Markets don’t get into a “teaching position” like this very often.  But – wow – are they in a position to inform experts in coming weeks.

Some of it has to do with inflation. But there’s the trend channels discussion. Hold the phone, though; we have two holidays in the coming month, as well – Memorial Day and Juneteenth.

Anything goes?  Or are there indicators?

A discussion after a couple of headlines to kick the neurons into swarming..

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OK, Ure is pissed.

The markets are being hyped up over 100 at the open based on a minute drop in the All Items less food and energy in today’s CPI report.

What you are not hearing much is that retails sales laid a big fat goose egg.

Advance Estimates of U.S. Retail and Food Services
Advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for April 2024, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $705.2 billion, virtually unchanged
(±0.4 percent)* from the previous month, but up 3.0 percent (±0.5 percent) above April 2023. Total sales for the February 2024 through April 2024 period were up 3.0 percent (±0.5 percent) from the same period a year ago. The February 2024 to March 2024 percent change was revised from up 0.7 percent (±0.5 percent) to up 0.6 percent (±0.1 percent).”

Credit to Bloomberg for at least reporting US Retail Sales Stall After Downward Revisions in Prior Months. We somehow didn’t see the story on the home page of CNBC…

Don’t look now kiddies, but this doesn’t keep up with inflation.

So we find ourselves (again) aghast at the lack of financial understanding by people dumb enough to put savings into a pre-crash stock market.

But ya’ll have fun.  the real deal in America is growth.  And we ain’t go none.

Did you miss the NY Fed report Tuesday?

“NEW YORK — The Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Center for Microeconomic Data today issued its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit. The report shows total household debt increased by $184 billion (1.1%) in the first quarter of 2024, to $17.69 trillion. The report is based on data from the New York Fed’s nationally representative Consumer Credit Panel.”

Have fun buying at the top.

Write when the delirium breaks,

George@Ure.net

Yeah – strange topic. But having written a book on vivid dream work and Packing to Die, the suitcase between your ears”  it’s more a logical follow-on.

Today, we will review how the three alternative perspectives are religion are doing, too. Fascinating to watch what humans can come up with the explain the outlook over and into the long timespan of Eternity.

First, however, this is a data dense Options week. We have sideshows like the new inflation report to go over. Retail sales, too. And then our 18 charts point us toward the (for now, anyway) the probable Future.  Should be fun.

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There are some things we don’t like to talk about on the “open web.” Although we normally confine our “deep thinking” to once per week, a very troubling observation from a colleague is our lead topic this morning.

We have our eyes on a very serious “change of sea state” and its part – we’re afraid – of the larger change that began when in the 2020 election, certain forces normally tasked with externalities of paving the road to future were turned internally.

Which matters?

With a Michael Benz book in the works his appearance in April on the Jewish News Syndicate’s Caroline Glick show was work taking the time to watch.  Benz was just as on point (and disturbing) as was his Tucker Carlson appearance. The U.S. government may be “managing” things domestically despite laws against such activities. Guess it depends on what you mean by “continuity of government” doesn’t it?

Once you understand what Benz is telling us then it’s easier to see the startling layers being perped on America right now.

Along with our usual ChartPack and a few other housekeeping items.

Three cups optional today.  It will really depend on how deep you want to roll with what we’re about to read you in on.

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Nuclear war was – for a couple of decades – back in the “unthinkable pile. Something that you’d heard about, maybe, but certainly not something a person in their right mind would actually plan on.

Yet here we are.  The television shows are starting.  Amazon’s series Fallout is rolling and doing OK in the ratings.

This concerns us greatly. Because we have seen too many times where “media leads Reality.”

Take, for example, the series of Robin Cook novels.  In 1996, there was “Contagion.”  Cook, who’s an exceptional “medical thriller” author was still going strong with many books including “Pandemic” which came out in 2018 – two years before lockdowns.

The “launchpad” for Cook was his 1988 book “Outbreak.” It should go without saying that anyone concerned with the Future might be well-advised to look up now and then, survey the media landscape around them and ask “Have we passed One Point Safe? Will the next minute bring us to “One Second After“? Or, are we just expressing the Sum of all Fears?”

This is a particularly worrying construction – one we would normally hold behind our subscriber pay wall. But there’s a pattern to be seen here. In the 2030 aftermess, will people look back on the Prime video Fallout, as well?

The two pattern elements are the arrival of the Cook series of medical thrillers and the whole genre of bio-pics that followed.  Ultimately was expressed by the GMV (global mass consciousness) as COVID.  The other is to consider the media evolution (and inculcation of the GMC by the nuclear genre. Do we write our fears and then live them?

Answer that and you’d be in a great position to time your “Snagglepuss the Cat” moment when it’s time to “Exit, Stage Left…”

Which leads us to this morning’s report.  How do responsible adults (go ahead, pretend, anyway!) tell our Big City children “It’s time to get the hell out of Dodge and head for the hills?”

Ure family internal planning docs for breakfast, it is.

This is also Bank Settlement Day – of which there are two per month. It would be a dandy time for a financial turn, as you will see in this morning’s ChartPack.

Revved and ready, then?

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It’s axiomatic that the “markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.”  But in our ChartPack section there are more than passing storm clouds to be considered on America’s horizon.

Not the leastd of which is the country’s internal condition where the word “declining” would have to be taken as charitable.

With a global war pending, and nuclear threats abounding, research this week suggests that “Apocalypse is going Mainstream” which we’ve been bracing for.

A cup of coffee and then it’s your choice: worry stone, prayer beads, or some high-speed trading?

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While our predicted Wave 3 down seems to continue organizing, we will address the elephant in the room for young people. Because conditions soon to appear will drive not only newly graduated from high school and colleges to question where the “best bet on Future” is, but as the economy unravels (from here) and in coming years, as well, understanding how to purposely create your own future will be a very desirable skill.

Of course, with the Fed meeting today, a few fresh numbers early and the downhill snowball picking up speed, it would seem to be plenty to write about.

“But wait. There’s more.”  In the  ChartPack, we will take a couple of swipes at actual numerical target for the future.

No, we don’t offer financial advice, but we did clear last Friday’s short position Tuesday. Now we’re waiting for a modest rally to set in.

More as we go – a ton to cover today. Like the ADP Jobs data just out.

Oh, and the ChartPack is something we are anxious for G.A. Stewart to comment on because we have a “date range of interest” on a technical basis…

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The odds of the Fed actually changing rates next week are low.   But that doesn’t mean the markets won’t be doing some hedging just in case.

While doing so, we have our eyes on a bank going banko and wonder how next weekend employment reports will sail, as well.

Mainly, we’re hoping for a quiet few weeks and a rally ahead of Memorial Day.  But the market dynamics, pending action in “the several wars” and a mixed public mood are just the right soil confusion over future to take root and grow in.

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Something more useful than market charts and insights today,  We do a once-over on pain.  The kind of aches and such that come with aging.  Because, well, with any luck anyway, we’re all going to do lots of aging.

If the world doesn’t blow up first.

First, though, a few of the more interesting (and potentially financially-impacting) of the headlines overnight.  Plus, the usual in our ChartPack series where we look at financial markets in a most unusual way.

Plan on two cups worth; the pain part alone is north of six-thousand words (about a book chapter worth).

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We have word today that the present general human model of death and the Afterlife may be seriously antiquated.  It’s a notion that had never struck me until one of my rare, but highly educational “Lucid Dreams” overnight.

Without telling all, let’s just say that the present model of “What happens when people die” lacks a key “missing ingredient.”

Technology.

See, tech isn’t only the specifics of how code, metallurgy, or electronics work.  Tech is an all-pervasive mindset.  A Way of Being that most people aren’t even aware they’ve been imprinted with.

Yet when you watch people recount their Near Death Experiences on YouTube, for example, you’ll never hear anything related to the “technology over There.”

Instead, you might hear about a hall of Akashic Records.  Most will fail to grasp or notice the obvious: Why “books?”  And “What language were these in?” Or more on track with the carryout from the overnight Lucid adventure “You still on books? What about streaming and….”

Almost as interesting is the story of “The Project” in that Realm… but first a few headlines and, oh yeah, we didn’t go short over the weekend.

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What humans have been doing so far has not worked out especially well.  Sure, we have 8-billion people.  Which – and this is a hard one to conceptualize – is 40-times larger than it was in Jesus’ time; people numbered only 200-million back then.

Even so, mankind was even then territorial, fighting wars, and using religious fervor to “out-screw” other religions. Because the main tactic of humans seems to be out-populate, assimilate, or assassinate.  In whatever order is convenient.

Mainly through (crappy, alright) choices, though we have longer spears now, the goals are relatively unchanged.  Put the “other guy’s population in chains” and have them work the fields, pay the taxes, and our birthright to violence has made it so.

It occurs to us, however, that with a modest application of teoriya resheniya izobretatelskikh zadach, TRIZ, we can indeed come up with alternative ways of being in Life that may save us from what is largely a psychosexual penchant for violence.

On the path today? Three items which may be of nearly universal interest.

The first is a new Solar Power paradigm.  See this is a novel cost-reduction strategy for power systems which has not been fully-realized yet.

Then we present a short discussion of changes to our prepping plans – aspects you may not have focused on IF the ugly reality of nuclear weapons use become real. As it is very much threatening to this year. Call this PRP – Personal Recovery Plans.

This is part of our ongoing effort to invent new ideas (like that Music of Markets concept) that could change the way we absorb information.

Then to wrap up, some headwork on what it’s really liked to have new “extra sensory perceptions.”  Not as hard to develop as you might think.  Extended Human Perception may be as simple as training ourselves to “open up” to other sensory channels. And testing our “off buttons” frequently.

OK, so a wide-ranging discussion list this morning. Best get to work after a few headlines and a mess of charts…

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There is an interesting story to being able to “see the numbers in your head.” Not as individual data bits, but rather in a proper context.  This simple visualization tool just “comes natural” to some people; for others it’s more difficult.

The way to improve your skill to mentally process numbers gets a short overview in this morning’s report.

After we sort through the week’s news and peer ahead into the murk of next week.

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Ever wonder why miracles and woo-woo don’t happen more often? And what this might have to do with how we make a buck in stocks and other investments?

OK, so it’s a longish ramble and lots of stats discussed conceptually.  But all triggered by a case of materializing silverware in our household. Woo-woo stuff.

Much less ethereal is our discussion of the inflation numbers with CPI being released a few minutes ago.

And then there’s that whole “wars thing” which ebbs and flows like the tornadoes in the South we’re just drying out from.

Double up on the buzz juice…hump day is here and we’re trying to ride it.

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