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#50 | Posted by hamburglar at 2025-01-28 09:06 AM
Sitzkrieg with the tinfoil hat

No tinfoil. Nancy P. (and some other Congress-critters) ability to trade on inside info is one of the reasons why NANC/"Nancy" outperformed the "market," even with the reporting lag, price averaging and mixed with other, less "informed" Congressional trades in the fund. One could probably do better just tracking Nancy P. and few others in leadership positions.

That's also the reason for so many calls to ban members of Congress from active trading... yet this can lead to them "whispering" the trades to managers of their "blind" accounts, so no visible trades = no tracking funds or ETFs like NANC or KRUZ.

So, double-edged sword.

#41 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-27 08:40 PM
... but how the Chinese seem to have leap-frogged US tech companies.

DeepSeek didn't leap-frog US companies in technology... but it's definitely shown we may have to rethink some "AI"-related economics, especially for non-critical/non-RT environments, like consumer-facing LLMs.

Some of this may actually be very good for AI development ("faster, cheaper, better") but not necessarily for all current vendors and suppliers to AI industry.

Since it's open-source, several companies (e.g., Aurora Mobile) already announced plans to incorporate R1 into their existing products or tech. Inference engine and other logic/calc parts may be developed/enhanced/speeded up through discrete ASICs, to move further along.

Far from perfect analogy, but they are looking to build, at least initially, [on] cheap BYDs, while many are stuck on Teslas.
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#36 | Posted by BellRinger at 2025-01-27 07:23 PM
Our political culture is stupid.

"Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know... has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby." - H.L. Mencken, Quotations from America's Critic

However, what's even more stupid to begin with, yet nearly inevitable, is having a "political culture" - today it's pretty much a substitute for / definition of "personality cult".
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#19 | Posted by sentinel at 2025-01-27 03:03 PM
"I wonder how Nancy P knew to sell her Nvidia stock just under 2 weeks ago."
Probably uses AI.

You, too, "can invest like Nancy P" - with a little lag, but no AI necessary and, like "the Congress" outperforming "the market":

Two ETFs - Congressional Dems (symbol:NANC / "Nancy") and/or Congressional GOP (symbol:KRUZ / "Cruz")

|------- "We're often asked why... don't we simply hold the "best" traders in Congress or try to pick off member's options trades?
... We launched these ETFs to highlight what members of Congress are trading. We fully support banning members of Congress from active trading, as does Unusual Whales, our data provider.

When a member discloses a trade, we explicitly choose the midpoint of that disclosure range... no matter what the member actually bought or sold. This choice is what drives all the relative allocations in both NANC and KRUZ.

The wisdom of the crowd is once again delivering superior returns with less risk...

These holdings are all expertly managed, fantastic businesses that generate enormous cash flows. But it is telling that the divisions we see in politics are also present in the portfolio holdings between the left and the right.

The top 10 holdings of one ETF are Microsoft, Amazon, Apple, Salesforce, Alphabet, Nvidia, Disney, Crowdstrike, Tesla, and API Group.
The other has ConocoPhillips, Shell, Accenture, NGL Energy, Philip Morris International, Fedex, Comfort Systems, Intel, United Therapeutics, and PayPal.

... The most important question for now is why the Democratic portfolio outperformed. It isn't that Democrats are necessarily better traders. Something more important is happening.

We are living through the early stages of what it is going to take to rebuild the world in NATO and non-NATO aligned customers, supply chains, and vendors. The U.S. restrictions on chips were really the early tremors of a decade-long decoupling. That takes time to evolve and will fundamentally shift the term structure of interest rates.

This instability is going to create cycles when a hopeful, optimistic outlook might outperform, and there are times when a value-based, everything-is-going-to-hell focus might outperform. ...
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And if you did your DD on "Trump trade," since November 5 the coffee and cocoa futures are up about 50 percent... Far from Greenland... Then again, it just might be a "climate change trade"... Pick whichever "cause" floats your boat, if you care.

OT: Re DeepSeek, it's 20x-40x cheaper cost all-in, and about 50x less computational-intensive (think speed and energy cost) - so, yes it's a Big F**king Deal, even though it's trained on a very different set of data (for now?), so the comparative results are not really comparable at this point or near future.
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Donald Trump has issued an executive order that represents a direct assault on section 1 of the 14th amendment.

Ivana Marie Zelnichkova Trump - married to Donald from 1977 to 1990, US citizenship in 1988
Donald Jr - born in 1977
Ivana Marie / "Ivanka" - born in 1981
Eric - born in 1984

Melanija Knavs / Melania Knauss Trump - married to Donald since 2005, US citizenship on July 28, 2006, first naturalized citizen to become first lady.
Barron William Trump - born March 20, 2006

[After receiving U.S. citizenship] Melania sponsored her parents using the "chain migration" immigration process that her husband later repeatedly criticized. Melania and Barron maintain dual citizenship, both in the United States and Slovenia.
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Trump is not the only one who can play the stupid game of "trade wars" and "tariffs" - he will claim credit and say that "his tariffs" led to "favorable trade agreement" and that all the previous presidents didn't know how to "Make America First and Great Again."

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... it is a major concern for ethics watchdogs.

"Ethics? We ain't got no ethics! We don't need no ethics! I don't have to show you any stinking ethics!"

Where have these "ethics watchdogs" been in the last 10 years and what did, could, can they do... except "express [major] concern"?

The "First crypto President" / "Slick Donald" strikes again...! Celebrity Apprentice 4.0 s**tshow is just starting. "You're fired! And you're fired! And you're fired!"

$TRUMP coin went to $72 in mere hours before dropping to $39. But wait, there is more!

Melania Trump posted : "The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now."

Only 15% are floated for distribution. Went from pennies to $10 in no time.

$MELANIA "coin" website and domain were created / registered just yesterday! Next on tap - $BARRON, $IVANKA, $DONJR "meme coins"?

"Drop It Like It's Hot! Drop It Like It's Hot!" - Snoop Dogg at the "Crypto Ball" in D.C.

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#12 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-17 12:00 AM
Am I the only one here who is noticing a pattern of purchasing the actions of Pres-elect Trump?

The "pattern" has been obvious and seen and heard by just about anyone who is not blind and deaf.

That's actually the problem that Jeff Yass was talking about in your excerpt:
|------- The group's president last year wrote: "Giving the government the power to ban apps and pick and choose between competing apps is a huge restriction on ... freedom."

The former president, who had originally spearheaded efforts to ban TikTok during his time in the White House, reversed his stance last week, posting on his own social media platform that getting rid of TikTok would benefit Facebook and that he doesn't want that to happen, suggesting Facebook is a bigger problem for the country. ...
-------|

Yes, the biggest immediate beneficiary of TikTok going "dark" would be Meta/Facebook's Instagram, so Zuckerberg "pivoted" early and is also one of the latest "donors" to Trump's inauguration.

What these business owners and CEOs understand all too well : "The government big enough to give you things is the government big enough to take things from you."

Maybe if we didn't keep giving more and more powers [and control over money, or selective "non enforcement" of laws, or making "laws" that attempt to "buy votes" through Executive Orders / actions, etc.] to Presidents / Executive branch, or the government in general, there would be less corruption?

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#18 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-15 02:32 AM
As I have posted on another thread, wage increases have surpassed inflation since 2023. ...

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President-elect Donald Trump on Tuesday said he will create a new agency called the External Revenue Service to collect tariffs and other forms of revenue that come from foreign sources

OMG! All this time we have imposed tariffs, but were not "collecting" $$ from them? Mamma mia, now I understand why we have record trade (and fiscal) deficits!

This one weird Trump trick is genius! This man knows more about taxes than anybody ever!

Finally we will have an AGENCY to collect TARIFFS, and all kinds of deficits will just disappear!

Never mind the legislation George Washington signed on July 31, 1979 creating the US Customs Service (currently known as Customs and Border Protection Agency) that does the collections of import duties now, it's old and needs reBRANDing / re-TRUMPing... like NAFTA / USMCA, Gulf of Mexico / Gulf of America, Greenland / Trumplandia etc.

More departments / agencies = Efficiency!
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#8 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-10
And since then I have asked the question, ~do we want for-profit healthcare to make those life decisions for us?

Probably because you are asking the wrong questions, based on the wrong premise, despite living in a state which has Insurance Capital of the World.

Contrary to most people thinking that "other developed countries" have a "free and universal" healthcare, in reality none of them are either "free" and "universal" - people who say that either don't know that they are paying for it, how and how much they are paying for it, or that the "right" to something doesn't guarantee [timely] access to it.

People dreaming of "free all-you-can-eat" healthcare in "other countries" have never lived, worked or "experienced" healthcare systems there or don't realize that many of them are going broke and costs keep going up - because "not-for-profit" model (IOW, losing money on product/service) is generally not sustainable, unless subsidized by other sources.

Also, you conflate ["for-profit"] medical insurance [industry] with ["for-profit"] healthcare [sector] - "solving" (or destroying) private insurance won't provide cheaper, better or faster healthcare.

Most people in the US are insured through their employers and are satisfied with their insurance choices, despite "free and universal" proponents using occasional anecdotal "issues" to rage about "for-profit" healthcare system.

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#5 | Posted by sitzkrieg at 2025-01-09 08:19 AM
If you get that number direct from a consultant companies API, it's algorithmic.
If a human consultant looks at a spreadsheet using the same formula and tells you a number, it's not algorithmic.

Oh, horrors, "algorithmic" spreadsheet automation! If government has the problem with "algorithms," what are government lawyers going to do about "AI"?

As I've said before, there is nothing here that cannot be done using data from Zillow, Redfin or many other public, private, corporate and other sources and basic spreadsheet. How do people "in the wild," without PMCs, compare housing / rental prices?

RealPage, and their numerous competitors, simply provide automated service (and related services, like tenant screening, billing, etc.) for something any landlord can already do by using Zillow or Redfin, Apartments.com, Homes.com, etc. and using average $/sqft, average rent prices in given area ('premium' / 'discount') and basic spreadsheet formulas.

This is yet another Elizabeth Warren's "stupid populist consumer protection trick" which is going to "protect" no one, but burnish her "cred" with financial/economic illiterates, and blame poor government policies and decisions on "gouging" and "greedy" corporations.

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#17 | Posted by catdog at 2025-01-07 09:43 AM
The S&P 500 gained more than 23% this year after rising 24% in 2023. The back-to-back gains of over 20% is the best performance for the benchmark index since 1997 and 1998, according to data from FactSet. The S&P 500 is up by around 53% over the past two years, after a poor performance in 2022 that saw the index fall 20%.

The S&P 500 was up approx. 66.8% during the reign of Dotard I. During Diamond Joe Biden's presidency, the S&P is up 73.5%, even with a drop of 20% in 2022. Somehow that's bad.

Fantastic facts and NUMB3RS! Which point out exactly the follies of Bidenomics - money went "from the bottom up and from the middle out" / i.e., "rich got richer, poor got poorer" (see my previous post about how money flows in the demand-side/"trickle-up" and the "industrial policy" inflationary economies) and why less than two upper quintiles (people like "us"!?) could feel good about THEIR economy (i.e., people falling behind on their bills, credit, especially ones "on fixed income" who can't keep up with inflation but, with people living longer, are increasing in number, and they vote).

Also, as you pointed out the "market" had a huge downturn right after wasteful bi-partisan 2021 $1.2T Infrastructure bill (and "manufacturing" hasn't recovered since), until October 2022, - that's when OpenAI made a ChatGPT announcement and sparked Mag7 "irrational exuberance" of market bubble... Exactly what did "Dark Brandon" (who, as every President, wants/gets the "credit") have to do with that "market cycle"? Where would this market (and the "economy") be without "AI"?

Also, despite this wonderful market, what was consistently swept under the rug by "mainstream" media and ignored by Dem campaigns, that for a long time at least two out of three people (in the lower quintiles) thought the country was "on the wrong track" and the "economy was in recession" and that Biden's negative "job approval/disapproval" ratings

As you well know, "the market is not the economy" (especially "cap-weighted indexes" like SPX) and in recent decades has been more and more divorced from, or even inverse to, the economic realities... because of the Fed and interest rate considerations. "QE forever" has conditioned the market dependency on lower interest rates. Often, what's bad for the economy was deemed good for the market, because, e.g., the Fed's policies and interest rates are tied to perceptions of economy and "weaker economy = lower interest rates", which are good for the market etc. So "weak" economy is good for the market, "strong" economy is good for the market - "heads you win, tails you win."

That's why "Are you better off than you were 4 years ago?" in the last few weeks of the campaign resonated so well with the less-affluent class, while Harris campaign was having glam-time with entertainment celebrities and giving interviews to friendly media that "nobody" cared to watched.

Remember Covid? The unemployment rate went up a little more than a lot. It's now at 4.2%, which is close to full employment.

Unemployment (U-3) rate, as flawed a NUMB3R as it is (much better range of indicators of job market conditions exist), obviously, came down pretty much everywhere else in the world since COVID. Yes, all Presidents claim credit for "low" #s, and blame "others" for "high" #s. Hell, in Russia it's 2.3% (along with inflation of 9% and CB rate of 21%) -

Obsessing about / comparing against COVID (un-)employment rates is just another example of "lying to yourself" - the sooner Dems stop doing that to themselves (and the rest of us), the faster they can start forming new, centrist, leadership that works for the people, not just know-nothing spoiled privileged brats.
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Correction - dates:

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"The U.S. economy is the envy of the rest of the world..."
-- the Numbers Tell a Different Story

Isn't that what "Dark Brandon" kept saying? So if the "economy" / "employment" / "manufacturing" / "inflation" NUMB3RS are so great, why did Harris+Dems lose the election? Did no one enlighten "Deplorables" how good they have it and they owe it all to Biden/Harris administration policies? I mean, look at OUR 401(k)/IRA/Roth accounts!

So another NYT article with feel-good rehash of 'wonderful economy' ... with no effort to hear voters and their 'economies' as the inevitable result of demand-side / "trickle-up" Bidenomics - "From the middle out / from the bottom up..." money "trickle up" to those who own/control appreciable hard and liquid assets and income generators.

Maybe, looking at other NUMB3RS, it was not "the envy of 65%-70% of the people of the rest of the USA" and so they rejected and "flipped the government" just like many in the rest of the world did, regardless of what side (left/right) they were? And will flip back if not deliver - UK Labor is already deeply unpopular.

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#31 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-01-04 08:02 PM
Maybe the Las Vegas bombing was a Timothy McVeigh attempt with miscalculated explosive power?

He was a Green Beret, he knew very well how much power needed to be inside "bulletproof" fortified Cybertruck (which is why it was chosen in the first place) to minimize the unintended casualties. Also, he would put a much higher load inside the truck bed instead of fireworks - it was designed to create a spectacle, to get enough media attention, not to harm people or property.

More interesting than conspiracy-seeking are a couple of similarities that are actually a lot more recent ones, which are also more likely to have been the triggers for suicidal actions:

Shamsud-din Jabbar was divorced 3 times, the most recent one (2022) turning nasty, with his wife getting a restraining order and eventual child custody, and his latest real-estate management business (he previously started several unsuccessful companies) was bleeding money - he was seriously in debt, with child-support payments and going broke. Whether or not he had PTSD before, that's extremely stressful and creates fertile mental ground for isolation, radicalization and/or violence. He initially wanted to "only" kill his family, but that wouldn't get that much media attention.

Matthew Livelsberger (Cybertruck in LV) had clear signs of PTSD (and probable TBI) and just days before he staged the "spectacular, attention-grabbing" suicide he was apparently dumped by his second wife (they have an 8-month old child).

Investigators in Livelsberger case should also look into possibility of him being treated, or self-treating, with psychedelics - there has been a lot of hype recently about using a range of psychedelics (ibogaine, ayahuasca, ketamine, psilocybin/shrooms, mescaline/"San Pedro", LSD+MDMA/"Candy Flipping", etc.) to treat PTSD and TBI, but little, if anything has been published about side-effects, such as HPPD and so on...
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#7 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-01-01 08:47 PM
You don't get the link between the Truck and Trump tower? FFS delete your account.

I think we all get that: Musk + Trump = BFFs (for now ?)... Was that the right answer? Is there a prize? Or just too easy?

#8 | Posted by oneironaut at 2025-01-01 08:49 PM
Yeah both were Electric Trucks rented from the same DIY rental "company", both used in a terrorist attack, just a coincidence...

Except that in Vegas it was not an "attack" or act of "terrorism" - it was really a suicide / self-immolation using Musk's Tesla Truck with low-charge explosives and space in front of LV Trump Hotel, not trying to ram the entrance or intended to harm anyone else, with whatever weird political/personal message that entails TBD... so yeah, most likely only a few similarities / coincidences.

There are quite a few studies of people often being more confident in their beliefs/knowledge having partial / "incomplete information" about a subject than those who have "complete information" (where that is possible) - "Illusion of Information Adequacy" is very useful in game and probability theories, among others.

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The world's richest man, Elon Musk, has sparked speculation after changing his name on his social media platform X to "Kekius Maximus".

Elon has done this pump-and-dump crap before, and not just with crypto, which is even easier to manipulate than worthless stocks, like, e.g., DJT, and didn't get any flack from SEC or CFTC.

"Wolf of Wall Street" and lords of "boiler rooms" have nothing on crypto schemers.

So now Elon looks to be safe for at least next 4 years, with DOTARD all-in on crypto, after calling it a "scam" in 2021... but then, reminded that scams, fraud and selling worthless things is what he's been doing all his life, and it's an easy and "mostly not illegal" way of making real money from his own "alt-coin" ($88M so far, including $30M "seed investment" from TRON founder Justin Sun, who is currently under investigation by SDNY, and whose recent claim to fame was buying 'Comedian / banana duct-taped to the wall' for $6.2M and later eating it) and crypto industry PACs donating more than $7M into his campaign and $130M to Congressional campaigns.

Anyway, the KEKIUS coin went up in price immediately by 900%, then ran up to 2600%, some other frog-meme "coins" also went up for a ride... but the euphoria didn't last long - minutes after Musk changed his eX-Twitter name and logo back to "Elon Musk" the price of KEKIUS coin and market value crashed 99%, from $400M to $2M.

God-Emperor Elon giveth a coin, God-Emperor Elon taketh a coin away. Whatcha gonna do?

"Get it while it's hot!"
"They are not making any more of it!"
"Those NFTs are your retirement!"

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**
|------- In 1879, German journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pamphlet... in which he used the word Semitismus interchangeably with the word Judentum to denote both "Jewry" (the Jews as a collective) and "Jewishness" (the quality of being Jewish, or the Jewish spirit). He accused the Jews of a worldwide conspiracy against non-Jews, called for resistance against "this foreign power", and claimed that "there will be absolutely no public office, even the highest one, which the Jews will not have usurped".

This followed his 1862 book Die Judenspiegel (A Mirror to the Jews) in which he argued that "Judaism must cease to exist if humanity is to commence", demanding both that Judaism be dissolved as a "religious-denominational sect" but also subject to criticism "as a race, a civil and social entity".

This use of Semitismus was followed by a coining of "Antisemitismus" which was used to indicate opposition to the Jews as a people and opposition to the Jewish spirit, which Marr interpreted as infiltrating German culture.

The pamphlet became very popular, and in the same year Marr founded the Antisemiten-Liga (League of Antisemites)... The league was the first German organization committed specifically to combating the alleged threat to Germany and German culture posed by the Jews and their influence and advocating their forced removal from the country.

... In the aftermath of the Kristallnacht pogrom in 1938, German propaganda minister Goebbels announced: "The German people is anti-Semitic. It has no desire to have its rights restricted or to be provoked in the future by parasites of the Jewish race."

... Europe has blamed the Jews for an encyclopedia of sins.
The Church blamed the Jews for killing Jesus; Voltaire blamed the Jews for inventing Christianity. In the febrile minds of anti-Semites, Jews were usurers and well-poisoners and spreaders of disease. Jews were the creators of both communism and capitalism; they were clannish but also cosmopolitan; cowardly and warmongering; self-righteous moralists and defilers of culture. Ideologues and demagogues of many permutations have understood the Jews to be a singularly malevolent force standing between the world and its perfection. ...
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#25 | Posted by Nerfherder at 2024-12-24 09:55 AM
"LIKUD is antisemitic?"

Well, they're busy exterminating and permanently maiming/disabling hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and Palestinians are semites, so yeah.

Using semantics / "anti-semantics" (?) to redefine the normal usage of the term has been "cleverly" tried since 1930s... and as usual, has been wrong - the terms "antisemite" / "antisemitic" have been first, and long since, applied specifically, as intended, only to Jews, and is separate from other more specific terms "anti-Arab," "anti-Muslim," "anti-Islamic" etc.:

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Trump Threatens to Retake the Panama Canal

Looks like Trump possibly wants to apply pressure and make a "deal" to escape another one of his fraudulent / Russian money laundering "business" entanglements in his "licensed name" hotels - tax evasion and outright business fraud case re Trump Ocean Club International Hotel and Tower in Panama, which has been sitting in NY Court for Southern District:

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Israel's government has approved a plan to encourage the expansion of settlements in the occupied Golan Heights

For those who don't understand, Golan Heights is a mountainous, very inhospitable to human life, area that currently has less than 8,000 families, mostly Druze - yet from military perspective it provides a strategically essential area and a buffer zone, for Israel's and Jordan's security. Living in the Golans is no picnic and, being a buffer zone, is extremely dangerous.

Most Druze have long left the area to live better lives in Israel or Lebanon when Israel took over the area after the 1967 war (one of several existential wars they fought against Soviet Union-backed Arab coalition countries) and those that remained have been safe under Israel's protection. The last time they came under attack was when Hezbollah's rocket killed 12 Druze school students playing soccer in July 2024.

Now that Syria has been taken over by IS branch, and Turkey has taken over and occupies about 18% of Syria, presenting growing threat to Kurds (and oil fields) as Erdogan pronouncing that "Allah wants Turkiye not to be confined to its borders and wants us to expand beyond" **, and severely weakened Ayatollah in Iran is trying to destabilize Jordan by forging alliances with HTS and new substate Islamist terrorists and smuggling weapons to and through Jordan, Israel needs to expand a buffer zone to protect itself and Jordan from the kind of attacks that happened on 10/7 and was planned by Hezbollah in the north, before their leadership, munitions and tunnels were destroyed by IDF.

Syria is being carved up anew, and Israel is taking security measures appropriate to new circumstances and new threats, in light of new leaderships and alliances in the region.

**
|------- ... In Ankara on Wednesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkiye cannot be leashed and "escape its fate."

"We will be in a much better place in the future. Turkiye is not just a place confined in an area of 782,000 square kilometers. History has a mission designated for us and we have to act in line with this. Some people cannot grasp it. They cannot grasp what we are doing in Libya or Somalia, they are not unaware of our mission. Those unable to see the transformation of Turkiye cannot see the course of developments we went through. We won't waste time with them and will focus on our goals. I believe you will undertake your responsibility in this sacred journey."
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#9 | Posted by NerfHerder at 2024-12-15 11:20 PM
CutiePie is a Zionist operative .......

Quos Deus/Iuppiter vult perdere, dementat prius (Those whom God/Jupiter wishes to destroy, he first deprives of reason/mind)