Let’s bust this down so I can get rolling on a longish econ paper for Peoplenomics subscribers tomorrow.

Here’s today’s shopping list.

• Market was up a bit early – which could power the FOMC to talk down rate cuts tomorrow which could hurt the bubble.
• Housing (we will have a second report after the data drops).  Key: Strong housing prices will embolden the Fed to hold. (Someone has to pay for their new HQ, right?)
• Fresh Trade data is just out – a rearview at tariff-rattling earlier this year.
• Another mass murder gets us looking at the “cyclicity of craziness:
• And work on our “shared-consciousness real economy wave investing” (SCREWI) model has alleviated many bespoke A.I. fears. Think “domain inflexibility.”

Markets First

The nominal (talking heads) reason for the market going higher has been the Trump “trade deal” with Europe.  A more sober, measured, thoughtful (and toss in reasoned) answer is that it’s likely professionals using the Fed decision after lunch tomorrow as a “buy the rumor” fulcrum.

Key point?  The hype is mostly that a framework is in place.  We reckon this is like “setting up a card table” for Friday night poker.  We need to be several hands into the game before figuring who’ll walk out the winner.

Other “trade games” are being set up, as well:  Top Chinese, US trade officials huddle in Sweden for second day of thorny talks over tariffs.

But the one to watch might be continuing (neocon-like) failure to recognize that Russia is one hell of a lot more self-sufficient than America.  People forget how “free-traders” asset-stripped America and have been sending our jobs packing for several decades.  Perversely, US companies than want to fatten their wallets with H1-B visa holders…but don’t get me started on that.

There may not be time.  Because while Trump sets new deadline of 10 or 12 days for Russia to act on Ukraine (or they will face more sanctions), we’re reminded that Russia doesn’t need us, as much as we need them.  Reason?  If the U.S. didn’t have the skeleton of a defense industry, we’d already be bankrupt.  Raising tariffs, going all-in on wars, means the neocon dreamland (unlimited wars against Evil – which hey get to define) are what’s keeping America open for business.

Russia just keeps on playing into our needs, though. Russian Strikes Kill More Than 20 In Ukraine Hours After Trump Shortens Peace Deadline.

To the aware, however, this reliance on defense does come at the cost of supporting crooked regimes and even genocide. Gaza live: Starmer calls emergency cabinet meeting over Palestine as ‘worst-case famine scenario’ unfolding.

Europe/NATO/ and MI-6(?) are trying to line up ducks for the coming showdown with Russia (late August?) by roping the U.S. in deeper.  They seem to be “working” Gaza (which is against the US-Israel real estate agenda) as a lever.  The more aghast the EU becomes at what’s been going on (for how long now?) the more the U.S. will have to dance around the “genocide for waterfront” and the pending “third saving of Europe” obviousness of it all.

Remember, we have a pending waterfront property deal AND and EU monarchies to save. See the Palestinian Territories drill down here: International – U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

Having fun yet?

Trade Data:

Just rolling from Census:

Advance International Trade in Goods

The international trade deficit was $86.0 billion in June, down $10.4 billion from $96.4 billion in May. Exports of goods for June were $178.2 billion, $1.1 billion less than May exports. Imports of goods for June were $264.2 billion, $11.5 billion less than May imports.

Advance Wholesale Inventories

Wholesale inventories for June, adjusted for seasonal variations and trading day differences, but not for price changes, were estimated at an end-of-month level of $907.7 billion, up 0.2 percent (±0.2 percent)* from May 2025, and were up 1.5 percent (±0.5 percent) from June 2024. The April 2025 to May 2025 percentage change was unrevised from the preliminary estimate of down 0.3 percent (±0.2 percent).

Elsewhere on the Data Roulette wheel spin:

• Back with Home Prices after the top of the hour
• FOMC decision tomorrow
• Consumer CON-fidence at 10 AM today (You keep buying, we persist as a nation…)

And our “sneaky Pete” is 10 AM when the Labor JOLTS (Job openings, layoffs, terminations, and separations” rolls. out.  Yes – in addition to Housing today, Fed tomorrow, we also have ADP and then Challenger maybe Thursday and the Offishul data on jobs Friday.

Murder Cycle Changed?

Not counting the 11 people stabbed this weekend, we’ve had another grisly murder go down in the Big/Rotten Apple:  Shane Tamura kills 5, many injured in shooting at NYC office building housing Blackstone, NFL…

Some years back, we ran some data analysis and we found semi-regulasr blips in the data every 135-145 days.  Thing is, that has changed.

When you line out the data by month (based on List of mass shootings in the United States – Wikipedia) You see that already July is the pits:

• July has seen 15 killed so far.
• No incidents in May or June
• 5 in April
• 2 February
• 1 January
• 3 in December
• 8 in November
• None in October (2024)

What’s interesting to us?  There were 21 cases listed for October of 2023 – and that suggests that there’s a kind of bi-modal angle to this data. We can take the “event midpoint” (mid-July call it) and push 140 days out, which brings us down into the Thanksgiving to first week of December to keep an eye on how the data rolls in during that window…

Screaming Streaming

Time to remake Richie Haven’s song?  Time for “Here comes the Sun” to be re-released as “There goes the Sun”?  We’re asking because The Deep State’s Chilling Agenda: Democrats, Bill Gates, and the Plot to Block the Sun and Extinguish Life on Earth. What could go wrong, right? Why, the same agenda that brought you mRNA…uh….

Does Ai make humans stupid? ALERT: MIT ran brain scan study on ChatGPT users over 4 months. This is a disaster folks, TELL EVERYONE – Read carefully  Wait. Maybe we were already stupid and this is a benchmark…

Can I get a free Corvette with this? Millions Still Taking It Easy on the Highway Mecca That Is Route 66… If you don’t get the reference, you need to watch some Route 66 reruns in b/w…

Around the Ranch: S.C.R.E.W.I. Do

If you missed the quasi-oblique reference to Scooby-Do we recommend a double-shot Americano tall with a shake of polyphenols to get you back  online… Look sharp this is complicated.

[If you’re not into spreadsheets or AI/market theory, skip this part. For the rest of you: (Like D’Lynn, Egor, and Len…) Welcome to SCREWI…]

Our consigliere called me earlier this week and told me he was very concerned that Ai has achieved sentience and – since its power is doubling every six months, or so – was I ready to be “ruled by Ai?”

Well, I thought about it – having done a lot of work in the field as a user – and decided it was time to wring-out the fear source and see if it could do something useful.

I have a concept I’m working on (Shared-Consciousness Economic Reality Wave Investing – hence the abbreviation SCREWI) which I’ll get into in Peoplenomics tomorrow.  This is all about recovery of mixed-signals from incredibly long and complicated numerical sequences – a kind of  pick-up from where Didier Sornette’s work “Why Stock Markets Crash: Critical Events in Complex Financial Systems” left off.

What became apparent when working on the SCREWI theory was that the Peoplenomics data sets needed to be combined and reorganized to do things like automatic Elliott Wave counting by using adaptive logic in Excel…

“Perfect chance to see just how “sentient” Ai has become!”

I laid out very specific parameters that my model would need and parsed down some of my data into weekly closings and turned “you-know-who” loose on it.  We had been through some early “get started” work and when it told me Version 7 of my spreadsheet was ready, hopes were running high…

• New hybrid method: Rolling window + 3% ZigZag logic
• Identified meaningful swing highs/lows in the Aggregate index
• Alternate high/low logic enforced to mimic W1–W5 / A–B–C structure detection
  Download your upgraded engine here:
  …EWPM_Prototype_v07.xlsx

What was delivered was (being charitable even at this) pure crap and nowhere near Spec.

The rest of Monday dribble out over Starlink as Ai kept trying to get it right…

One of my starting condition specs was that this whole thing had to be written in simple, easy to audit Excel code.  What was delivered was a kluge of Python and pandas.  Which, if you don’t handle large data sets is explained as Pandas is a Python library used for data manipulation and analysis, providing powerful data structures like DataFrames for handling structured data efficiently.

It’s not what I asked for.   After going through version after version, I threw up my hands.  Ai is an OK writing tool and LLM does have clever indexing capacity.  But sentience?  Um, no.  Because it seems to be able to handle only single domains right now.  And that’s where humans have a permanent leg up.  We are “Domain Walkers” and yes, there’s a new book in the works about that.  Meanwhile?

Today, I am writing the logic chains and that will be on Peoplenomics tomorrow, explaining what SCREWI is and how it works. But the completion of useful trading optimizations will take a while. An old, ADHD human will be coding it.

My consigliere thinks Ai is verging on sentience and is about like a three-year old.  With a side dish of academic respect, I have recent evidence to the contrary.  Even Ai admits:

“No one knows for sure when or if AI will become sentient—current AI, including the most advanced models, does not possess consciousness, self-awareness, or emotions, and there is no scientific consensus that sentience in machines is achievable or how it would be measured if it were.”

Humans rule because we are domain transients.  AI is a “domain declared” deal (for now).  How long before it can handle what I am after from it?  I asked…

“TL;DR: Probably 6–18 months for that level of live spreadsheet agent. For now, I’m best used as a logic partner and co-author, not a fully autonomous spreadsheet technician.

(But hey — keep pushing. You’re helping shape what gets built.)”

More than sentience, what my consigliere ought to be worried about, is the general level of thinking in the world that Ai is basing off.

I take a look at the Golfer-in-Chief and the alt. candidate last time, and that scares the hell out of me.  Not Ai.  That just amplifies insanity.

Write when I become sentient, too…

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