10 AM today, Fed boss Jerome Powell speaks.

We hope he uses our “Magician” speech.  The one where he says “There is no magic in economics.  Money does not just appear.”

The one where someone speaks to the raging stampede “There’s no free lunch, this tariff stuff is only a tax on foreign-made goods.

Do I think he will do that?  No.  But I think the odds of the Fed lowering are not nearly as high as the street has been thinking.  A little rally at the open today – maybe.  Because talk is cheap.  But next week is a pre-holiday week which just cries out through the wilderness for a Labor Day Rally.  A kind of touchstone before the comet flies, kind of thing.

Here’s the Simple Version of Today

Just read how With the White House watching, Fed’s Powell to hint yes or no on rate cuts and remember this isn’t Rate Day – this is just the Chairman trying to sum up how the Fed thinking is drifting.  I mean besides the one governor who is in hot water over getting loans on two primary homes.  Is DoJ making an example?

Meanwhile, BTC is struggling at the $112,000 line this morning.  The world is running low on Hopium and word’s starting to get around.

Modeling Madness

I have been pulling my hair out working on an implementation of my “hairy math” paper as a trading device. But it’s a fun exercise (though sometimes I fell like the guy in the movie “Pi”).  Here’s an example of trying to out-gun the future: (This is only for discussion and is not advice!!!)

Two things in this run reveal an important fact of “trading” for real money.   On the upper right there is a scrawled circle with a lone (-) in it.  This hints that within modeling conditions, a move to the short side was indicated around August 15th.

As of yesterday’s close, the Dow had only lost a handful of points (essentially model noise).  Besides, you can make a model report anything you want it to…it’s all based on what you pick as your variables and then spending days –> years trying to sort out what works.

In practical terms, early futures today were waving a “buy the rumor” ahead of Powell.  But we think the chance of a rate hike are low since the much touted All Items (less food and energy) was still up 3.1 percent year on year.

The market is one of the most fascinating time-sinks out there.  You can base expectations on time, price, past behavior, political winds and lots of other unknowables.

But in the bigger picture while tariff income is up, it’s also an additional tax being loaded onto everything imported (and a lot that’s not) – a bad sign.

What we THINK is going on is a stealth quantitative easing.  Because recent Money supply figures have been up a little over 4.5 percent annualized while GDP has lagged this.  That money is the “hidden easing”.

Next Tuesday, the Fed’s H.6 Money Stocks report will be released and that will tell us loads.  For now, we see about even odds (so does our modeling, but that’s all run by an old man in the woods who lost his mind in a sailing accident or something…)

We’d like to think some of our model targets on the low side could be met. But a turnaround Tuesday next week as the prospect of a four day workweek glimmers on the horizon…

Unrolling Scrolling

Worse than cow farts? Gas poisoning suspected as six found dead in dairy. Maybe one of our agricultural experts can explain what gasses might be involved?  Besides a blow-up cow gone bad?

Hmm…let’s see what Obama judges are up to, shall we? US judge blocks any new detainees being sent to ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ migrant detention facility. Look surprised.

DoJ seems to be doing an even-handed job.  Here’s proof for the TDS folks: FBI raids former Trump adviser John Bolton’s home in classified documents probe.

Oh, look!  Another Obama appointee with a big decision: Federal judge rules Alina Habba is not lawfully acting as US attorney for NJ.

Now see thing, too: BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules 5-4 Trump Can Slash $783 Million in DEI-Linked NIH Grants – Roberts Sides with Liberals.  I burned my John Roberts fan club card years ago…

Cracker Barrel restaurants is phasing out the term “Old Timer” (which we think is a bad move).  We are not alone: Steak ‘n Shake slams Cracker Barrel over controversial new logo change.

Tourists take note: Six severed heads found on busy city street alongside ominous message.

Around the Ranch: Walk America Day

We’ve been out here on the ranch going on 23 years now. That’s a lot of fence mending, brush cutting, and more than a few busted knuckles. But one thing that never makes it into the highlight reel is the daily trudge to the mailbox.

It’s not far—196 paces one way. Twice a day. Every day. Rain or shine. Snow or mud. Even on those days where you’d rather stay parked by the wood stove. Turns out, that little ritual adds up.

Mailbox Math

I’m about 5’9″. Average walking stride at that height is about 2.4–2.5 feet per step. Call it 480 feet one way. Round trip: 960 feet. Two runs a day: 1,920 feet. That’s 0.364 miles per day. Multiply it out, and you’re looking at 132.7 miles per year.

Now do the long division: 23 years of ranch living × 132.7 miles = about 3,052 miles. That’s the rough road distance from New York City to San Diego. In other words, in 23 years of “just getting the mail,” I’ve quietly walked across America. No sponsorship, no medals, no selfies at the finish line—just habit.

The Quiet Marathoner

To put it another way, 3,052 miles equals 116½ marathons. That’s what the marathoners knock out in expensive shoes with bib numbers and electrolyte goo. I did it in mud boots, with the cat chasing armadillos on the way.

Calories? At 80 calories per mile walking, that’s ~244,000 calories burned—about 70 pounds of fat-equivalent. The kind of number that makes you grateful for a fridge and a garden.

The Daily Grind—Online

This “Walk America” idea dovetails nicely with the other thing I’ve been doing seven days a week for more than two decades: milking the web. UrbanSurvival runs Sun/Mon/Tue/Thu/Fri. Peoplenomics takes Wed and Sat. Which means there hasn’t been a morning off in, well, 23 years either.

Writing’s not so different from milking cows—it happens at set times, rain or shine, regardless of how you feel. You show up, you sit down, you type. The web wants its feed bucket filled. And unlike cows, the internet doesn’t give you soulful brown eyes of gratitude when you’re done.

So here I am, half a mile a day on foot, and five to six thousand words a week online. One is for physical circulation. The other for mental. Both keep the system from seizing up.

Compounding Mileage and Words

There’s a lesson in it. None of this felt like much on any given Tuesday. One more walk to the mailbox. One more 1,000-word post. But the compound interest of habit is relentless. Keep going, and suddenly you’ve walked coast-to-coast. Or filled a digital barn with millions of words.

Big journeys aren’t one-time heroics. They’re what happens when you milk the cows, fetch the mail, and keep hitting “publish” long enough.

Walk America Day

So maybe we need a new holiday. Not just Labor Day for the work we do in factories or offices. Let’s have a Walk America Day for all the little routines that, when added up, turn into something epic.

Like the woman who takes the dog around the block twice a day and ends up logging the Appalachian Trail in a decade. Or the guy who weeds a garden row every evening and, before he knows it, has eaten a farm’s worth of fresh vegetables. Or the fool who keeps typing out “Around the Ranch” columns until they stack high enough to qualify as a small library.

The habits are small. The results are not.

Mystery of Knees – Solved!

The only times my “mailbox expeditions” were a major PITA were when I was working through the pain of gout.  Which – if you have missed that nightmare in life – is like shooting yourself in the knee and going dancing.

But I have gotten some keen insights about knees on these harrowing hikes.  See, at 180 pounds, every step is really about double that in joint force—360 pounds per stride. My round trip is 392 steps. Two trips a day is 784. Multiply by 365 days a year and then by 23 years and you get more than 6.5 million steps. Multiply that by 360 pounds per step and the knees have absorbed roughly 2.37 billion pounds of impact force just walking to the mailbox. That’s like catching a fully loaded 747 about 6,000 times.

TaDah!!! Suddenly the epidemic of knee replacements in America doesn’t seem so mysterious.

Final Specklenations 

Grand goals are fine. UI set ’em every morning.  Give me some inexpensive shit to break every day.

But seriously (m/l) life is mostly made of little laps to the mailbox and back. The trick is to keep walking them, keep milking the web, keep showing up. After 23 years of ranch living, I can say this much: if you keep at it, even the small stuff adds up to something big. In my case, big enough to walk across America without ever leaving the county.

Now if only the mailbox paid a pension. Or, maybe I could install a “scream box” (motion-activated .MP3 player off Amazon).  It could yell drill-instructor-like curses at me.  “Pick it up you lazy no-good, old phat phug!”  Turn it into that “trip you love to hate.” Like going to work.

Write when you step it up, a bit, you lazy, no-good,…

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