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Humanity’s Salvation Will Necessarily Look Like A Leap Into The Unknown

December 21, 2019

Humanity’s Salvation Will Necessarily Look Like A Leap Into The Unknown

If humanity is to turn away from its murderous, omnicidal, ecocidal, oppressive and exploitative trajectory, it will necessarily involve a sharp, drastic deviation from all its previous patterning.

You would think that this would go without saying; obviously a drastic change in behavior will look drastically different from the behavior which preceded it. This is self-evident. Yet when you look at the arguments that people are making today, there’s almost universally a built-in assumption that humankind’s salvation will in some way involve a continuation of its previous patterning.

Most people with an ear to the ground understand to some extent that the collective behavior of our species is unsustainable. Where they differ in opinion is on what should be done to address this problem. Where they unify in opinion is on the assumption that the solution will look like their own personal ideology winning out over all the others. Capitalists believe that capitalism will provide technological solutions to the problems that capitalism has created, and that this will happen more quickly and efficiently if the fetters on capitalism are removed. Socialists believe that socialism will solve the problems that socialism has been powerless to provide this entire time, if only this consistent pattern of socialism’s inability to obtain dominance is magically deviated from somehow. And so on.

But if you really think honestly about it, how can that possibly be? How can any preexisting ideological pattern possibly create a deviation in patterning? Any ideology you are bringing to the table will almost certainly be one which has been a part of humanity’s collective patterning for generations, and probably for centuries. How can an ideology which has been promoted in more or less the same patterns for generation possibly lead to a pattern deviation?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder

November 1, 2019

Things Are Only Going To Get Weirder

Things are getting stranger and stranger. If you would have told someone ten years ago that Dennis Rodman would one day be helping to negotiate peace between North Korea and President Donald Trump, they would have assumed you were describing some weird movie cooked up in the mind of Mike Judge or the South Park guys. But in this timeline it’s an actual news story.

Everything about the last few years has been weird. The mass media’s behavior has been weird, Russiagate was weird, Ukrainegate is weird, a former presidential candidate accusing a current presidential candidate of working for the Kremlin was weird, people constantly accusing strangers on the internet of being Russian agents is weird, factions of the US government constantly leaking information against other factions of the US government is weird, the DNC getting caught rigging their primary was weird, Hillary Clinton losing the election was weird, the Skripal poisoning was weird, US government officials openly tweeting about their Venezuela coup is weird, the breakdown of the entire mainstream Syria narrative is weird, Assange’s arrest was weird, the campaign to censor the internet is weird, and this is just stuff off the top of my head from the areas I’ve been looking at in my own narrow spectrum of focus. Anyone else could list dozens of other weird new developments from their own slice of the information pie.

I often hear people in my line of work saying “Man, we’re going to look back on all this crazy shit and think about how absolutely weird it was!”

No we won’t. Because it’s only going to get weirder.

It’s only going to get weirder, because that’s what it looks like when old patterns start to fall away.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why You Should Expect the Unexpected

October 20, 2018

Why You Should Expect the Unexpected

End of the Road

The confluence of factors that influence market prices are vast and variable.  One moment patterns and relationships are so pronounced you can set a cornerstone by them.  The next moment they vanish like smoke in the wind. One thing that makes trading stocks so confounding is that the buy and sell points appear so obvious in hindsight.  When examining a stock’s price chart over a multi-year duration the wave movements appear to be almost predictable.

 

The fascinating obviousness of hindsight – it is now perfectly clear when one should have bought AMZN. Unfortunately it wasn’t quite as clear in real time. [PT]

Trend lines matching interim highs and lows, and bounded price movements within this range, display what, in retrospect, are the precise moments to buy and sell. In practice, the stock market dishes out hefty doses of humility with impartial judgment. What’s more, being right does not always translate to success.  Sometimes it is more costly to be right at the wrong time than wrong at the right time.

One fallacy that has gained popularity over the last decade is the zealot belief that the Fed disappears risk from markets.  That by expanding and moderating the money supply by just the right amount, and at just the right time, markets can grow within a pleasant setting of near nonexistent volatility.  Some even trust that when there is a major stock market crash, the Fed, having the courage to act, will soften the landing and quickly put things back upon a path of righteous growth.

Believers in the all-powerful controls of the Fed have a 30 year track record they can point to with conviction.  Over this period, the Fed has put a lamp unto the feet and a light unto the path of the stock and bond market.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Gold and Gold Stocks – Patterns, Cycles and Insider Activity, Part 1

December 29, 2017

Gold and Gold Stocks – Patterns, Cycles and Insider Activity, Part 1

Repeating Patterns and Positioning

A noteworthy confluence of patterns in gold and gold stocks is in evidence this year. At the close of trading on December 26, the HUI Index has given a (tentative) buy signal by completing a unique chart pattern, which is why we decided to briefly discuss the situation. As usual, things are not as straightforward and simple as they would ideally be, but there is always an element of uncertainty – one has to accept that as a given. Let us look at a chart illustrating one of said patterns:

 

This chart shows the gold price, the weekly net hedger position in gold futures (the inverse of the net speculative position), with the Fed’s December rate hikes in 2015, 2016 and 2017 highlighted by red vertical lines. Keep in mind that the December 2015 hike was the start of the current rate hike campaign. In the weeks leading up to it, the gold market was in the grip of a bearish hysteria, just as it approached a major lateral support level. Nearly every day Bloomberg, Reuters and other mainstream financial media published articles by “experts” no-one had ever heard of before (or since!), along with reports from analysts working for various well-known investment banks, all of whom stridently insisted that the beginning rate hike cycle was going to be the most bearish thing that could possibly befall the gold market, and that a further collapse in prices was nearly certain to coincide with it. Not surprisingly, the exact opposite has happened. You were definitely not surprised if you were reading this blog at the time – see for instance “Gold and the Federal Funds Rate”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Change has Nothing to do with the Sun?

December 9, 2017

Climate Change has Nothing to do with the Sun?

COMMENT: You are wrong. This chart proves you are wrong and it is mankind that is creating global warming. The sun activity has been declining for 35 years and the temperature is rising. That proves you are wrong.

PL

REPLY: First of all, the chart you rely on starts in 1880. The historical record is millions of years. Over 35,000 scientists have signed a letter stating Global Warming is fake. If I charted the Dow Jones for just the post-2009 period, I could conclude that the stock market only rises and never crashes. There is absolutely no empirical evidence whatsoever that proves Global Warming is caused by mankind when there have been warming periods and ice ages long before fossil fuels. It is one thing to say that our use of fossil fuels have “accelerated” the trend and something entirely different to argue that we have caused the trend.

The ice core sample proves there is about a 300 years cycle between the maximum and minimum energy output of the sun. Looking at just 140 years of data does not prove anything. I am glad you trust the government so much that they argue this so they can tax it. Like cigarettes, if they are 100% bad, then outlaw them. Never! Why do that when they can tax them?

If you want to argue the sun has nothing to do with this issue, then provide a study that goes back beyond 1880. If I am wrong, then perhaps all those who think they are the cause of the planet turning warm should walk to work, use no heat or air conditioning, purchase no clothes and make your own from sheep without consuming energy, or just commit suicide to stop breathing since you put out CO2 which you demonize as the planet killer.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Uncertainty and the Humility of Forecasting an Unknowable Future

April 5, 2017

Uncertainty and the Humility of Forecasting an Unknowable Future

While we’re being reassured that all these grandiose promises are resting on trends that are as reliably predictable as the tides, the next easily predictable crisis will very likely reveal the trends are speculative bubbles that will predictably burst in a devastating reversion.

Certainty and uncertainty come in a variety of flavors. “Certainty” seems rather definite, but lurking beneath certainty is the more scientifically verifiable notion of probability: the probability of outcomes can be high enough to qualify as certain and low enough to qualify as unlikely.

We can’t know with perfect certainty that our neighbor hasn’t invented a death-ray and may decide to test it on us due to that simmering feud over his dog Fluffy’s antics on our yard.

But we can make an assessment of the probability of this occurring, and conclude the probability is low with a high degree of certainty.

This assessment should change, of course, if we hear strange noises in his shop and notice shrubs in his back yard are now charred in peculiarly symmetric circles–and we learn he previously worked at a national lab on high-energy weapons but was dismissed for pursuing crazy ideas about developing handheld death-ray devices, i.e. phasers. (Star Trek fans, please raise a cheer.)

This brings us to a critical distinction between low-probability events, i.e. known unknowns a.k.a. highly unlikely “long-tail” events, and unknown unknowns, a.k.a. “black swans” made famous by author Nassim Taleb.

What is a known unknown? Death qualifies as a known unknown: we know with a high degree of certainty that the vast majority of living things eventually die (even cancer cells die once their host dies)–but the timing of their individual natural death is inherently uncertain, due to the great number of inputs, variables and causal factors intrinsic to life.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

4 Things That Are Happening Today That Indicate That A Deflationary Financial Collapse Is Imminent

July 21, 2015

4 Things That Are Happening Today That Indicate That A Deflationary Financial Collapse Is Imminent

four asphalt - public domain
When financial markets crash, they do not do so in a vacuum.  There are always patterns, signs and indicators that tell us that something is about to happen.  In this article, I am going to share with you four patterns that are happening right now that also happened just prior to the great financial crisis of 2008.  These four signs are very strong evidence that a deflationary financial collapse is right around the corner.  Instead of the hyperinflationary crisis that so many have warned about, what we are about to experience is a collapse in asset prices, a massive credit crunch and a brief period of absolutely crippling deflation.  The response by national governments and global central banks to this horrific financial crisis will cause tremendous inflation down the road, but that comes later.  What comes first is a crisis that will initially look a lot like 2008, but will ultimately prove to be much worse.  The following are 4 things that are happening right now that indicate that a deflationary financial collapse is imminent…

#1 Commodities Are Crashing

In mid-2008, just before the U.S. stock market crashed in the fall, commodities started crashing hard.  Well, now it is happening again.  In fact, the Bloomberg Commodity Index just hit a 13 year low, which means that it is already lower than it was at any point during the last financial crisis…

 

Richard Bravo @richbravo2

The Bloomberg Commodity Index plunges to 13-year low, led by a drop in gold. http://bloom.bg/1I4NjGH 

#2 Oil Is Crashing

On Monday, the price of oil dipped back below $50 a barrel.  This has surprised many analysts, because a lot of them thought that the price of oil would start to rebound by now.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Right or Wrong – The Dark Side of Human Nature

January 19, 2015

Right or Wrong – The Dark Side of Human Nature

I greatly appreciate the confidence saying I am never wrong. But on an individual level,NOBODY can possibly be right all the time. This is why I try to emphasize that the numbers are the numbers and that all we can do is watch how everything unfolds. I have no personal vision of the future and what I fear I would not say publicly anyway for that is just opinion. All I can do is say this is what has happened in the past and express what the computer says – not ME. The markets are the only infallible guide if you just listen.  Like the year-end closing for the Swiss. A closing above the 9700 level simply stated the 2011 low should hold. Had we closed below that, then new lows were possible. The number define the forecast – NOT my opinion. Most people forecast on what they “think” will happen. I do not play that game. My OPINION is no better than anyone else’s.

The key to analysis and trading is you must define where you are right and where you are wrong. The key here is long-term verses short-term. One thing I observed is that trying to predict the closing of whatever tomorrow will be infinitely much more difficult than predicting years in advance. The trend is in motion. Like the Swiss Peg, yes you can fight against the trend, but the trend will always win. So where the Dow closes tomorrow really means nothing to the long-term. That is just what we call noise. There are countless variables that will determine the closing of the Dow on a daily basis. But the trend determines the course of where you are headed. It is the difference between the daily weather and the 4 seasons.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

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