sandy beach

New Home Sales for January from the Census Bureau https://www.census.gov/construction/nrs/pdf/newressales.pdf Lumber futures cratered - now recovering.

Exited XBI at $92.09 for a small gain.

Now that is funny! LOL

Mr. J - you are a sentinel!

Snider's view is that the impact of QE/QT and the rate changes by the Fed since the early 1990's has been peanuts in terms of its impact on markets. He believes the biggest factor is global growth in the EU, the BRIC's and the emerging markets. You can predict the US market better by watching foreign holdings of US assets. And they aren't liquidating US assets due to trade wars, Russian spats, etc. They are liquidating because China, the EU, Russia and the emerging markets are all entering a liquidity crisis. That is his view. China, the EU, Russia and the emerging markets are all anticipating a crisis now and there isn't much the Fed can do about it and therefore the yield curve won't steepen. He believes the Fed is completely misunderstanding what is happening in US markets because they are ignorant about global flows.

There you go - Trump just said it - he'll let the deadline with China slip if they are getting closer to a deal. The technicals are lining up for a shorting op but with all these headlines it'll be hard for the market not to melt up. I'm going to be patient for now.

They sure are. Their two little kids are always spying out the door when we bring them freshly made cookies

Manafort is a poster-boy for everything that is wrong with the current political class. They rarely make their own pay for their crimes. It'll be interesting to see what comes of his sentencing March 13. My guess is at the end of it he will actually get away with serving a fraction of the time a little guy would serve for a similar offense. Not too dissimilar to all the bankers and wall street guys that walked away from the last two blow-ups they caused. RE: Russophobia - I have Russian neighbors across the street - nicest, warmest people you ever met and well educated too. I very much enjoy them.

In my humble opinion putting all these meaningless sanctions on Russia is only helping Putin consolidate power in Russia. It gives him a means to rally his population against the West and move the country away from the modernizing/liberal influences that used to penetrate into Russian society by trade and shared research. It completely backfires. And it also forces Iran and China to team up with Russia in the U.N. which is exactly what Putin wants. We had one chance to turn the tide in the Ukraine and that was during the invasion and referendum on the status of Crimea in 2014 but Obama was spineless and indecisive. He should have immediately closed the Bosphorus Strait thus rendering their warm port Navy impotent until they agreed to sit down with the Ukraine in UN sponsored talks. But we didn't do it and that's on us. We will never get Russian out of the Crimea now and we need to face that and move on. Only liberalizing commerce with Russia will eventually get the to move away from their totalitarian tendencies. In my opinion the Ukraine should have eventually devolved into at least two countries - one win the EU and one with Russia. The two sides of the country have nothing in common. They would have been better off if they could have negotiated a split and ended up like the old Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia - better in bits than as a whole. But the US insists that borders should never change even if they don't in any way reflect the political preferences of the people that inhabit these borders.

Second retest of the 50-day moving average on the S&P500 right here. RSI approaching 70 soon and MACD looking like it is about to cross-over. This at the exact same time as we get a budget agreement, a no Russian collusion announcement from the senate investigation and I'll bet soon an announcement that we have sufficient progress on trade with China to extend the deadline. Amazing timing. What else could the market as for at this technical juncture? Perhaps a joint announcement by Maduro, Jung-Un and the Iran Mullahs that they are all going to step down and hand over power to moderate reformers...

Out of ELLI for a 12.7% gain. This was my largest purchase in 2018. The company is going to be taken private.

Those were astute observations. I remember thinking - why is this taking so long to unravel??? It took two bubbles for me to realize just how long the "present bias" lasts. Scary stuff. I'm thinking Doug Noland during this period must have just been beside himself.

Earnings & outlook have been weak this quarter.

Hope you feel better doc! We need one more good up day to get to the 50-day.