The Market Perspective

A Slew of Reliable Indicators

4/18/2025

A Slew of Reliale Indicators

We are early in the bear market. The Dow Industrials double topped at 45,000 from December to February. Already,  $11 trillion in market capitalization has evaporated. DOW formerly Dow Chemical has dropped 50% in the last year. If the Industrials matched that, they would already be at my target of 22,000.

Here are more qualitative indicators.  At past market tops, the US Government sues the most successful tech company. In 1929 it was RCA. RCA never recovered its 1929 high until the early 1950s.  In 1966 the target was IBM.  In 2000 Bill Gates was astonished that the US sued his Microsoft firm.  He then hired Washington DC lobbyists. Now the US is suing both Google (alphabet) and Meta/Facebook. In the latter case the Government wants an astounding $30 billion for monopolistic practices. That is rich considering there is no bigger monopoly than the US Government. Who would be the better fiduciary of $30 B, Mark or the Washington bureaucrats?

The 1930s saw an expansion of the luxury car industry. One could order a Dusenberg  chassis, engine and frame. Then order up a one-off special coach construction.  Auburn and Cord offered special sport high versions of their cars.  All three firms vanished in the Depression.  The same thing now exists with McLarens and Bugattis. Mercedes cashes in with its AMG series, even including a hot rod SUV!  For 2025 Chevrolet will over its first ever 1,064 bhp ZR1 Corvette. It requires every engineering trick in the book including twin turbos and a flat plane crankshaft.

From the 19269 high one can draw a trend line connecting subsequent market highs. The Industrials just thrust over that top trendline. It now has fallen back some 6,000 points.   The trend is now down.

With all the fuss over the Magnificent Seven tech stocks, one does not hear much about the former tech indicator, the SOX index. The SOX is the  semiconductor index of chip makers. It peaked at 5,750 last summer. It has already lost 34% of its value.

Last week the Chief Economist for Patterson and myself were concerned about crude oil falling to the low 50s.  Apparently the market has responded to our alarm.   Today crude has climbed back to  $64.68. I am not sure why but with Trump’s tariffs and shipping fees changing daily, volatility reigns.  The energy XLE and service XES ETFs are bouncing but face some big gaps to overcome as prices have fallen.

We remain steadfast in recommending Treasury Bills as a safe harbor for your money. There will be a time of great bargains and we will be alert, but those are a long way off.

n the Mood

4/17/20258

In the Mood

Frank Sinatra Fly Me to The Moon

hFrank Sinatra Fly Me to the Moon

Salmon and the Eco System

4/17/2025

Hi Dennis, Science and sustainability. Building legacy. The ethos of living in concert with nature. These are a handful of the overarching themes that first inspired my husband Arron Kallenberg to found Wild Alaskan Company. These themes continue to guide the company to this day, helping to illuminate the path forward as we evolve and grow.  With Earth Day around the corner, I feel pleasantly overwhelmed by the multitude of directions in which I am being pulled. And that’s when this Earth Day’s theme came to me: Trust the fish.  I’ve learned many things from Arron, but perhaps one of the most idiosyncratic is this idea of “trusting the fish.” His unique perspective as both an Alaskan and as a Kallenberg — a family with multigenerational ties to wild salmon — has culminated in this quirky, seemingly simple aphorism. Put simply, it’s an acknowledgement that wild salmon have much to teach us, if we are willing to take their lead. That salmon’s instinctual journey through life can guide us when our life’s compass is spinning. This train of thought led me to the words and wisdom of our good friend ​Melanie Brown, whose work as a commercial fisherman and salmon advocate is complemented beautifully by her work as a writer and musician. In honor and celebration of Earth Day, I’ve asked Melanie to write a piece for us that I believe brings this idea of “trusting the fish” to life. She begins her essay with lyrics from one of her compositions. *** Your Body Feeds the World Around You By Melanie Brown   “Pulsing filled with purpose, flash of silver light, jumping joy grouped in a movement, your return brings us life. When it’s time to go home you know, the pull of your home stream guides you, giving spawn to young you’ll never see, your body feeds the world around you” – “Salmon Song” lyrics by Sunny Porch   Salmon feed the world in so many ways. Their lives serve as an inspiration for how I aspire to live as a human being, and I would also posit that the world would be a better place if we followed the example of salmon.   Salmon begin their lives in the gravel of the freshwater environment where their spawning pair parents deposited them. After consuming the nutrients provided within their own egg sac, they leave the gravel and feed in their river and lake system on zooplankton that was fertilized by the bodies of their parents, in preparation to go out into the ocean as juveniles. The salmon journey far and wide as they feed and grow to adult size. When they reach full maturity, they set themselves on going home to find a spawning partner and deposit fertilized eggs in a gravel nest, beginning the cycle anew.   The circular loop that marks the lifecycle of salmon is one that conveys growth and development, returning to one’s roots and sharing by giving back. To relate this in the simplest terms, salmon give everything back when their bodies swim to their home streams.   When I first began my work as a salmon advocate, I learned from Dr. Carol Ann Woody, a salmon scientist, that nitrogen carried from the ocean in the bodies of salmon can be measured by sampling feathers, fur and hair. In other words, it is possible to see how much nutrition a bird, bear or human derives from salmon through sample testing.  Flora is fed by the salmon, too. I later learned from photographer Amy Gulick that it is possible to measure how much salmon nutrients are taken up by trees through core sample testing. Amy compiled a book of her photographs and interviews of people who live in the Tongass National Forest in Southeast Alaska, where spawning salmon enrich these waterways with their bodies, greatly accelerating the growth of Sitka spruce situated near the stream's edge. The book is called “Salmon in the Trees”, and I highly recommend it.   If you ever have the chance to fly into Bristol Bay over the tundra, this effect is visible to the naked eye when you look at the intricate system of rivers, lakes and sloughs. It is easy to see where the salmon have gone to spawn and die because you will see a bright green bloom adjacent to the waters where they have been. Even herbivores benefit from the gift that salmon bring back to the land by browsing on the leaves of bushes and trees that grow by the water’s edge.   I am struck by how salmon, as an anadromous fish, teach us to recognize that the land and sea are inextricably linked ecosystems; salmon cannot exist without both habitats, and their return to the land benefits the habitat they were reared in.  My work outside of fishing is centered around making it possible for salmon to continue to complete their life cycle so that they will carry on. This purpose benefits from a wider focus to see the world as a giant ecosystem that recognizes the need to bring in the values of growth, return and sharing. Embodying the values of salmon just might help us to not only save salmon, but the whole Earth ecosystem that we live in. *** Salmon is just one point of connection — one that, naturally, is very dear to us — between Mother Nature and our collective, human efforts to imagine a better planet. But there are so many other points of connection, so many other creatures and plants and cycles and formations that can guide our way forward, if we are willing to follow.  Have you ever felt moved by nature — even perhaps learned a life-changing lesson? I invite you, dear members, to take a moment to reflect on this, and the power of forever savoring these epic gifts from the universe. Live Wild, Monica Pictured above: From Melanie’s camera roll, an aerial shot of the Nushagak River system, near Dillingham, Alaska. A green bloom in the water is visible to the naked eye — a marker of the nitrogen-rich ecosystem that’s supported by the bodies of spawned salmon.

EWI Free Trial

4/17/2025

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Bulish Percent is Low

4/17/2025

 

all are well below 50%, it's a bear market but I see the put call ratio is 72%, so way more calls being bought, social mood still positive despite the low bullish percent, yes I know buy the dip

An  odd day with INDU down over 500 but NDX and SPX up

INDU looks like it is just waiting to plunge

SPX, chart in about the same position as INDU, RSI and PMO have both recovered  from the sell off

NDX has managed to fill both gaps, INDU did not

I began adding SH PSQ HDGE BEARX yesterday and put orders under exisiting prices none were triggered today

After scaring the industry with oil at  55 it is now rallying into teh 60s, go figure

 

More tomroow

 

Well I Got That Right!

4/15/2025

I would argue that investors are 'buying the bounce.' The market is settling into bear market profile, a big drop, followed by a vigorous rally which recovers only the most dramatic part of the fall, and so they buy in, This is an indication no one has grasped that the tenor of the market has changed from bull to bear.

The market has not quite come to 50% of the drop, that would fill the first gap and it may well do that. But it might pay to start scaling in bear positions, recall that over the weekend Trump reversed himself on various tariffs.

Several articles today in he WSJ. Phil Gramm likens the chaos to Smoot Hawley Tariff of  1930 expecting a world recession. WSJ interviews a Chinese lady who exports socks. There is not enough margin to cut price, and who in the US wants to make socks?  I see Xi is cancelling Boeing orders, more unintended consequences for the Don. And Xi is making the rounds of SE Asian countries suggesting China is a  more reliable market partner than the US, gee that is an easy sell.

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4/16/2025

Well I did start scaling in yesterday ouch, I should have as joe biden would say, gone big. as the day progressed the markets fell further and further, As said yesterday the market might fill the first gap so I bought a bit and entered orders below the bear fund levels.

Well markets fell hard today and I was not well rewarded but far more downside lies ahead, we are on the correct side of the market which is down

PSQ is just starting to, move, there is far more potential to the upside, we clearly have a wave one up two down and now three in veryearly stages, go  long.

 

NDX is set to fall very hard

And it appears interest rates are on the rise, more tomorrow

Confidence in US Dollar Fading; A Short Lesson in Monetary History

4/16/2025

hMarket Watch reports less use of the dollar as a safe haven.

Recall that the US Dollar became the World Reserve Currency in the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944.

The next big move came in August 1971 when Nixon shock eliminated the dollar convertibility to gold.

The long term result was to allow Congress to inflate the currency. LBJ's $100 B budget is now over $36 Trillion. The $3,500 Chevy  nicely equipped back then is now ten times that figure, and way more for popular SUVs.

the price of gold in the US had been fixed at $35 since FDR's term. It rose over $100 when Americans were allowed to then own gold, today it just passed $3,000.

the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank kicked off in 2014.

It is clearly an attempt to promote the Chinese Yuan as an alternative to the US Dollar. The market watch article suggest that with tariff threats the world is turning elsewhere for currency transactions. The real reason for the Kuwait war was that Saddam Hussein was cheering for the EU to be used for oil transactions rather than the US Dollar.

If the Dollar lost its status as the world reserve currency it is easy to see inflation taking place in the US with its $36 T total debt.

 

 

Investors Buy the Dip

4/15/2025

The fallout from President Trump's tariff announcements and revisions hasn't yet pushed investors to shy away from an old habit: buying the dip.

Data from VandaTrack showed the week following "Liberation Day" saw "record dip-buying flows from retail investors," including $3 billion in net purchases on April 3, the largest daily total since VandaTrack began collecting this data in 2014.

Finance.yahoo.com today

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I would argue that investors are 'buying the bounce.' The market is settling into bear market profile, a big drop, followed by a vigorous rally which recovers only the most dramatic part of the fall, and so they buy in, This is an indication no one has grasped that the tenor of the market has changed from bull to bear.

The market has not quite come to 50% of the drop, that would fill the first gap and it may well do that. But it might pay to start scaling in bear positions, recall that over the weekend Trump reversed himself on various tariffs.

Several articles today in he WSJ. Phil Gramm likens the chaos to Smoot Hawley Tariff of  1930 expecting a world recession. WSJ interviews a Chinese lady who exports socks. There is not enough margin to cut price, and who in the US wants to make socks?  I see Xi is cancelling Boeing orders, more unintended consequences for the Don. And Xi is making the rounds of SE Asian countries suggesting China is a  more reliable market partner than the US, gee that is an easy sell.

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About all those phone ringing and first here gets the best deal

Well no agreements signed yet, and with the back and forth  from Trump, why commit to anything so soon, Tim Cook after all got a pass on his I Phone

the unintended consequences continue to fall from canceled Chinese orders for Boeing to Canadians not coming to America for vacation

 

 

 

Andy Kessler on Vertical vs Horizontal

4/14/2025

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1. Opinion
2. Inside View
    

Trump’s Protectionist Bunker

The U.S. prospers atop a horizontal empire, not as a vertical island.

 

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By

Andy Kessler

 

April 13, 2025 4:19 pm ET

 

 

 

360

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The IBM logo is seen at a company facility in Bromont, Quebec, April 26, 2024. Photo: Christinne Muschi/Associated Press

“Mister, we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again,” goes the “All in the Family” theme song. Donald Trump, who grew up 15 minutes from Archie Bunker, took it seriously. “We’re bringing wealth back to America,” says tariff-happy Mr. Trump. “That’s a big thing.” Those in the Trump administration with Wall Street experience should know better.

“The American dream is not ‘let them eat flat screens,’ ” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said last month on “Meet the Press” to justify tariffs. “It’s mortgages, it’s cars.” Clearly he hasn’t been to Walmart on Black Friday.

Mr. Trump’s America-first policy, as hallucinated by trade adviser Peter Navarro, is this: Make in America. Invest in America. Everything done by Americans. A self-sufficient, stand-alone country.

It’s more of a political agenda than an economic one—more about protectionism and isolationism. Trade? Globalization? Increased living standards? How quaint.

Look, I’m all for America on top, but America first isn’t how you get there. America first is a vertical model: Do everything. But vertical always fails. Vertical IBM made chips, wrote software, assembled computers and wrapped plastic around them. Vertical AT&T provided phones, wires and both local and long-distance calls.

Fortunately, vertical gave way to horizontal: industries organized into layers of expertise, sorted by value added. Intel and Microsoft owned layers in a horizontal stack that made up personal computers, leveling IBM mainframes. The internet became a horizontal stack of routers, servers and applications, upending AT&T’s network. Even the artificial-intelligence revolution is horizontal—Silicon Valley’s OpenAI uses Nvidia chips made by Taiwan’s TSMC using Dutch ASML’s equipment.

“Didn’t need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight,” the theme song goes. Globalism and trade also became a horizontal model, with the U.S. sitting on top of what I call a horizontal empire, sorted by value added. Apple designs iPhones in California but assembles them lower down the stack in China—now shifting toward Vietnam and India—where living standards also increased.

Sadly, this horizontal model causes freak-outs over U.S. trade deficits. But who cares? Forget actual trade numbers. Focus on the margin of the products flowing cross-border. Apple has 34% operating margins. Foxconn, which assembles trade-deficit-boosting iPhones, has operating margins of 3%. Which would you prefer?

TVs, cars, clothes, toys and lumber that we import are all low-margin and usually labor-intensive businesses. We export high-margin software, financial services, drugs and AI applications, all intelligence-intensive businesses. I like to say, “we think, they sweat.” Meanwhile, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick says, “Human beings screwing in little screws to make iPhones, that kind of thing is going to come to America.” You first, Howard.

Getting horizontal got society wealthy. Economists note that trade deficits have a flip side of capital-account surpluses, money that gets invested in the U.S. to offset those trade deficits. But where are they in our economic statistics? Hard to find. Economists can count foreign money that bought Treasury bonds (so Americans don’t have to). But when capital flows into stocks—foreigners own 18% of our equities—the numbers get fuzzy. A net $1,000 buying Google shares can drive its value up $2,000, or $5,000. Google is worth more than $2 trillion, but $2 trillion in cash didn’t get invested—productivity drove its value up.

Mr. Bessent says, “Data is on our side.” Is it? We’ve run cumulative trade deficits since 1999 of $15.4 trillion. Meanwhile, U.S. equity values rose $45 trillion between 1999 and 2024 (both market peaks). U.S. household net worth at the end of 1999: $41 trillion. End of 2024: $160 trillion. Let’s run bigger trade deficits! As long as we keep the margin. Trade and productivity pay. No wonder the market is a yo-yo.

“Gee, our old LaSalle ran great,” the song concludes. So why would you ever want to go back to a vertical, isolationist model for the U.S., leading to higher-rate mortgages and expensive cars? A margin surplus means we let low-margin jobs move overseas and become a high-margin nation. Living standards rose across the globe. Smartphones and autos everywhere. Why go back?

Note to Trump yes-men: Low-wage jobs aren’t the American dream either. Populist protectionism, worsened by tariffs, has been shown to destroy more jobs than it creates. Even the lower-valued jobs that the Trump administration hopes will return may not exist. Most machine and metalworking shops now use programmable machine tools. Factory jobs will require proficiency in operating robots. Fixing education is critical.

“Boo hoo,” one can almost hear, “collapsing stocks only hurt the rich.” Yeah, but it also severely limits access to capital for U.S. companies to fund growth and create better jobs—let alone build new factories. Do we really want that? America can stay first only by sitting on top of a horizontal empire, not by reconstructing a retro isolated vertical island. Going backward is a meathead move. Stop trying to bring back the “All in the Family” nostalgia: “Those were the days!”

Write to [email protected].