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TLC Weekly Update May 13, 2023

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Another interesting week has passed with the US stock market continues to be trapped inside a tight range. Bulls believe we are going to see a new high soon because of whatever reason they can come up with. Bears insist that so far this is a dead cat bounce and reality will hammer the market back down. Maybe, it is something else all together – like we have reached an equilibrium for which the next major move has nothing to do with the current state of the market at all but some external events that will decide the outcome.

Of course people don’t like to see things this way because everyone wants their own predictions come true. Both sides have a chance to win. What matters most is that when they are wrong, can they survive for the next play?

A very interesting topic to me, “Is reality discrete or continuous?”, discussed by none other than Stephen Wolfram.

Here it is with Hugh Hendry again. This time he has a conversation with Russell Clark who has an opposite view of TLT from Hendry.

We don’t get a lot on YouTube with Doomberg as they are mainly active on Twitter only. Here is a great overview of what Doomberg thinks about various markets and the future.

Got to go.

Enjoy your weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update May 6, 2023

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NFP week ended with a wild roller coaster ride all week. FOMC announcement on Wednesday did some damage to the stock market however the earning report from Apple turned the market around hard on Friday. Yet, it so funny to see that at the end, S&P500 is still stuck in the same place, again, by Friday close.

Here is a video telling the simple truth of what US really is all about. I do not agree with him that Russia and China are more corrupted at the top level though. US is way more corrupted as I pointed out in the past that those two countries are just not as articulate with hiding the corruptions.

Peter Zeihan reported about latest IMF economic forecast for the year.

A discussion of the current regional banking crisis from the perspective of a crypto guy.

Let’s round up this week with a joke on Brandon.

I have a number of technical emergencies to address this week, so must go back to work on them now.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update April 29, 2023

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Month end for April managed to send the stock market indices closing above the first quarter close. That’s a powerful message sent to the world that the stock market is going to go much higher … for those who want to be scammed. This works only when more than 50% of the components in the major indices also doing the same. Well, I can tell you that it is not the case this time. So no confirmed strength for the stock markets to go much higher.

A great video on a real medical scientist calling bullshit on the bull shit research on statins. I always tell people that nowadays you can’t trust majority of the so-called research results because most of those involved are goal seeking instead of real exploration of what matters most. I am luckily that I can dissect these papers and tell if they are lying or not. Normal people will have a hard time figuring out the truth. Watch the whole video on how people in powerful position can suppress the truth even when their work are garbage that harm people.

For those of you interested in investing, Ray Dalio came out the other day in a podcast updating his thoughts on the subject of the changing world order. I think he has now finally telling what he truly believes will happen soon.

I didn’t know that there is this train that goes from Toronto to Vancouver. It looks nice enough to at least try it once. When I get the chance for a short break I will definitely give this a try.

Kevin Kelly went on The Tim Ferriss Show lately. If you have the time, I think many of you will enjoy this podcast.

Got to go. Tons of work to get done.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update April 22, 2023

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Another option expiration week ended in absolute stalemate between the bulls and bears. Funny enough, it looks like everyone from the hedge fund industry told me they are forced to buy in the hope of a melt up from here … I don’t know what to say.

Here is a video on the stock market talking about the bullish scenario. I don’t agree with Jason Shapiro point of view but then what do I know since I am just a day trader.

My personal take on the current trading /investing environment has not changed. It is simply not about the financial news or what central banks do at all. The future hangs on the geopolitical landscape going forward and any development on that front will decide what goes up and what goes down.

Patrick Boyle posted this interesting video about the “finfluencers”. The very last part kills it. Enjoy!

Many of you know my take on Cathie Wood’s ability in investing. Here is a short video of Hugh Hendry dissecting the so called insight from her. The video started with some trippy effects and if you do not like that skip to 2:30 to watch his actual analysis.

For those of you who just started hearing about ChatGPT, here an article talking about people who are smart enough to use it to make more money for a long time already.

Out of the blue, I have all these new technical issues to resolve. I am not sure if it is because of Mercury retrograde that starts on April 21 and ends by May 14. Anyhow I know this will eat up all my time.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update April 15, 2023

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US stock market again pushing higher this week, even though so many financial pundits calling for the stock market to go much lower with their magical turning dates. Personally I know for a fact that major downturn is coming to the US stock market no matter what the bulls believe in. But I don’t have an exact date for a top because I am not talking about all these market timing stuff or macro play based on the financial conditions worldwide.

All I need to know is that majority of baby boomers are now well passed their retirement age. It is just a matter of time they will continuously sell their stock holdings from their retirement accounts year after year while their children would never be able to offset the outflow. This one factor alone will limit any more upside for the stock market until majority of the stock market holdings owned by the boomers are drained.

Demographic dictates the real trend underlying majority of the swings in political and financial scenes. I mentioned this multiple times in my newsletters over the years. Interesting enough, on Friday Jeff Gundlach mentioned a new book coming out from Neil Howe, “The Fourth Turning Is Here”. You can look up his name for various podcasts featuring his talks. Here is a short video of him talking about US Federal Reserve. It is very insightful.

Of course what I expect is not set in stone. All it takes is the US government somehow find a way to kill like half of all their boomers in a short period of time … then those stocks they own will most likely be tied up in government audits for decades to come. Sorry for spreading another conspiracy theory.

Lately I watched a video mentioning that there are some 7 million young male adults (20-40s) in US are not working at all. Yet, they are reportedly spending 2000+ hours a year on screen time. And majority of them are taking some form of pain medications. And they don’t work. This is kind of scary.

I came across this video about bees that makes me think – things like this usually happens over a long period of time and at the end, when the tipping point is reached, the exponential disastrous outcome will hit. Be ready for major worldwide food shortage in a few years.

Since Howard Marks wrote about the changing landscape a while back, he hasn’t provided any updates on his view. This new video offers some more insights from him about the world.

This week in Toronto we have some exceptionally warm days well above 20C. That’s rare. It’s nice to get some sunshine though.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update April 8, 2023

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After the spectacular first quarter rally in the stock market, things suddenly look not as bullish anymore. For some mysterious reasons, quite a number of large financial firms came out calling for lower price levels in coming months. This sudden change of tune, of course, upset many bulls.

For the die-hard bull fans, they think they have found an angle that can’t be disputed. Namely, such strong first quarter performance always lead to a strong year in the past. Well, just like what I have warned last year that there would be no Christmas rally while all these so called “objective” analysis saying that 100% we would, I think they are again, wrong.

I said this again and again to people that, volatility is not the same as direction change. When you can’t distinguish whether we are just seeing a rise in volatility (which is the case right now) from actual directional change (like the major market bottom in the past), you have no idea what you are talking about.

I can actually use the exact same argument the bulls use – because we just got a six month of high volatility rally, a crash is imminent. In fact, it is also true 100% in the past.

So what do I think? It will be a messy high volatility environment. All it takes is aliens suddenly invade Earth or any other one-second event to end our financial markets (and the world). No point guessing.

Jim Bianco’s take on the current financial landscape and the threats on US dollar’s reserve currency status. His position is a reasonable one.

Here is another video from Jeffrey Snider whom I find willing to say what everyone else already know but choose to say nothing because they fear that one day they may have burnt the bridge somehow.

There is really no point pointing fingers at the Fed for doing what it is tasked to do. Hugh Hendry makes this point very clear – Powell is at a place that he has limited options and all of them are bad. So be ready if the unthinkable happens.

I just made a statement about the future of daytradingbias.com. For those of you who are members of the site, you may want to check it out.

Happy Easter!

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TLC Weekly Update April 1, 2023

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End of first quarter of 2023 gave us a rally that destroyed most of the bears, just like what happened last year, multiple times. The signs of the squeeze was coming are there – very bearish sentiment, hedge funds all loaded up on the short side, etc. So it is not a surprise at all if you truly understand how the financial markets really work. It is just a game that the major players trying their best to mess with the gullible ones.

Haven’t seen Robert Shiller for a long while. Here is his take on US housing market.

This podcast with Darius Dale on the macro outlook for the near term is very interesting and on point thanks to Darius’ articulate narrative of all the areas he covered.

Another great interview by David Lin with E.B. Tucker. Tucker raised a few important points that everyone should pay attention to. Here is the latest article wrote by Tucker. It is a fun read.

For those of you asking what the outlook for this quarter will be, my take is that real risk is not priced into the stock market at all. I even mentioned that on my twitter. Real risk means major natural disaster, alien invasion, etc. If such risks are priced in, as in the ancient past in human history, the stock market would not be parking at the current level at all.

Thus it is not the serial outlook or trend that matters. Because one second ago, your holding was valued at certain price. But by this second, it is worthless already due to the “long predicted disaster” finally happened. How can any valuation method provide the correct price at the moment?

Got to get back to work.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update March 25, 2023

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Another eventful week where the stock market rallied into FOMC rate decision and dropped hard right after. Yet, by Friday, magic buying came back and S&P successfully go back to the middle zone of this year’s range.

Blockworks’ Alfonso Peccatiello sees a recession coming quickly and that can take down the stock market too.

An opposite view of where the S&P is heading by a guest of the one and only Hugh Hendry. You may not agree with the guest’s opinion but understanding the views from all sides of the market can help one making sound judgement in this complex market environment.

Personally, I like to use simple common sense to look at the situation. We have some regional banks scr#wed by the Fed. We have Credit Suisse taken down suddenly. By Friday there is rumor that Deutsche Bank is next one in trouble. What does that tell us? It means more uncertainties and news shocks are coming. That translate to S&P will swing two ways crazily but it may not go far either way until there is clarity. So trade accordingly.

One thing worth mentioning here is the geopolitical risk is rising again with even more countries are engaged in “hot” wars. This looks very much like the environment right before WWI. As inflation is getting out of hand, more people are facing hardship. When this reaches certain level, it will provide a platform for madmen to rise in power.

That’s something I don’t want to see happening.

Time for a bunny video to ease the negative thoughts.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update March 18, 2023

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This quarterly option expiration Friday facing all kinds of twist and turns from bank runs on US regional banks and Credit Suisse getting worse and worse with its situation. Yet, S&P500 has shown the world that it is not ready to go lower, even under sure pressure on the banking sector. Maybe, the actual damage to the broad market index from the financials is not as important as many thinks?

The whole world is still discussing the ongoing crisis on youtube, twitter, etc.

Here is CNBC’s interview with Jim Grant on the situation.

And the sarcastic take on Credit Suisse by Patrick Boyle is well worth your time.

DoubleLine has released its latest webcast from March 7, 2023. Remember it is an internal webcast for DoubleLine’s clients. Having the chance to see what Gundlach has to say to its clients can help one to keep tap on the current financial environment.

My take on the situation is that the US regional bank problem is now partially contained by Powell and the US government. What we don’t know is that there can be unintended consequences after the US government, US Federal Reserve and Swiss National Bank all acting at the same time with such bold actions. My guess is that we may see yet another shock taking the US stock market lower in coming 1-2 weeks but as long as no more serious side effects are felt, at least not immediately, we will see at least a sizable bounce thanks to brave investors picking the bottom.

Until the unintended consequences surface, all is well.

I am going back to work after my lunch break.

Have a great weekend all!

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TLC Weekly Update March 11, 2023

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Next week is going to be a very difficult option expiration week not only because it is a quarterly option expiration, but that we have major economic data like US CPI, PPI, and then ECB rate decision, etc. It will be a mess to deal with …

The biggest news for this week was the “sudden” shutdown of the Silicon Valley Bank. Here is the latest take on the event by Chris Whalen on Blockworks Macro. It’s just half an hour and obviously it represents the view of majority of those in the financial industry.

So, everyone is pointing their fingers at Fed and Powell. Next is how the US government will weaponize the event to force the Fed to stop raising rate or even start to do QE forever. More drama is ensured as US is also heading to the standoff game of debt ceiling in coming months.

One thing I don’t agree with these financial industry insiders is that SVB fails because of bad practice encouraged by bad policies put in place since year 2008. There should never be multiple boom and bust crisis since. By punishing bad behaviours like sending those bank executives to jail for their reckless behaviours back then you would have a very healthy economy built on organic growth from there, instead of the massive bubble we are seeing now.

At this point most of the people in the financial industry all playing along the bubble game because if they don’t, they need really good understand how trading really works to make money. For example, Renaissance Tech’s Medallion Fund will continue to do fine, so are the other few firms like Jump Trading. Since almost everyone is guilty, they would blame anyone who ends the gravy train.

Here is a different take on the subject by Patrick Boyle. He talks about Silvergate situation in details. As usual, I find his sarcasm on these subjects quite funny but it may hurt the feelings of those crypto fans.

Instead of keep talking about this heavy topic, let’s watch a happy desert making video.

Lately, I find posting on twitter with my charts on longer term trading outlook much easier than doing it through the blog or in an article within daytradingbias website. For those of you interested in these updates, you can check it out.

Back to work for me.

Have a nice weekend all!