We are all just part of the infinitely disposable software. What AI will do is point out to us how this was all but a simulation already….
—Job Steves
Smoking a j and following the stock market can actually be a nice way to spend part of a day. The action in financial markets around the world has been of particular interest lately. It’s almost like what sports are supposed to be: entertaining, gripping, providing a basis by which to root.
There’s so much going on in the world today that the stock and bond markets do a pretty good job of filtering, illustrating, translating, transcribing. There’s AI. There’s the concentration of so much wealth the hands of a small group of individuals. There’s inflation, there’s geopolitical turmoil, there’s politics, there’s an election less than two weeks away.
There’s that Talking Heads song, “Flippy Floppy.” One day the AI trade is on, the next day those stocks are getting slammed. These have been some big swings. This is volatility that the VIX doesn’t seem to register. If you’re in this trade, the five percent you lost today is worth more than the five percent you made yesterday—do the math. ($100 x 1.05 =$105.00; .95 x $105=$99.75). Ride those waves day in, day out and you are not going to make any money.
I like to look instead at what stocks are up on a day like today. (I am my father’s son.) What is interesting about the green on the screen today is that you don’t have to go into the weeds to find the winners. Bonds are up (interest rates are down). Who saw Treasury Bills as one of October’s best trades? Predicting the future is a fickle business.
But it’s not just bonds that are up today (note: this is as of the last hour of the trading day, 14:26 CDT…) How about the exchange traded fund RSP? Up almost half a percent. That’s the Equal-Weighted S&P 500, meaning the fund holds 500 stocks with each stock comprising 1/500th of the total portfolio. (As opposed to the “regular” S&P 500 which is cap-weighted, meaning its biggest constituents have the largest impact on the price of the index.). The regular S&P 500 is off by 1.3% as of 14:29. The Nasdaq? Down 2.63%.
Look at utilities, though. The ETF XLU is up by 1.79%! Rotation, rotation, rotation. The Transports, reflected by ETF IYT, are up 2.26%! Incredible. Apple Computer (AAPL) is up .94% and is relishing a role as an anti-AI play. The broader market will really be in trouble when the AI trade is getting trounced and AAPL is down a couple of percent or more. Then we’ll know they’re throwing in the towel; then we’ll know the tide has gone out, and then we will see who is naked!
IBM has just poked its head above water, up .11%. There is strength in some industrials. Air Products (APD) up 1.47%. Deere (DE) up .85% (shaking off some recent murkiness, a price-fixing investigation, maybe a bone being thrown to some pissed-off farmers or maybe something of merit, we will see). XYL up, HON up. Illinois Tool Works (ITW) is up, which it seems to be on these types of days.
Retail is up. COST, WMT, TGT, HD. And consumer staples. I regret selling my Altria (MO). The stock is at an all-time high, has good earnings, and pays a 6.01% yield. PG up, KO up, CLX. It’s a good day for the brands. Church & Dwight stock has finally started to move. It’s not far from an all-time high. I always thought they were a takeout target.
Need a drink on a day like this, the Nasdaq melting into the close, down 2.86% at 14:39 CDT. The QQQs are down over 3%. How about a shot of Tennessee Whiskey? Brown Forman (BF-B), a truly dreadful stock since 2022, a stock hit hard by the President’s “Liberation Day” tariffs is beginning perhaps to imagine once again an economic landscape free of said tariffs, a stock perhaps emblematic of a broader market beginning to see a turning of the tide? The spirits maker is still profitable despite the tariffs that tanked its business and it pays a 3.28% dividend yield. It’s up nearly seven percent today and has put in a series of lower lows. ¡El Jimador, por favor!
What recent years’ gains in the stock market have obscured is just how bad this market—just how bad this economy—has been for many stocks for the last few years now! Tech has been responsible for most of the gains. A day like today harkens back, takes me back to a market of ten years ago, stocks that used to outperform that have fallen on hard times, and might just be awakening…!
Ha, this was supposed to be a weed review for a strain called Skywalker OG by Psycho Somatic. But this blog was always about more than marijuana. I am in fact feeling the effect of the Skywalker OG, and I am wishing I had more of it. I bought just a gram in Las Cruces, NM, a couple of weeks back. Rolled it up in the Catalina Foothills above Tucson, Arizona. Smoked one one night there but it was late, anything was going to put me out, and it did.
But I remember getting what they called simply Skywalker three or four years back from Nature’s Grace in Illinois. SKY, it said on the package. Technically, Skywalker and Skywalker OG are two different strains. And in lineage, technicalities are all there are from one generation, from one strain to the next. Anyway, that Skywalker was an intense high. I remember smoking some at Rockingham (my parents’ house) and staring at the wall, feeling my head thrum, that ringing in the ears of a really good head-rush high.
Straight up Skywalker is Blueberry x Mazar (source: seedfinder, link). That’s Mazar as in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan. Whereas Skywalker OG is a cut of OG Kush, maybe even the cut of OG Kush, the OG OG Kush, from Florida to LA. (link) What seems not up for debate is that whichever Skywalker you have, it would be considered an indica. For whatever that’s worth!
It could just be that this is an unusually beautiful day (outside) and I am buzzing on the fresh air, the low humidity, the temperature right around seventy degrees. What do you call seventy degrees and forty percent relative humidity? Inside, I call that HVAC nirvana. Outside I don’t call it anything, I just go outside, or want to.
What is the point of any of this you are asking. Break down the wood, plant the bulbs, smoke the SKY! Also, get a little laundry going. It’s not about effective altruism, it’s about efficient altruism. We’re going to get this right this time, I can feel it.
