IMO gold has definitely become a trading piece because of ETFs. A lot of hot money flows in and out of it. I used to crab that the hot money would screw up gold.

And maybe it has.

But, in 2008-09, corporates got killed while treasuries went up. Exactly why HB chose the treasuries.

I have a satisfactory amount of grumpiness.

Received my first ever British Sovereign today. Goddamn they are tiny. Platinum jubilee design as shown here - https://www.royalmint.com/sovereign/2022/ I was watching a Doug Casey (fka The International Man) video, and the discussion turned to how do you carry your gold coins into a country. He sa...

"FDA sharply limits use of Johnson & Johnson shot due to rare blood clots The Johnson & Johnson vaccine has been associated with a rare, but potentially deadly blood clotting and bleeding syndrome called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome, or TTS. The condition usually occurs within one to t...

It is what it is..... I'm really thinking this is the bursting of the Everything Bubble. How things look on the other side of this, who knows? I'm just glad to have bets placed on several different asset classes as opposed to concentrated in one area. I was thinking the same thing the other day abo...

Saving face is paramount in China, so part of this might be to blame the GDP/real estate collapse on SARS https://old.reddit.com/r/ChurchOfCOVID/comments/ugd64k/unpfaithful_plague_rats_being_taken_to/ https://old.reddit.com/r/CoronavirusCirclejerk/comments/ugx2h9/you_will_take_the_shot_grandma/ Tha...

In 2009 I made a big bet that the rest of the world would outperform the US. I put half of our stock allocation into the FTSE ex-US fund at vanguard. It’s been a wrong bet ever since. We still have it. But hey, diversification.

It’s hard to say money is tight when the Fed funds rate is 0.50%.

murphy_p_t wrote: ↑

Sat Apr 30, 2022 9:28 pm

No screams after the move on Friday?!

Must be shell shocked.

I’ve been expecting it. We have to have a prolonged bear market at some point.

I'd be lying if I said I feel good about the T Bonds. But I always see the clouds over every investment category so that's not a new feeling for me. I'm a poor enough market timer that I have decided to just run with the PP unless or until it fails spectacularly because of a new paradigm. I think th...

Won’t Russia have to sell any outcome, negotiated or otherwise, of this war to the West, in order to be allowed back into regular relationships? If so, can you see a path from here to there? Especially if they intensify their war campaign? One such path would be Putin's ouster (by whatever means), ...

Because of inflation, we decided to increase our budget for a new house. First of all we essentially had to. But also, we had the money parked and earning nothing. If it’s going to lose 10 or more percent, might as well buy a better house. Which we just did. We might have bought at the top, who know...

Won’t Russia have to sell any outcome, negotiated or otherwise, of this war to the West, in order to be allowed back into regular relationships?

If so, can you see a path from here to there? Especially if they intensify their war campaign?

How dare you sink our warship? Just for that, we’re going to bomb your capital. Crazy stuff. Isn't is more of "How dare Moscovy warship randomly catch fire and sink during special military operation. We therefor randomly like Ukraine even less. More missiles for Kiev unless they stop spontaneous co...

How dare you sink our warship? Just for that, we’re going to bomb your capital.

Crazy stuff.

Excerpt from Glenn Greenwald's article today on censorship & propaganda in this war. I don't have a link, it's on Substack though. I just get an email with no link. On one hand, I get the de-platforming of RT News and Sputnik. But on the other, it feels sinister. If one wishes to be exposed to news,...

Am I right?

Regardless, the ends don't justify those means.

So on the false flag idea.... I don't think the various atrocities are false flags by the Ukes. But when I apply the cui bono test, the Uke government benefits more than the Russian. Arguably it hurts the Russian efforts, although they might not think so. That's an important test. Heck it even has a...

While I find the killings by the Russians to be disgusting, I think the situation is pretty normal in war. The civilians are resisting. Some of them are organizers. Etc. Not defending it, just saying this is what happens in war. Who's a war criminal depends on who wins. Or on who's doing the judging.

I'm not sure. But if you go back far enough, then the answer is obviously that it was more about the stocks themselves. The maxim that in the short run, the stock market is a voting machine, and in the long run, it's a weighing machine, I'm not sure about that any more. It only seems like a voting m...

Don’t forget, anyone who’s been invested in any reasonable allocation during the past 40 years has done quite well. Sometimes I congratulate myself for my investing performance but it’s been more about right place, right time.

Last week I was in a doctor’s office in north Texas and masks were not required.
I was pretty surprised.

Disney Parks’ diversity and inclusion manager, Vivian Ware, (says) the company has “removed all of the gendered greetings” at its theme parks. No more “Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls.” No longer will a little girl in a gown be greeted with a “Hello, princess!” https://nypost.com/2022/03/30/di...