scott Dean/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Starting next week, General Motors is again halting the assembly linesof several pickup truck plants because the company doesn’t have enough computer chips. The plants had been back up and running for just a week following a shutdown in July, which was also caused by the chip shortage.

These production halts may not stop anytime soon. “I do think we’ll continue to see impact this year, and it will have a tail into next year,” warned CEO Mary Barra on Wednesday. And Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger similarly predicted last month that things won’t get back to normal for at least a year or two.

Now, the impact of the supply crunch is spreading to consumer tech. Apple CEO Tim Cook warned last week that a limited supply of semiconductors would hurt sales of iPhones. Microsoft is struggling to make enough Xbox consoles and Surface laptops. Elon Musk told a court last month that the chip shortage meant Tesla would only be able to manufacture about half as many Powerwall home batteries as it thinks it can sell. One San Francisco sex toy company even stockpiled microcontrollers to fend off future supply chain problems.

It’s clear that the global chip shortage shows no sign of abating anytime soon. In fact, it seems to be getting worse. While the White House is racing to expand chip manufacturing in the US to avoid future shortages, it could be years before that government investment actually pays off for consumers. So for now, the chip industry will continue to be hampered by the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic, as products ship with missing features and higher prices — often after long delays.

“The administration is saying, ‘Well, this is temporary,’” Willy Shih, a management practice professor at Harvard Business School, told Recode. “People are spending a lot of money to expedite things, and somebody’s going to have to pay for it.”

In an effort to measure the scope of the chip shortage, Recode reached out to nearly 30 companies that use, design, and make chips, including General Motors, Qualcomm, and Hewlett-Packard. All of the companies that responded said they were affected by the shortage.

The electronics maker Toshiba told Recode it’s stuck paying higher prices for components while Toyota said the company’s supply chain issues continue to affect production at its North American facilities. BSH, which makes Bosch appliances, said some products have lead times as long as six months.

While companies are adapting in their own ways, most didn’t anticipate a resolution anytime soon. Instead, companies see the chip shortage as an industry-wide problem that could go unresolved until at least next year and quite possibly into 2023.

The chip shortage is still wreaking havoc on auto production

Almost every major automaker has been affected by the chip shortage. Last month, Ford Motors announced that its second-quarter profits had fallen by 50 percent, more than half a billion dollars, largely due to the lack of semiconductors. Stellantis, the Dutch automotive conglomerate, stalled production of its Jeep Gladiator pickup in July because the company couldn’t secure enough chips. And Subaru’s chief financial officer, Katsuyuki Mizuma, recently said that, thanks to the chip shortage, the company has just seven days worth of inventory on hand, compared to the 45-day supply of cars the automaker normally has.

These supply chain woes began in the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, when lockdowns worldwide shuttered manufacturing plants, disrupting the supply of semiconductors while simultaneously driving a surge in demand for devices like laptops and gaming consoles. Sensing an economic slowdown, many car companies jumped off the line for chips. Semiconductors can take up to six months to make, so when automakers canceled their orders, consumer tech companies were able to swoop in and buy those chips. When car demand returned and automakers needed semiconductors again, there weren’t enough to go around.

Why a global chip shortage is screwing up America’s pickup trucks

Car buyers are now feeling the consequences of the difficult-to-predict pandemic in the form of vehicles missing features, higher prices, and a scarcity of options. GM has sold some of its newest pickups and SUVs without advanced gas management systems or wireless charging features. Renault stopped installing the large screens that sit behind the wheel of its Arkana SUV models, while Nissan left navigation systems out of thousands of cars.

Tesla even turned to rewriting its vehicles’ code so that the company could make use of the chips it did have at its disposal. But even that hasn’t completely spared the company from the shortage’s impact. CEO Elon Musk told investors in July that the company was finding it particularly difficult to secure chips needed for its airbags and seatbelts, essential features for a car.

All of these problems combined are affecting price tags, too. Some 13 percent of people buying a car in April paid above sticker price, compared to 8 percent in 2020, one analyst told The Verge. In fact, the chip shortage has now gotten so dire that it’s not just fueling high prices for new cars, but higher prices for older vehicles, too. This means consumers looking to buy a new car have three limited choices, Consumer Reports wrote in July: “Look at models you weren’t previously considering, hold off on buying, or fix your old car if it’s in rough shape.”

There’s no quick fix to the semiconductor shortage​

Demand for chips is still incredibly high, and there’s no reason to expect a sudden surplus of semiconductors to arrive in the next few weeks. Right now, there are only a small number of chipmakers across the globe, and much of the world’s supply of semiconductors come from a single company based in Taiwan: TSMC.

Chipmakers are already producing chips at their maximum capacity, according to Falan Yinug of the Semiconductor Industry Association, a trade and lobbying group that represents the chip industry. “Chip production has, in fact, increased substantially, and more chips have shipped in recent months than ever before,” Yinug told Recode.

Again, making a single chip takes an incredibly long time. At the same time, building more chip manufacturing plants, sometimes called fabs, requires years of engineering and construction and billions of dollars.

The White House is still trying to offer some short-term relief. Biden administration officials have already brokered negotiations between semiconductor makers and car companies, helping push more chips back into the hands of automakers. That’s made the auto giants happy while frustrating others. Medical device makers, who use chips for everything from patient monitoring systems to assistive robots for surgery, urged Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to avoid “prioritizing one industry over another.”

The Commerce Department recently concluded a 100-day review of the US semiconductor supply chain, which the White House said resulted in collaboration with the chip industry and a task force to identify potential disruptions in the supply chain. The agency is also pushing for a $52 billion program to incentivize more chip manufacturing in the US, a plan that will need congressional approval.

“It’s not like you can just build a plant in 30 days. It takes roughly about 2.5 years,” Patrick Penfield, a supply chain management professor at Syracuse University, told Recode. “We’ve got Intel. We’ve got a couple of smaller fab manufacturers, but it’s gonna take time — and I think there needs to be more of an investment.”

The shortage has come for consumer tech​

Although they scooped up the chips that automakers abandoned earlier in the pandemic, consumer tech companies are now running out of semiconductors as well. This is causing the price of laptops and TVs to rise and delays in orders for smartphones and gaming consoles.

The market research firm Strategy Analytics estimated that, on average, the global wholesale price for phones grew 5 percent between April and June. Laptop, TV, and accessory prices have also spiked. One investment research firm told the Wall Street Journal that HP alone had raised the price of printers by more than 20 percent over the course of a year. At least one phone maker, China-based electronics company Xiaomi, delayed the shipment of a new device model in India. Sony also warned customers in May that there won’t be a large supply of the PlayStation 5 until at least 2022.

The problem has gotten so bad some chip shipments are being stolen by smugglers. Fraudsters have even started selling counterfeit chips to dupe smaller electronics makers. Now, there are growing sales for special X-ray machines to identify those counterfeit parts, according to the Journal.

Though the latest devices often tout their highly advanced chips, they also need simple semiconductors, too. And right now, it’s these basic chips that are in the shortest supply. This category of components includes “commodity chips that do these mundane things like display drivers or timers or microcontrollers or power management chips,” Shih, the Harvard professor, told Recode.

In announcing how chip shortages would impact iPhones, Tim Cook told analysts that it was “legacy nodes” — simpler chips that can be manufactured using older techniques — that were hindering production. Whirlpool similarly struggled with the sparsity of microcontrollers, which are also relatively uncomplicated chips, in manufacturing its washing machines, microwaves, and refrigerators.

As the chip shortage has hit consumer tech, chip designers and makers have promised to boost supplies and manufacturing capacity. A spokesperson for Qualcomm, which makes chip processors for devices like smartphones, told Recode that the company is making a lot of adjustments and said that it ”continue to see strong demand in every single business outpacing supply.”

Intel told Recode that the company boosted its central processing unit by double digits compared to last year, bolstered by the high demand for new electronics. It is also expanding its manufacturing capacity, and in March, the company announced that it would invest $20 billion to build two new chip-making fabs in Arizona. Still, Intel says the high demand for semiconductors is a challenge, and that the shortage could stretch into 2023.

As the chip shortage continues to rattle car and laptop makers, consumers are all but certain to feel the consequences, possibly in price hikes as high as 10 to 15 percent, Penfield, the supply chain expert at Syracuse, told Recode. So for now, whether you’re hoping to snag a pickup truck or a laptop for back-to-(virtual)-school shopping, it’s best to buy as early as possible. As Penfield warns: “It’s going to be a difficult holiday season.”

Thank God I got my HAM radios before the chip shortage made them scarce and unavailable. We're going to need those pretty soon from what I hear!

 

[arminius]

You can always go back to vacuum tube for ham. Lots of good old gear out there. But I imagine the market for tubes comes out of china too...

 

[Scorpio]

Ford Motors announced that its second-quarter profits had fallen by 50 percent, more than half a billion dollars, largely due to the lack of semiconductors

ohhh puhhhlease already,

these corps have been blaming boo hoo flu for everything,
no business,
no chips,
no whatever,

yet stock prices still go up,

the reality is, it has been a long time since ford actually built something of value,
and yes I know, been driving them for years

f150's marginal, escapes marginal, focus marginal, etc etc

they are losing the truck market to dodge pretty quick, and once lost they will play hell trying to reclaim the turf,
I finally gave up and bought a ram instead this time

and yes, so far it is a better truck overall and at a better price

 

[oldgaranddad]

So I guess 2021 model year cars are going to become collectors items due to their scarcity?

I’m glad I lucked into my 2021 Ford Ranger when the previous buyer couldn’t qualify for financing. Dealer wanted to make 2nd quarter and first half numbers. I got an incentive and 36 month zero interest. I guess karma finally paid me back.

The damn Toyota dealers wanted $5K over MSRP. No way was I going to pay that. I’m actually impressed by the Ranger considering that I was settling for my number two choice. Payload is almost that of a F-150, the 10 speed transmission is very smooth compared to the Tacoma 6 speed and the thing is Jack rabbit quick that I have to drive like an old man. Plus the MPG is better.

 

[Uglytruth]

Pick this apart.

Your group in charge of the world.
Industrial age is over.
It had led to wealth, population growth & social problems.
Automation age is reality.
Slave labor is rampant in the manufacturing areas of the world.
Population is growing exponentially.
Like compound interest the population is growing just as the long term outlook is far fewer jobs,
What will they do if no meaningful work?
Many that will never amount to anything except useless eaters.
Resources are starting to show strains.
Pollution is high as is drug use, crime, inner city's are now slums .
tptb are having a harder time controlling the ever expanding flock.


What do you do?


Just trying to see if I can understand their side of this. I would think most agree we have any social problems.
They are being magnified & used against us.

 

[tigerwillow1]

Just trying to see if I can understand their side of this.

To understand their side you'd need to have been the cause of a lot of the problems but be too stupid to realize it.

 

[Scorpio]

"The longer I live, the more convinced am I this planet is used by other planets as a lunatic asylum."
George Bernard Shaw

 

[Scorpio]

haven't figured out the counter trade to those large metal smackdowns like we recently saw,

you wouldn't think that amount of dough would be sent out without some type of counter move being put on at the same time,

talking billions here of exposure,

many times we have spoken of relation to options expiry,
done to accomplish retiring a large number of call options worthless,
in this case though, it was 3 weeks before sept silver options expire, or far in advance,

was there a large uptick in put option purchases prior to this hit?
that would be interesting

after the hit, what has happened? Has open interest declined as they exit the positions or are they still open?
will they roll the positions to the dec contract or close them prior to sept going off the board?

they can't close a position without a counter to it, so if they want to buy to exit, someone needs to be selling to offset and close the contract.

I was watching that real time, and any buying activity was being hit with another avalanche of volume selling

 

[Zed]

There's a KC-10A out of Travis AFB circling around the military's new favourite haunt off Tijuana right now:

Obviously spraying Lambda over Mexico, right?

 

[Zed]

haven't figured out the counter trade to those large metal smackdowns like we recently saw,

you wouldn't think that amount of dough would be sent out without some type of counter move being put on at the same time,

talking billions here of exposure,

many times we have spoken of relation to options expiry,
done to accomplish retiring a large number of call options worthless,
in this case though, it was 3 weeks before sept silver options expire, or far in advance,

was there a large uptick in put option purchases prior to this hit?
that would be interesting

after the hit, what has happened? Has open interest declined as they exit the positions or are they still open?
will they roll the positions to the dec contract or close them prior to sept going off the board?

they can't close a position without a counter to it, so if they want to buy to exit, someone needs to be selling to offset and close the contract.

I was watching that real time, and any buying activity was being hit with another avalanche of volume selling

This weeks COT will deliver the clues.

 

[Zed]

20K Contracts came out of Sep Silver. Nothing came out of Oct Gold and maybe ~15K out of Dec Gold (bigger OI, not so meaningful) the target would appear to have been silver, which anecdotally is tight.

Panicked shorts?

It looked desperate.

Which is why I think there is a chance they go again this weekend.

 

[Scorpio]

yep, that is the thing I was wondering about also,

while gold was getting the headlines, sure seemed to me the real target was silver

but I am not sure about the desperate part, as I don't know their counter move,
ie what are they protecting, or what are they offsetting this with?

we might be missing the real reason behind this stuff, and the why it keeps happening time and again

 

[Zed]

but I am not sure about the desperate part,

The hit in the thin Globex hours is too obvious (easy to show that manipulation was the intent, big offers into no bids) and always seems to happen when things are getting heated. That is the only reason I say desperate, it was a cheap shot, not the normal Comex push that happens when they are feeling cocky.

I dunno, just a guess.

 

[Scorpio]

sure, get that,

but the reality is, we have even spoken to it,
the gold and silver markets are tiny tiny

joogle has $175B sitting in cash
apple has over $200B in cash
mcsoft, $150B
etc.

trillions in cash laying around in corporate coffers,

and with modern corps chasing yield rather than worrying about building widgets, well?
proof? sure, you have bezos talking about taking cryptos
cuban announces big moves into cryps
musk taking positions and talking up cryps on and off

all these corps and their financial gimmickry chasing yields in any manner

I have no issue believing a couple of phone calls, some dough is ponied up, and easy dough is made by hitting any market,
and even better, not even closely related to their primary businesses,

All manner of entities with access to massive capital can accomplish this,
spac's, hedge funds, fall street insiders, etc etc

 

[Uglytruth]

ure, you have bezos talking about taking cryptos
cuban announces big moves into cryps
musk taking positions and talking up cryps on and off

Is this an older generation "social influencer" move? Were they given ds money to herd the "older with more assets" masses to cryptos so they can be easier to fleece with the transition to ds fed digital bucks?

 

[Uglytruth]

Any insurance insiders here?
Anyone heard of covid hitting Life Insurance companies hard?
How about huge policy increases or if you get the jab it won't pay?
Disability companies?

 

[Thecrensh]

Any insurance insiders here?
Anyone heard of covid hitting Life Insurance companies hard?
How about huge policy increases or if you get the jab it won't pay?
Disability companies?

Or, how about medical insurance!!

 

[Uncle]

Any insurance insiders here?
Anyone heard of covid hitting Life Insurance companies hard?
How about huge policy increases or if you get the jab it won't pay?
Disability companies?

www.sanlam.co.za is domplaining hard, but from a shithole. DYODD.

Golden Regards
Uncle

 

[Thecrensh]

Or, how about medical insurance!!

Just saw a story linked on my email about health insurance companies are planning to charge more for people who aren't vaccinated....but nobody cares about people who smoke, engorge themselves on fast food 7 times a week and sit on their couch doing nothing all the time and the associated health issues that accompany their behaviors.

 

[Uglytruth]

Just saw a story linked on my email about health insurance companies are planning to charge more for people who aren't vaccinated....but nobody cares about people who smoke, engorge themselves on fast food 7 times a week and sit on their couch doing nothing all the time and the associated health issues that accompany their behaviors.

Just a lever to force businesses to do their dirty work.

 

[Uglytruth]

Go this today from a friend in TN.

Yesterday while leaving Cleveland, I spotted one of those electronic billboards on CSM Paul Huff Parkway advertising legal action by teams of lawyers wanting to sue on behalf of people getting injured after getting the 'jab'. I thought all parties involved weren't liable if they force you to get the 'jab'? Obviously these attorneys must know something we don't.

________________________________________________________________________________________

This weekend phone call #1.

Out of the blue Afghanistan was brought up by him. Man if we pull out all those people that lost loved ones or have injured people with missing limbs etc are really gunna be pissed & will hold someone accountable.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Phone call #2

I just can't believe what biden is doing. What an idiot, gas prices, road tolls, food prices, etc.......
He then went on about the shootings in Chicago as he is from IL.
Complained about minorities & the killings and destruction they cause.

****************************************************************************************

My point is people are waking up. Both calls were for an upcoming event. Neither are very political and they BOTH brought it up not me.

 

[Uglytruth]

Very interesting comments. From quality to people to jabs. From a nurse to computer IT people.

The Market Ticker Error: Post Not Available

market-ticker.org

 

[Scorpio]

what a jackass,

most small business people wouldn't last if that was their modus operandi,

now if'n he wanted to push it to the .gov and .corp level, then by all means,
the workers are slaves,
they are plug and play

and they deserve exactly that as their 80 iq's ain't a gettin' them anywhere fast

so let's be realistic about what is and what isn't

ie reality, not fantasy

but make no mistake, those with talent, those with skills, will always be coveted by all, and won't be taken for granted
for those dumb enough to ignore that very salient point, well they deserve what the market will reserve for them

 

[Uglytruth]

Who's thinking the Afghanistan pullout and leaving billions of equipment behind was planned to arm a new enemy to create another war?

So everyone gets to reverse engineer everything. Zero development cost and latest technology.

It would have been so easy to destroy it.............

 

[Scorpio]

all market eyes on jackson hole get together announcements tomorrow,

whether or not the fed decides to finally stop injecting $120B a month into the economy

if they taper,
dollar goes up and metals get slammed

if they don't
the perception is dollar down and metals should be up

now of course, the written statement will be released an hour before the talking head goes on the toob,
so those with access will already be on the move prior to the 'announcement'

------

now you can ask, can they taper?
is there anyway they can allow interest rates to start moving up?
what happens to stocks if they taper?
what happens to housing if they taper with rates moving up?
etc.

there are some who believe the fed is trapped, wherein what they have done prior, has boxed them in,
and the only way out is if they decide to take the short term hit for a long term gain,

so one can argue they are only trying to estimate the magnitude of the drop, not whether or not it will happen,
and is that drop 'acceptable' overall

 

[Scorpio]

Investors see no speed bump in Fed's Jackson Hole event​

By Karen Pierog, Saqib Iqbal Ahmed
5 MIN READ
CHICAGO/NEW YORK (Reuters) -Despite weeks of anticipation, investors have lowered their expectations for Friday's Jackson Hole event here, saying that U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has little reason to rock the boat.



FILE PHOTO: Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell and New York Federal Reserve President John Williams walk together, ahead of the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank’s annual conference on monetary policy, in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, U.S., August 22, 2019. REUTERS/Ann Saphir
Some market-watchers had seen the conference as a potentially key moment when Powell could give hints about tapering here the Fed's $120 billion in monthly asset purchases that have propped up the market after COVID-19 hit.
However, with a consensus still forming among Fed members on when to taper, some see scant market-moving revelations by Powell in his speech, contending the Fed will want to see upcoming jobs and inflation data and more information on how the coronavirus Delta variant impacts the economy.
“It does feel like the markets and investors are basically going into this event with more of a neutral stance and not taking any big bets one way or another,” said Anders Persson, Nuveen’s chief investment officer.
Amid many characterizations of the conference as a potential “yawner,” U.S. stock indexes have hit record highs and derivatives markets are shrugging it off, although bond markets have been a bit more volatile.
Meanwhile, tapering views may be evolving due to the Delta variant with Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan saying last week he may need to adjust his call for reducing asset purchases this fall.
Even when tapering does start, some say the Fed is unlikely to generate a "taper tantrum" here similar to 2013 when Fed chief Ben Bernanke told lawmakers the central bank could slow its pace of asset purchases, sending yields sharply higher.
Goldman Sachs in a research note estimates the magnitude of moves versus 2013 “is likely to be smaller” given how well-telegraphed the policy change is likely to be.
Powell in July edged closer to unveiling plans to taper, going so far as to describe the Fed’s July gathering as the “talking-about talking-about meeting.”
“We were always in the nothing-burger camp and at this point we think that ... the Fed has talked about tapering for quite some time and so if you aren’t expecting it you live under a rock,” said Jack Janasiewicz, portfolio manager at Natixis Investment Managers Solutions.
‘SNOOZER’
At a time when gyrations in the foreign exchange market are particularly muted - the Deutsche Bank FX Volatility Index is near historical lows - traders do not see Powell shattering the calm.
“Currency markets are overwhelmingly positioned for a snoozer,” said Karl Schamotta, chief market strategist at Cambridge Global Payments in Toronto. Activity in the U.S. equity options market is similarly nonchalant, with traders largely looking past the Jackson Hole event, Susquehanna International Group’s Chris Murphy said in a note. S&P 500 options are currently pricing in a one-day move of about 0.6% on Friday, according to Matt Amberson of analytics firm ORATS, about the same as the 0.63% move the S&P 500 has logged on average on the day the Jackson Hole symposium heard from the Fed chief, a Reuters analysis showed.
In the bond market, the ICE BofA MOVE Index, which tracks traders’ expectations of swings in the Treasury market, was just a little higher than its 5-year average. Yields moved higher on Wednesday, although that was partly ascribed to low liquidity.
Jason England, a global bonds portfolio manager at Janus Henderson Investors, sees thinly traded Treasuries remaining range-bound.
“Until you get some more of that data and get closer to any firm views on tapering from the consensus on the (Federal Open Market Committee), you’re not going see much shocks in Treasuries,” he said.
Still, there remains some caution.
Tim Murray, a capital market strategist at T. Rowe Price, said his positioning of being slightly underweight in equities reflects concerns over elevated valuations in most asset classes, slowing growth and waning stimulus.
“Within equities, we are tilted towards value ... if there’s a negative surprise and rates do go down you’ll want to have fixed income in that case so we benefit from a slight overweight there,” he said.
Charlie McElligott, a cross-asset strategist at Nomura, cautioned in a note on Wednesday that the Fed event also coincides with a large-scale expiration of Treasury options on Friday, indicating the potential for heightened moves in the Treasuries market.
“Powell will have to say something at Jackson Hole,” said Thomas Costerg, senior economist at Pictet Wealth Management. “We have heard the views of regional Fed governors and people want to hear what Powell thinks.”
Reporting by Karen Pierog in Chicago and Saqib Ahmed in New YorkAdditional reporting by Megan Davies in New York and Sujata Rao-Coverley in LondonEditing by Megan Davies and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Analysis: Investors see no speed bump in Fed's Jackson Hole event

Despite weeks of anticipation, investors have lowered their expectations for Friday's Jackson Hole event, saying that U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has little reason to rock the boat.

www.reuters.com

 

[chieftain]

So is the Fed crashing and burning?

 

[Scorpio]

fed ballard was just on,

stated it was time to announce taper,
metals are already moving down in anticipation of 'manana

 

[the_shootist]

fed ballard was just on,

stated it was time to announce taper,
metals are already moving down in anticipation of 'manana

taper? 'Manana? You speak a strange language sir

Never mind, I went back and read some previous posts and I'm caught up, thanks

I'm hoping metals move down enough to create yet another buying op...there are only so many of them left IMHO

 

[Scorpio]

fed announce is tomorrow am shoot,

I don't need anymore down action in metals,
am not looking to buy anymore door stops,