Perhaps the hardest task of any serious-minded investor is staying ahead of social trends in America.  To do this, one needs to be able to estimate the direction and velocity of different social mood. 

For example, investing in a gay nightclub in the 1950’s likely wouldn’t have worked out too well.  Whereas investing in one in the mid 1990’s might have made you a fortune.  So time is what?  Everything!

Understanding how algorithm run our lives (via media inputs) is therefore critical.  So this morning we sit back and review from of my first-hand in the Top-40 radio wars of the 1970’s and see if there aren’t some economic ideas to be screened from that.

First, however, a look ahead with our Trading Model to see where your retirement money could be heading and a few headlines, since foreplay is half the fun.  Okay, an eighth of it then…

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It’s actually a half cousin to another kind of thinking we refer to all the time around here:  Algorithmic thinking.

Used to be in the Personal Motivation groups that the buzz was all about “motivation.”

Now, however, we’re evolving out of PMA (positive mental attitude) and into CCT (coldly calculated thinking) as the way to get ahead.

Exactly what you’d expect to see as the feedlot fills up with too many humans.  So along with an update on where we are with Peak Oil and how the collapse of the American energy industry (now at hand) will be levered by the Saudis into even more of a dog leash on American foreign policy, you’ll find this way of “running your life” pretty interesting.

This morning, the upside of PEROEI and how to get somewhere despite the herd.

After headlines and headlines with coffee and bacon.

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We wrote a definitive article on grab and go bags for subscribers back in 2008.  Yet as times change, our outlook has changed as well.

This morning’s we’ll explore how our grab-and-go plans have evolved and discuss how to do a “grab-and-go chip” in style and what to have on it.

Along the way, we’ll talk about your personal grimoire (magician’s spell book) updated to include digital recovery content should you ever need it.

First, though, our usual skim of headlines, most of which is beyond our control, but out Trading Model is always worth looking at.  Coffee at the ready?  It’s a big gulp this morning…

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Yes, I mean seriously.

No, neither Elaine or I have ever won anything larger than $65 in the weekly lottery tickets we’ve bought over the years, but then again, lottery tickets are properly called “taxes on the poor” or “tax the statistically inclined.”

Still, there are times…

But the real reason to use “Winning the Lotto” as a financial thinking tool is that it forces you to look realistically at all the investment options out there. 

And that, I believe, is a very worthwhile thing to do at least once a month.  After our Sunday coffee and dose of headlines that matter.

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Subscriber Note:  This Weekend’s report will be published around mid day Sunday because I really need more bandwidth than is practical shipboard (like some www.nostracodeus.com software runs on financial sites to make sure we’re using Big Data to our advantage.  I’ll be running data scanning from Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning and then working out how to read those text leaves…

(Somewhere of Honduras)  This morning we pull back the curtains to reveal the chart no one in government bothers to mention.  The reason?  It’s based on a couple of things that go largely unreported in the mainstream press.  Among these is the inflation-adjusted income level or workers, the real population of the US (which yes, includes deployed military) and from this we can make a most revealing chart of how economic reality has been working out.

Which, it shouldn’t surprise you, is much more like the economic long wave than the touts of this or that from either party.

If you’re strongly partisan, it will be a disappointment.  The political process, when you count all the bodies and all the inflation adjusted average earnings data has merely reduces politics to the Pinocchio Party and the Lying Fishermen’s Party…and we’re all out for a cruise with them.

Care to guess among what?

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How old is the earliest advice on prepping?

We think we’ve traced some fine country wisdom back to Ionian times, and while much longer than our usual report, once you get past all the references to Zeus (plus instructions on where to pee and where not to…) there is actually some interesting folk wisdom to be had.

So this week, a look into the past as we look at the long history of prepping and making our way in an uncertain world.  Which has been an uncertain place for at least the past 2,000 years and we got the goods to prove it.

After coffee and news headlines not to mention our Trading Model.  I mean the world may be uncertain, but no need to be poor, now, is there?

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Okay, the past month or so, we have been looking at the weird changes to what was once a fairly straightforward science called economics which is now being spun on his head by not only digital currencies but something even stranger: Fame.

This was covered a while back by PBS in one of their outstanding FrontLine reports dealing with Friends, Followers, and Fame. It was titled “Generation Like.”  But they didn’t roll deeply into the economic implications so we’ll do that this morning.

The problem is that in a digital society, a new form of currency is evolving before our eyes. This morning we’ll take an unabashed look at this weird phenomenon and see if we can make sense of it and what it portends for our future.

As usual however, we will begin with coffee, a few headlines, and then that ever important Trading Model.

Unless we suddenly become famous before we get that far…which would be fine…

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It’s Valentine’s Day and we all love music, right? This week I’m going to take you on a short tour of our home recording studio and explain how it grew into what it is today.  Which has what to do with economics?  Talk about an industry rocked by changing technology!  Yee-gads!

I mean besides showing you a shopping list for a kick-but home project studio for under $500? (*Not including computer), you are going to see first-hand how all this “new media” stuff is killing off the old-guard music business.

You see, there is a huge war on between the old and the Avant-new. Our slowly developing project http://musicengineerandproducer.com/ and building multitrack facilities in L.A. does allow for something approaching expert analysis in this area…

Since you may not own a small home/commercial studio, you may not be following the trends in the music biz.  They are…to put it mildly…horrific.  We’ve got some Nielsen data to back that up.

The problem?  It’s a huge challenge to Central Control…which is one more reason the Internet will end up being regulated in some form, because it is killing the way things used to be…as we’ll get into after coffee and headlines and the Trading Model…which has continued to outperform even the best of the TV pundits.  Amazing….

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We’ve been talking about “Compunism” – the takeover of traditional human institutions by pernicious computing – for several weeks now.

In this morning’s report, we’ll trace the history from the 1700’s rise in the field of statistics to the latest headlines outing the voice recognition systems that are sending private conversations held in your own home, to off-site partners who are then doing what they please with your personal information.

But first, a few headlines and then our ChartPack – one of the more unorthodox ways of looking at markets to discern their future.

Oh, and coffee, too.

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Oh?  Never heard the word “Compunism” before?  Planned, but chaotic governance driven by competing computer systems.

Well, there’s a reason for that.  It didn’t exist in an economic context until I got to looking for a word that would embrace the breadth and depth of the world change that has been in place since the foundations of the Internet were laid down in the 1980’s.

In fact, Ure’s truly actually had a hand in bringing it to life in a minor way, as did every one of us who had a role in the Halt and Catch Fire years of computational development and networking.

As bad as “communism” was as an economic system, what we seem to have found in data is an extremely high correlation between deficit spending and where markets do.  And about the future?  Well, let’s just say that the TV show “Person of Interest” meets early day super computing war-gaming and it becomes a processor based totalitarianism….yeah.  That becomes a kind of writ large concept box.

But the scariest part?  It explains why Bush was so much like Clinton at a policy level and why Obama is so much like Bush.  And why Boehner and a bunch of other traditional conservatives seem to be listening to unseen coaching from the sidelines.

What’s the reason?  My suggestion is we’re rolling into a new form of government called “compunism” and it will be as profound in its impacts as the Interstate Highway System.

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OK, we now have a legit, statistical indicator that either Congress and the President have become super-prescient, or we’re really living in a controlled economy.

But the Wizard of Oz question is elusive:  When we pull back the curtain, who’s there?

We will be reviewing the evidence and looking at some mighty odd correlations before curtain-pulling, but first some coffee and our Trading Model as a warm-up.

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The nice thing about quantum physics is that it’s pretty universal stuff.  And some of its implications are startling – world-changing in fact.

But is there something in the process that can be learned and applied to investing?  Yes, likely so.

Since most of the US will be watching football this weekend, it seems like a good opportunity to stray a bit from the hard logic of investing and wander briefly into the ethereal end zone.

First, however, coffee and check of our Trading Model after we look at the bigger picture.

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Does adding solar power make sense for a lot of Americans?  Why, certainly.

Does it add to America’s energy independence?  Obviously!

Then why are power companies trying to sneak through “connect charges” for people who want to make a bit of their own power?  (The word dickweeds comes to mind.)

This morning, we lay out some big systems, explain how they work, and continue our discussion of solar power at a higher level than in the earlier columns this week along with drawings and such.

After coffee and a look at our Trading Model…

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