Screwball

Disclosure; That article is behind a paywall for me. This is a "market" thing. When the value of the dollar (against another currency) goes down, the "purchasing power" of our money is less. Market 101. The dollar index they are talking about is the value of the US dollar against a basket of other currencies so it is going down against many. Depending on what flavor of economic/fiscal theory you buy into, this comes into play. In this case, a cheaper dollar is good for US exports. On the other hand, it is bad for "our" consumer because our money doesn't go as far. When TPTB decided globalization was a good thing and took advantage of environmental and wage arbitrage through slave labor and 3rd world countries to exploit and dump waste, our goose was cooked. We went though the industrialization era of mass produced automobiles and other products - the hey day of American workers - to shipping our jobs and production all over the world. The giant sucking sound as Ross Perot said. I lived it, I watched it. I even helped it happen, and I hate that. But I had to eat. It's too late. All the jobs we lost are not coming back, and on top of that, any that can be replaced by a robot, will be. Even if they tried, it would take years. That's assuming the ****wads running this place actually give one good ****. But they don't. I don't know if they are all actually this economically illiterate, or just play the role on TV.

Yes, there has been some updates that were not good. I redid a laptop to new drives and more memory recently and went to Win 11 at that time. Some of the updates killed settings I spent hours getting the way I wanted. Spit again!

I went through the digital transition from the beginning. At first, I thought, wow, this is pretty cool - tech guy an all. Then spent years in IT, or IT adjacent, and learned first hand how ugly it can get. I tried to be the most safe, protected, unknown person in the digital world. I have now thrown in the towel. They know more about us than we do. Spit! You can't beat it.

The tech in these cars is off the charts cool and amazing. I hope people realize this also helps us mortals. Like the things we learned from space travel but these machines don't get off the ground. 🙂

I worked in a bowling alley back when Earl was king of bowling. The guy was a fricken machine. He had 25 300 games and this was back when the lanes were not as easy as they are now. Incredible. But I was curious. From his Wiki page; Dude had game in multiple sports.

Something happened around 8:20 this morning. Both gold and silver took a ****. Silver went from $121.785 to $106.61. It has now recovered some and its back to 112 ish. That was a big move in about an hour and 10 minutes. In other news, MSFT is getting smoked to the tune of 12%. META is up around 7. Also of note, crude oil has been up the last three days and is now $65+ a barrel (WTI). It's been around 60 or lower for quite some time. Probably due to weakened dollar.

Weird, when we turn the scope into us little people - I'm old. I bought my first house in 83. My second in 2000. The first one I paid almost 8 percent interest and had to have like 20 percent down. In 2000 my rate was %6.875, and much less of a percentage down. Don't remember the exact details. Kinda weird too, even given those rates at the time, both were 30 year loans to keep the monthly payment as small as possible, so that mattered (they offered 15 year too). It was cheaper to buy than rent. If you could save up enough money for the down payment, you might as well give that X amount a month toward the property and eventually own it. Even at that time is was cheaper than the equivalent rent. I don't know about elsewhere, but I'm guessing almost everywhere, it's even worse now, and has been getting this way for a long time. I had a 350 dollar a month house payment in 2000 (small house, kids flew, didn't need much, frugal). This place could easily rent for more than a grand today. That's nuts.

Target isn't the same as what the numbers tell us, but I get your point. This is the deal with interest rates. What is the price of debt/credit? Some think interest rates should be punitive as a throttle of credit creation. Others think they should create all they want. Why not, the more money, the more there is to go around, right? What's not to like? Again, library's full of this debate.

What 1% rates would those be?

If they don't, they damn well should, or they shouldn't be in it to begin with. They are for day traders and stupid people. Maybe that's the same guy. 🙂 Daily Rebalancing & Compounding: Impact on Leveraged ETFs

On the Silver trade; Not shown in the image; To the bold; those playing this leveraged ETF are playing a very dangerous game and a good way to get their face ripped off. That ETF trades at twice the percentage of the underlying asset, in this case Silver Futures. That also means you can lose 2X faster. Beware...

What's wrong with the Dow today you ask? UNH - United Heath care is taking a ****, and apparently their guidance wasn't good either. Down %20 as we speak; Let's take a look at the yearly chart. This has been all over the place in the last year. There is a gap around August of 25 at the 273.85 level that needs to fill. This was $606.36 on April 11, 2025. Ouch!!!!

Fun stuff; Some think it's a blowoff top and others think it's going to keep going. Back up to $110.45 as I type this at 9:47pm. I'm not sure his math is right, but still wild.

Everything is funny money. That's why we are seeing what we are seeing. We live in a world of fiat currency where the value is diluted over the course of time. What is "real" money, currency, specie? Library's full of this topic. I'm guessing not too many bought on Friday. You never want to go into a weekend with a new trade not knowing what will happen over the next two days.

I wouldn't complain about a 10 foot 3 putt right now.