Puke Monday. Inner ears will “tumble” from weightlessness. Fresh spikes in the punch bowl.  Dow futures were +900 points earlier.

Second Coming at hand?  Um….no….

What we think is going on?  Someone (besides us) figured out the abyss was open and the world was about to fall in.  So let’s all get the Plunge Protection Team to jump  ALL-IN via the offshore proxies.  And give the Confuser-in-Chief a flying palace to keep him in line.  Trump administration poised to accept ‘palace in the sky’ as a gift for Trump from Qatar: Sources. Study the following and tell me this looks like an “honest” market?

Yessir, our expected – but only without massive government manipulation – outcome is out the window.  The punch bowl was clearly spiked because with he 42 under the 85 day average and the 85 ALSO under the 200-day average, something had to be done.  As in Stat!!!!

We will have to wait for others to weigh-in: D’Lynn and Egor along with The Economic Fractalist.  But my sense is, this is what happens when the government hits the “PRTSCR” button.  Two week (or two-day) wunder-rally?

CPI tomorrow.  Bugly and fugly because this is when trade-excuse price hikes begin appearing?  Data lags… And does that, in turn blow-up the Fed rate drop hype?  See the problem, yet?

For today, if you’re wondering “How far is UP, anyway?” think of this next chart as “Destination Rehab?”

About the time we hit that line (a week, day, or a few minutes from now) Trump will be able to claim “See? I told you invest!” The Central Banksters will buy gold, and with the BPLTM (big pile of long term money)  we’re skill popping :skepticism pills” until the 42 DMA is over the 85.

THE POTENTIAL GOOD NEWS?  If we could keep going higher over summer and hit a new all-time high… Amnd that could postponed global meltdown into next year.  Still, we’re not betting on that – so we’ll just watch that resistant level and see what’s next.

Punch Bowl Check

Who’s He?  He is hopeful the can has been kicked more than 90-days down the road…  Key takeaways from China-U.S. high-level economic and trade meeting?  But, for now, it’s a 90-day solution and we all know how “trial separations” work out?  U.S., China agree to lower tariffs in 90-day cool-off period.

And no surprise to see BTC lined up at the punch bowl, either: Goldman Backs Bitcoin ETF Surge as BlackRock’s IBIT Breaks Inflow Record.  $105,000 briefly overnight…

Not in the Punch

Hamas is still outplaying Israel by working Western Liberals: After direct talks with Hamas, Washington secures release of US-Israeli hostage.

Keep an ear open for racists on the left to whine as Refugee status for white South Africans: First group flying to US.

Possibility of talking turkey on Ukraine will be where? Zelenskyy challenges Putin to meet him in Turkey ‘personally’ for ceasefire talks. But the shooting continues…and we sense war clouds over Europe.

Ted Talks: TED CRUZ tells Mark Levin that Iran is actively attempting to assassinate President Trumps.

And we’ll believe it when we can read it: Dan Bongino: FBI Releasing Files on COVID Coverup, Mar-a-Lago Raid..Yeah…uh….tick-tock…

Around the Ranch: Texas Chainsaw Madness

“Electric Things” from Amazon didn’t do so well in April around here.  I had put in an order for a super-discounted e-bike from Chyna (*$299 – which was more than 1/2-off).  Bike didn’t ship, but then I got told that with Amazon (nowadays) you can only cancel an order within 30-minutes of clicking or you have to wait until x-days after your new “sparkly” was supposed to arrive.

Honestly, I thought it would be kinda cool to have an e-DB (electric dirt bike) to tool around the property because our perimeter here is over a mile. Fast silent patrol, right?  Well, nope.

There’s a Freesky that looks pretty good except, here lately, Amazon has been going nuts on added shipping on expensive to ship items (e-bikes) which drops the value of Prime.

So, I gave up,  Old men (over 76 now) I supposed don’t need to be dirt-biking in snake and feral hog country…Universe does drop hints.

Take a tip from a nearly “senior” – when a path into your personal future becomes littered with obstacles – take it as a hint and stick to the “low-resistance path.”  Better on karma along with blood pressure.

Time and Chainsaws

This e-bike disaster (roadblocks and obstacles) left me with an unallotted pile of FRNs about the same time two other things happened around here.

1. One of my big fire breaks has a very flammable tree laying across it…
2. Our homeowner insurance went up 30%.

Home insurance companies, as a group, have turned into financial rapists.  Our increases were wholly one-sided.  They want more, but they give less.  No adjustment (not even a dime) on the payout side,  Screw ’em.  We will go with liability only because the home is the cost-driver.  Something about “in a forest fire prone area.”

The insurance would come to just under $2,000 OR less than $500 going with liability only.  Not a hard choice.

But this now circles us back to the blown-over big pine laying across the fire break.

While we have an assortment of chainsaws around here, the more I use those little 6 and 8-inch electric chainsaws (that come with two batteries, if you shop) the more I like electric.  I picked up a really nice Oregon  electric with a self-sharpening rig on it.  (On sale for $97 now.  Yes, of course everything goes on sale after I buy it!)

Works dandy except for one tiny issue: The Cord.  See, the fallen tree is >300 feet from the house/shop.  Hmm..

I hit the Zon again – fingers pre-treated for credit card burn – and came up with a suitable 60 volt 5 amphour battery saw that promises it can cut up to 200 4 X 4’s before needing another shot of juice.  It happens to get incredibly good reviews, but again, Amazon seems to be letting merchants “tidy up” their profiles, so the truth is in the pudding, as it were.

Thing about trying to “go all-electric” around here is that after over half a century of mixing gas an oil, I have finally decided to hang it up.  Not because living in a “gas dump” was dangerous – life’s full of dangers, right?  No, this is a “time thing.”

If I go over to the country store in Montalba, Texas, it’s pushing 40-minutes round trip.  Then doing the mixing routine… Power tools really like fresh fuel…so how much is an hour of time worth?  Plus with all the solar around here, we can recharge even after the end of the world.  (Yes, Ray, we do have back-up inverters and backup MPTP charge controllers…)

Digital Hell

Two huge time sinks this weekend?  The Starlink pop3 access to our phone and ISP provider fell apart this weekend.  So there went a couple of hours – changed over to IMAP (which is god-awful slower since it’s a “chatty” protocol.

Which failed about the same time Orifice365 rolled out their latest stunning BETA candidate on the hapless computing public.  If this pops up on your screen:

Don’t try it unless you have recently retired and have a lot of time on your hands to be an unpaid beta tester.  (Can someone please tell LibreOffice to mix in a basic email program into their suite? I’m in.

Oh, and May 8th Elon’s SuperGrok deleted my whole account and canceled my $300 annual subscription access.  I hired the bank card dispute folks to go fight that BS. I will sign up for $30 a month instead of $300/year – because SuperGrok is great even if the Accountants and wheeler-dealers at X.ai can’t return emails or fix broken crap like account access.

Which gets me to the morning’s last acerbic view:  GOD I HATE APPS!

Everyone has gone”app shit.”  Yes, phone disease has made the leap over into the general public now.  What’s more there are thousands of companies online now that REQUIRE you to have a phone so they can send bullshit texts to you!  Want to look at your StarLink account?  Can’t get their with your Win11 anymore. Gotta load BlueStack and download the app from the PlayStore – this is such a pant load of time waste I can’t see straight!

No. I don’t use a cell phone for anything but what?  (Making the odd phone call when traveling?)

Not everyone needs an ear-warmer or digital umbilical.

Morning’s like this (market on fentanyl, can verify it’s me at the end of a landline and other idiocy like that) that nothing ever gets fixed anymore.  The markets are still algo-rigged, the trade mess is still a what?  (All-together now: “A mess!“) And Indian-Pakistan will be hot again before summer’s out – bet me?

BONE Us Super-Whine

I have mentioned before that I’ve come to believe there are severe problems in the US Postal Service distribution center in Coppell, Texas.  USPS is generally very good.  But I bought a collection of old books on CDs last month and still not sure it will ever get here.

Study this tracking report and see if you see the Coppell problem:

Shipment history

Write when you get rich, I’m going to go puke. Been one of those weekends.

[email protected]