Month: September 2017

Via StockBoardAsset.com,

In part one of this series called: ‘Why America Needs a Wall’, we showed a video of an intense firefight between Government forces and drug cartel members. The widespread death and destruction rippling through Mexico this year is not widely being reported by the mainstream media. 

In the first 6-months of 2017, more than 12,000 murders have been registered, making it the deadliest year in over two decades.

In this series, we are going to show a reality that the mainstream media will not broadcast, because it’ll destroy the narrative of a borderless society. Breitbart has leaked body camera footage of Mexican authorities in a fierce firefight with a squad of cartel members just 275 miles from the United States boarder.

 

Per Breitbart,

Chihuahua police officers fight off an attack by cartel gunmen in Madera Chihuahua

Last week, President Trump selected four contractors to build concrete prototypes of the wall. Each prototype will measure 30 feet tall and 30 feet wide, and cost around half million dollars.

Per NPR, 

The  prototype walls will be constructed in about two weeks. Each contractor will have about 30 days to complete the project. Shortly after, Homeland Security will then test each wall for 30-60 days.

An MIT study puts the price tag of President Trump’s wall at $38 billion. The next step is to secure funding and it turns out Mexico is not paying for the wall, but rather the American people. As the debt ceiling creeps closer and funding for projects become limited. President Trump lashed out at the opposition and said he would be willing to shutdown the government if funding was not received in the upcoming debt ceiling bill.

As you may know, the United States runs out of cash on September 29. Congress is expected to pass a short term funding bill, but there is a chance that may not happen. U.S. chief economist at S&P, Beth Ann Bovino, writes that “failure to raise the debt limit would likely be more catastrophic to the economy than the 2008 failure of Lehman Brothers and would erase many of the gains of the subsequent recovery.”

Conclusion: The era of falsehoods and illusions provided by the government in-conjunction with the mainstream media is cracking. America’s in a transitional period and it’s time that each citizen receives their full dose of truth much greater than any of the drugs or even opioids they’re taking. Lifting the veil of the utter death and destruction spiraling out of control just miles from the United States boarder would induce anyone with common sense to demand a boarder. The time to act is now.

***********

Per The Atlantic (2013), 

It’s sad that many don’t see that Rome is already burning. It’s up to you to extinguish the flames before time expires. Our government with the Federal Reserve can only print currency, they cannot print time. Use it wisely.

via http://ift.tt/2vULnSp Tyler Durden

Approximately 60,000 residents of Germany’s financial capital, Frankfurt, will be ordered to evacuate their homes on Sunday as the city’s emergency service staff will attempt to defuse a massive World War Two bomb, discovered recently at a local building site. The 1.4-tonne HC 4000 bomb dropped by the British air force during World War Two was uncovered on a building site on Wismarer Strasse in Frankfurt’s leafy Westend where many wealthy bankers live.

“We have never defused a bomb of this size,” bomb disposal expert Rene Bennert told Reuters, adding that it had been damaged on impact when it was dropped between 1943 and 1945.

Bomb disposal experts who examined it said the massive evacuation could wait until the weekend. “We are still working on the modalities of the evacuation plan,” a spokeswoman for Frankfurt police said on Wednesday.

As a result, ahead of Sunday’s planned evacuation, more than 100 hospital patients, including premature infants and those in intensive care, were evacuated from two Frankfurt hospitals on Saturday, city councillor Markus Frank told Reuters television. 

Every year more than 2,000 tonnes of live bombs and munitions are still found in Germany, even under buildings. In July, a kindergarten was evacuated after teachers discovered an unexploded World War Two bomb on a shelf among some toys. During World War II, Germany was pummeled by 1.5 million tonnes of bombs from British and American warplanes that killed 600,000 people. German officials estimate 15% of the bombs failed to explode, some burrowing six meters (yards) deep.

And while local residents have been eager to comply with the unprecedented evacuation, the biggest since the war, Frankfurt fire and police chiefs said they would use force and incarceration if necessary to clear the area of residents, warning that an uncontrolled explosion of the bomb would be big enough to flatten a city block.

Frankfurt’s residents have to clear the area by 8 a.m. on Sunday and police will ring every doorbell and use helicopters with heat-sensing cameras to make sure nobody is left behind before they start diffusing the bomb.

Where this otherwise trivial evacuation takes on a more sinister, “Die Harder” spin, is when looking at what other structures are impacted by the 1.5 km evacuation radius: these include Frankfurt’s Goethe University, police headquarters, two hospitals, transport systems… oh and the Bundesbank headquarters, which as a reminder ten days ago completed the accelerated repatriation of 674 tonnes of gold – some three years ahead of schedule – from New York and Paris to its vault deep underground.

According to Reuters, the Bundesbank vault which stores 1,710 tonnes of gold deep underground – approximately half the country’s reserves – is located less than 600 meters from the location of the bomb. Well, that particular vault which now holds $70 billion in gold (including $28 billion in freshly repatriated physical) and everything around it, is about to be evacuated. All that’s missing are several dozen dump trucks to take advantage of the massive evacuation that will leave thousands of gold bars without security for 1.5 kilometers in any direction.

While airspace for 1.5 kilometers around the bomb site will be closed, we doubt that will prove a major hurdle to anyone eager to take a stab at a real-life reincarnation of the second Die Hard movie.

Still, to prevent anyone from getting any ideas of following in Simon Gruber’s footsteps, a spokesman for the German Bundesbank said, that “the usual security arrangements” would remain in place while experts worked to disarm the bomb.

The fate of half of Germany’s gold aside, bomb disposal experts said they will make use of a “Rocket Wrench” to try and unscrew the fuses attached to the HC 4,000 bomb. If that fails, a water jet will be used to cut the fuses away from the bomb, Bennert told Reuters. The most dangerous part of the exercise will be applying the wrench, Bennert said.

Roads and transport systems, including the underground, will be closed during the work and for at least two hours after the bomb is defused, to allow patients to be transported back to hospitals without traffic. It is not unusual for unexploded bombs from World War Two air raids to be found in German cities, but rarely are they so large and in such a sensitive position.

Meanwhile, Frankfurters can spend the day at shelters set up at the trade fair and the Jahrhunderthalle convention center. Most museums are offering residents free entry on Sunday, and a few of them will open their doors earlier in the morning than usual.

via http://ift.tt/2eQ0iHW Tyler Durden

Authord by Joseph Salerno via The Mises Institute,

Paul Cantor, Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia and Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute, attended Ludwig von Mises’s seminar at NYU as a young man.

He recently surprised and delighted a few of us by revealing that the line that he remembers Mises speaking most frequently in the seminar was “No farzer credit expansion!” 

As a native German speaker with an accent and less than complete familiarity with English usage, what Mises meant to say, of course, was:

“No further credit expansion!”

Upon hearing this, it struck me that Mises pithily summed up in four words a program for “stabilizing” the economy, that is, abolishing booms, bubbles, and recessions.

Why the entire program could – and should – be printed on a T-shirt…

via http://ift.tt/2iR2HH2 Tyler Durden

Hurricane Harvey may solve the auto industry’s inventory problem. But right now, it's about to create a giant headache for the federal government.

Based on the latest estimates from Irvine, California-based CoreLogic, insured flood losses for homes in the affected areas of Texas and Louisiana could total between $6.5 billion to $9.5 billion. Since private insurers typically don’t provide personal flood insurance, all but $500 million of that will fall to the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s National Flood Insurance Program, or NFIP.

According to the Street, if insured damages reach the high end of this range, it would totally deplete the $7.5 billion of cash and available credit available to the 49-year-old government program, which provides about 98% of residential flood insurance. The program is already about $25 billion in debt to the US Treasury Department and would need Congressional authorization for additional funding. To be sure, final totals could be much, much higher given the severity of the the “1-in-1000-year” flood.

The potential funding shortfall could create problems if Congress doesn’t act quickly this month to shore up the financially-troubled flood-insurance program. As we’ve reported, Congress already has a full agenda in September – a month where lawmakers must pass a funding bill to keep the government open, and another to raise the debt limit and stave off a technical default on US debt. Initially, President Trump said he would force a government shutdown if Congress didn’t approve funding for his border wall in its next budget. However, it appears that he has backed away from this, as the Washington Post reported today that the administration has quietly notified Congress that the $1.6 billion in wall funding would not need to be included in the September continuing resolution.

Furthermore, Congress must explicitly pass legislation to keep the NFIP intact. Without it, the entire program will lapse.

To be sure, there are some signs that Republicans are taking steps to ensure that emergency disaster-relief funding is approved as quickly as possible. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, some Republican lawmakers are raising the possibility that funding for the cleanup effort could be attached to the debt-ceiling bill, giving both measures a strong chance of passing. But it didn’t say if funding for the flood-insurance program would be included.

Thanks, in part, to the hurricane, and the perceived political consequences of failing to aid the disaster victims (though Texas has proven to be a reliably red state), Goldman has cut its odds of a government shutdown to 15%.

* * *

To be sure, this problem could’ve been avoided if the federal government didn’t involve itself in the complicated process of responding to natural disasters. Instead, as Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute suggests, the Federal government should just hand Texas back the income-tax revenue it’s collected this year, and give the state carte blanche to organize and finance the recovery, INCLUDING the reconstruction of flooded and otherwise damaged homes.

“Of course, we'll be told that federal disaster relief programs are all about "sharing" and "cooperation" and "kindness." In reality, it's all just about forcing one group of people to hand over money to another group of people. There is no doubt that Texas and Houston now face significant challenges in rebuilding after the flood. But, when we demand that other regions and states pay for the rebuilding of Texas, we're acting as if those other states and communities don't have problems of their own.

 

Needs related to poverty, infrastructure, and education in, say, Michigan did not magically disappear because Texas experienced a flood. The only reason it now seems right to take money from people in Michigan, and hand it over to Houstonians, is because Houston's problems are in the headlines, and Michigans mundane daily problems are not. The central planners have decided that Houstonians deserve Michigan's money. But the rationale for this decision is purely political, and thus arbitrary.”

After all, the state has a larger GDP than Canada, Brazil and Italy.

That would at least spare the 30,000 people living in emergency shelters the anxiety of wondering whether President Donald Trump and Congress will manage to put their political squabbling aside for long enough to authorize the funding.

Especially because Hurricane Irma, currently a category 3 storm, could make landfall in the Gulf of Mexico, or Florida. If it's the former, southwest Texas could receive its second pummeling in two weeks.

via http://ift.tt/2iSb7Ok Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Many people involved in politics swear by the notion that “the ends justify the means,” which is typically the sign of a self-serving actor attempting to justify questionable if not downright evil action in order to get what he or she wants. While pursuit of “the greater good” is often put up for public consumption, the driving force behind this sort of action is almost always personal gain of some sort. This is what most politicians do for a living, which is why they are justifiably hated by the general public.

 

The moment you justify one very wrong action to achieve a noble goal, what’s to stop you from next even more unethical action, or the next and the next? Nothing. This is what’s so dangerous about going down such a path. Indeed, those who fight monsters often end up becoming the exact thing they claim to be fighting. The world doesn’t benefit from this, only the person who has gained power as a result does, at least superficially. Ultimately, even that person doesn’t benefit when all is said and done. A person who attains their goal by sacrificing principles is a tormented, miserable person. They may seem to “have it all” from the outside, but deep down they hate themselves and what they’ve become. There is no peace. I believe karma eventually catches up to everybody one way or the other.

 

– From May’s post: Do Ends Justify the Means?

One of the primary motivating factors that drove me to start writing publicly on a daily basis, was a recognition that the chaos and cultural lack of cohesion resulting from the thievery of the financial crisis and the increasingly corrupt, socioeconomic paradigm we live under would provide the pretext for “the state,” whether governed by a Democrat or Republican, to further dismantle civil liberties and usher in a country increasingly defined by less freedom. This was a motivating concern under Obama and it remains a motivating concern under Trump.

As I’ve warned repeatedly over the years, at some point the “war on terror” would be brought home to the good ol’ USA, with all enemies suddenly being labeled domestic terrorists. This is happening right now, thanks in large part to all the media hysteria about antifa and neo-Nazis.

Personally, I try to keep things simple and think it’d be wise if others did did the same for the sake of our future. I believe offensive violence is almost never justified, while self-defense almost always is. The purported objective of any group is irrelevant. The worst tyrants in the world always claim to be working for “the people” as they lock people up in gulags or concentration camps to torture and kill them. Ends don’t justify the means. The means are everything.

The reason I’m writing this post is to demonstrate that antifa is playing right into the hands of those who wish to further the objectives of a burgeoning police state. They provide fuel for unconscious people on the other side of the political spectrum who see their thuggishness and then squeal to the government to “do something about it.” If I didn’t know better, I’d assume antifa were probably a bunch of deep state operatives trying to convince the groveling public to cry out for a strong hand government solution. Since I have no evidence to back this up, I’ll just go ahead and call them useful idiots.

Importantly, it’s not just those dressing up like ninjas punching people for wearing polo shirts who are the only useful idiots. Those on the “right” begging the government to call them terrorists are just as foolish. As I tweeted yesterday:

Don't use words the government wants you to use.
The government wants us to start calling each other terrorists.
Don't do it.

— Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) August 31, 2017

For more on that angle, see my recent article titled: Stop Asking the Federal Government to Label Groups You Dislike ‘Terrorists.’

Unfortunately, it seems this train has already left the station. The results for those of us who love freedom might not be pretty.

As Politico reported earlier today:

Federal authorities have been warning state and local officials since early 2016 that leftist extremists known as “antifa” had become increasingly confrontational and dangerous, so much so that the Department of Homeland Security formally classified their activities as “domestic terrorist violence,” according to interviews and confidential law enforcement documents obtained by POLITICO.

 

Since well before the Aug. 12 rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, turned deadly, DHS has been issuing warnings about the growing likelihood of lethal violence between the left-wing anarchists and right-wing white supremacist and nationalist groups.

 

Previously unreported documents disclose that by April 2016, authorities believed that “anarchist extremists” were the primary instigators of violence at public rallies against a range of targets. They were blamed by authorities for attacks on the police, government and political institutions, along with symbols of “the capitalist system,” racism, social injustice and fascism, according to a confidential 2016 joint intelligence assessment by DHS and the FBI.

 

Those reports appear to bolster Trump’s insistence that extremists on the left bore some blame for the clashes in Charlottesville and represent a “problem” nationally. But they also reflect the extent that his own political movement has spurred the violent backlash.

 

“It was in that period [as the Trump campaign emerged] that we really became aware of them,” said one senior law enforcement official tracking domestic extremists in a state that has become a front line in clashes between the groups. “These antifa guys were showing up with weapons, shields and bike helmets and just beating the shit out of people. … They’re using Molotov cocktails, they’re starting fires, they’re throwing bombs and smashing windows.”

 

Almost immediately, the right-wing targets of the antifa attacks began fighting back, bringing more and larger weapons and launching unprovoked attacks of their own, the documents and interviews show. And the extremists on both sides have been using the confrontations, especially since Charlottesville, to recruit unprecedented numbers of new members, raise money and threaten more confrontations, they say.

The way to stop this is actually pretty simple. Don’t get sucked in. Don’t pick “a side,” and don’t pressure others to do so. It’s just gang warfare and it won’t lead to anything good.

Moreover, we must denounce offensive violence as a political tactic and marginalize those who advocate it. 90% of people don’t want anything to do with street violence irrespective of how much you despise the system, and believe me, I despise it. Don’t give into the negative energy. Negative energy creates negative outcomes.

Now back to Politico.

Even before Charlottesville, dozens and, in some cases, hundreds of people on both sides showed up at events in Texas, California, Oregon and elsewhere, carrying weapons and looking for a fight. In the Texas capital of Austin, armed antifa protesters attacked Trump supporters and white groups at several recent rallies, and then swarmed police in a successful effort to stop them from making arrests.

 

Rallies are scheduled over the next few months across the country, including in Texas, Oregon, Missouri and Florida. Authorities are particularly concerned about those in states where virtually anyone, including activists under investigation for instigating violence, can brandish assault rifles in public.

 

“Both the racists and a segment of violent antifa counter-protestors are amped for battle in an escalating arms race, where police departments are outmaneuvered, resulting in increasingly violent dangerous confrontations,” said former New York City police officer Brian Levin, who has been monitoring domestic militants for 31 years, now at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “It’s an orchestrated dance. The rallies spill over into social media and then even more people show up at the next rally primed for violent confrontation.”

 

Some of the DHS and FBI intelligence reports began flagging the antifa protesters before the election. In one from last September, portions of which were read to POLITICO, DHS studied “recent violent clashes … at lawfully organized white supremacist” events including a June 2016 rally at the California Capitol in Sacramento organized by the Traditionalist Workers Party and its affiliate, the Golden State Skinheads.

 

According to police, counter-protesters linked to antifa and affiliated groups like By Any Means Necessary attacked, causing a riot after which at least 10 people were hospitalized, some with stab wounds.

“By any means necessary” is basically the dictator’s blueprint. Anyone who espouses such ideology is an unconscious threat to society.

At the Sacramento rally, antifa protesters came looking for violence, and “engaged in several activities indicating proficiency in pre-operational planning, to include organizing carpools to travel from different locations, raising bail money in preparation for arrests, counter-surveilling law enforcement using three-man scout teams, using handheld radios for communication, and coordinating the event via social media,” the DHS report said.

 

Several state law enforcement officials said that all of those accelerating factors have come to pass. And recent FBI and DHS reports confirm they are actively monitoring “conduct deemed potentially suspicious and indicative of terrorist activity” by antifa groups.

 

The two agencies also said in their April 2016 assessment that many of the activities the groups engaged in “are not within the purview of FBI and DHS collection” due to civil liberties and privacy protections, including participating in training camps, holding meetings and communicating online.

Read the above paragraph over and over until you get it. The feds will claim they need the public to give up more civil liberties to fight “domestic terrorists.” If you’re dumb enough to give into this, I don’t know what to tell you.

All that said, I will not stand here and tell you that unconscious gangs fighting in the street isn’t a threat. It’s certainly becoming an issue, but we need to take a step back, take a deep breath, and not respond emotionally. Indeed, I think the recent approach voiced by the mayor of Berkeley is wise. He suggests treating groups like antifa as gangs.

Here’s some of what he said:

BERKELEY (CBS SF) — Mayor of Berkeley Jesse Arreguin on Monday said it is time to confront the violent extremism on the left by treating black-clad Antifa protesters as a gang.

 

“I think we should classify them as a gang,” said Arreguin. “They come dressed in uniforms. They have weapons, almost like a militia and I think we need to think about that in terms of our law enforcement approach.”

This is a preferable approach to using the word “terrorist” since the latter definition causes people to lose their minds and justify a destruction of the Constitution. Let’s not be stupid.

If you liked this article and enjoy my work, consider becoming a monthly Patron, or visit our Support Page to show your appreciation for independent content creators.

via http://ift.tt/2wt7wen Tyler Durden

Shortly after topping $5,000 (according to several exchanges), Bitcoin began to tumble dramatically – now down almost $500 – erasing all the post-North-Korea missile anxiety gains.

 

Ethereum crashed even more…

 

In fact, 9 of the 10 largest cryptocurrencies are all plunging this morning…

 

While there is no specific catalyst for this drop, we note that in the last few days, regulators in Russia, and China, and now the US have begun cracking down on ICOs.

 

It's starting. http://pic.twitter.com/ZpfW8Kb9jT

— BitCrypto'ed???? (@Bitfinexed) September 1, 2017

via http://ift.tt/2gAWZrN Tyler Durden

Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

The head leaker in chief at the NY Times, beneficiary of her father’s 40 yr career at the paper, Maggie Haberman reported yesterday that Trump and his new chief of staff, John Kelly, are grinding each other’s gears — citing an incident where the President publicly humiliated Kelly in front of staff.
Source: NY Times

President Trump was in an especially ornery mood after staff members gently suggested he refrain from injecting politics into day-to-day issues of governing after last month’s raucous rally in Arizona, and he responded by lashing out at the most senior aide in his presence.
 
It happened to be his new chief of staff, John F. Kelly.

Mr. Kelly, the former Marine general brought in five weeks ago as the successor to Reince Priebus, reacted calmly, but he later told other White House staff members that he had never been spoken to like that during 35 years of serving his country. In the future, he said, he would not abide such treatment, according to three people familiar with the exchange.

Haberman hems and haws through a garrulous article, more gossip than anything else, extolling the many virtues of John Kelly, even suggesting that he and Mattis are trying, desperately, to keep transgenders inside the military, ‘slow walking’ Trump through the process.

Mr. Kelly is close to Mr. Mattis and supported the Pentagon’s decision to slow-walk Mr. Trump’s order to ban transgender troops from serving in the military, opting for the creation of a panel to study the matter before implementing a policy that is highly popular with the president’s conservative base.

She concluded her gossip column, loyal to her chimerical bias against the President, pejoratively stating: “But one associate who spoke to Mr. Kelly last month said the former commander had remarked that his current assignment was by far the hardest job he had ever had. His favorite gig, he jokes, was his first: Marine grunt.”

This all ties in nicely with the Daily Beast’s “breaking story” today, saying Omarosa Manigault is the next one to be dismissed by Kelly. Her crime: providing the President with negative news article that would ‘trigger’ him and make him go fucking crazy around the White House, throwing Oscar in the trashcan tirades — which haven’t served the President’s best interests.

Source: Daily Beast

Multiple sources in and outside the Trump White House told The Daily Beast that, until recently, it was common practice for aides to slide into the Oval Office and distract and infuriate the president with pieces of negative news coverage. Manigault, they say, was one of the worst offenders.

“When Gen. Kelly is talking about clamping down on access to the Oval, she’s patient zero,” a source close to the Trump administration said.

The stories Manigault would present to Trump, often on a phone or printed out, would often enrage the president, and resulted in him spending at least the rest of the day fuming about it. For example, one White House source noted that Manigault was one of the people who would bring to President Trump’s attention online articles concerning MSNBC hosts, and former Trump pals, Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski “slagging him, and his administration.”

This contributed, at least in small part, to the president’s mounting rage against the MSNBC couple, which exploded in late June when Trump attacked them and tweeted that, among other things, Brzezinski “was bleeding badly from a face-lift.”

To understand why Kelly would want to isolate the President you first have to understand who he keeps company with, a small group of people and at the meridian of that group of former Obama defense secretary, Leon Panetta. It’s becoming exceedingly difficult to give the President a pass for alleged ‘deep state’ swampers, when in fact he’s the one who’s hiring them.

More from the satanic online news rag:

Kelly “is not thrilled by any means by [Manigault],” a West Wing official told The Daily Beast. “He is, however, thrilled that he has been able to stop staffers including Omarosa from bolting into the Oval Office and triggering the president with White House [palace] intrigue stories.”

Of particular concern for Kelly were stories from conspiratorial right-wing websites that occasionally whipped Trump into a frenzy over issues such as the West Wing’s press leak problem. In Manigault’s case, sources said, the stories generally originated at more obscure, gossipy websites, and concerned White House palace intrigue, media personalities, or prominent Republicans in Congress.

Ever since Kelly instituted the new regime, Trump’s former reality-TV co-star’s capacity to influence her boss during the work day has taken a hit.

“She’s not happy about it,” another White House source said. “She has a bond that goes back years with [Trump] and resents being cut off like everyone has.”

To be sure, the president still uses his private cellphone to speak with and solicit advice from a small inner circle of longtime aides and friends, Manigault among them. Though Kelly has sought to limit and streamline the pipeline of information into the Oval Office, there’s not much he can do about the president’s penchant for calling up his closest advisers, even at odd hours, once his staffers depart for the evening.

As Kelly has clamped down on the information that reaches the president through official channels, Trump’s inner circle has increasingly reverted to phone calls with the president directly. The sense is that Kelly is essentially powerless to block Trump off from a coterie of friends and allies that predate the White House by years.

This story is indeed rich with irony, with The Daily Beast attempting to sockdolager the President’s access to ‘gossipy’ websites, when in fact the entire report is kitschy coffee talk. The foreboding winds that sweep in and around Trump are festooned with cheap regalia, harkening back to an era when parvenus beer swillers would profit from the power exerted out of DC. Now that their vainglorious schemes have been upbraided, they’ve resorted to Wagnerian styled outbursts — tangentially scattered about like children commiserating in a lonely and sad room for having their toys taken away.

via http://ift.tt/2gA17bS The_Real_Fly

Authored by Dmitri Speck via Acting-Man.com,

Recurring Phenomena

Many market participants believe simple phenomena in the stock market are purely random events and cannot recur consistently. Indeed, there is probably no stock market “rule” that will remain valid forever.

However, there continue to be certain statistical phenomena in the stock market – even quite simple ones – that have shown a tendency to persist for very long time periods.

 

This chart illustrates a “rule that changed” – for eight decades (actually longer, but on this chart we can see the final eight decades during which the rule applied) the dividend yield on the S&P 500 Index would never fall much below 3%. Whenever that level was reached, everybody knew a correction or a bear market was imminent. This changed profoundly in the mid 1990s. The culprit: massive monetary inflation. [PT] – click to enlarge.

 

In today’s report I examine such a phenomenon: namely, the performance of the S&P 500 Index on individual days of the week.

 

Tuesday is a Particularly Strong Trading Day, Friday a Weak One

The chart below shows the annualized performance of the S&P 500 Index since the turn of the century in black, as well as the cumulative annualized return generated on individual days of the week in blue.

I have measured the price changes from close to close; thus the performance of e.g. Tuesday represents the difference between the closing level on Monday and the closing level on Tuesday.

 

S&P 500 Index, performance by individual days of the week, 2000 to 2017 – annualized.  Friday is on average a down day.

 

As you can see, two days are standing out in terms of positive performance: Thursday, and especially Tuesday. The cumulative return of the stock market on Tuesdays alone was actually better than the cumulative return  achieved on all five trading days combined!

By contrast, Friday was on average quite weak. On Mondays and Wednesdays the market by and large tended to move sideways on average.

The difference between these returns, which was measured over no less than 4,436 trading days, is statistically quite significant. This suggests we are unlikely to merely look at a random phenomenon [ed. note: even though it is not possible to actually explain it off the cuff, the statistical significance indicates that an explanation must exist. PT].

What do these data look like in specific market environments though, i.e., during bull and bear market periods?

 

The Days of the Week Under the Microscope

The next chart shows the performance of the S&P 500 Index since the turn of the century in black, as well as the cumulative return achieved on individual days of the week in other colors – all indexed to 100.

 

S&P 500 Index, cumulative returns by day of the week, 2000 – 2017, indexed.  Even in 2008 investing exclusively on Tuesdays ended up generating a gain! – click to enlarge.

 

Take a close look at the performances during the bear market after the year 2000 peak and in the course of the 2008 financial crisis. Even in these otherwise difficult times for the market, Tuesdays (red) and Thursdays (blue) delivered pretty decent results.

In 2008, the cumulative return generated on Tuesdays was actually significantly positive, in the face of an extremely bearish market trend!

In short, these two trading days are indeed rather extraordinary.

 

Combinations Improve Results

By investing only on Tuesdays, one would have been able to outperform the market over the entire period examined above. However, in rally periods, such as e.g. the rally beginning in 2009, the cumulative return achieved on Tuesdays lagged behind that of the trading week as a whole.

That should actually be expected, as strong gains require longer investment periods, and being invested just 20 percent of the time is simply unlikely to be enough.

This problem can be addressed by implementing combinations. As already illustrated by the first chart, overall, the S&P 500 Index has gained 2.95% annualized since 2000, while the cumulative gain of all trading sessions on Tuesdays was 3.19%.

Combinations can make a very big difference though. Investing on Tuesdays and Thursdays combined would have generated an annual return of 5.52%. If one had additionally sold the market short on Fridays, the annualized gain would have improved to 8.07% –  definitely an excellent result!

 

Combining Independent Factors Will Lead to More Stable and Reliable Returns

Alas, there is a drawback to this combination strategy as well: the returns generated on individual days of the week are interdependent. For instance, it may well happen that at some point in the future, in an otherwise slightly uptrending stock market, Tuesdays and Thursdays no longer deliver a strong return over the entire investment period, but turn out to be weak instead.

If that were to happen, it would be highly unlikely that the returns generated on Fridays would remain as weak as they have been to date. In short, all three partial components of the strategy would then exert an unfavorable effect on the overall investment result.

From a statistical perspective, it is therefore as a rule better to combine independent factors, such as those that can be found with the help of the Seasonax app (available on Bloomberg and/or Thomson-Reuters). The probability that what was valid in the past will continue to be valid in the future is higher that way.

PS: For now, you can probably relax on Mondays and enjoy the action on Tuesdays!

via http://ift.tt/2gAVYQB Tyler Durden

Via The Daily Bell

The downfall of freedom and happiness: dependence on institutions out of your control.

I’ve always blamed the government.

Governments start the wars, carry out the genocides, steal from the people. Governments lay the foundation of an unjust society, by creating a hierarchy from the beginning. Some make the laws, and some must live by them.

But the government is only half of the picture.

I always trusted in the power of the free market.

The free market is the true democracy which responds to the people. It is controlled by demand and quelled by consumer pressures. Economic self-interest ensures a proper check on the wealthy from becoming too evil.

But there is no free market on a macro level. There is only the collusion of the government and industry.

They have positioned themselves as the mother and the father of society. How? By destroying the institutions which once stood in their place.

The Marriage of Government and Industry

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari describes a human transition. Populations went from farming societies inherently based on the sun and seasons, to industrial societies of assembly lines and time tables.

This caused many upheavals. Warm organic institutions–like family and community–were replaced by cold calculated ones–like factories and welfare. “Most of the traditional functions of families and communities were handed over to states and markets.”

Of course, this meant dependence on government and industry for survival. The roles of family and community had been outsourced. Now the government would take care of you, and industry would sell you fulfillment. All the structures humans evolved with quickly melted away, or became diluted.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the daily life of most humans ran its course within three ancient frames: the nuclear family, the extended family and the local intimate community. Most people worked in the family business – the family farm or the family workshop, for example – or they worked in their neighbours’ family businesses. The family was also the welfare system, the health system, the education system, the construction industry, the trade union, the pension fund, the insurance company, the radio, the television, the newspapers, the bank and even the police.

When a person fell sick, the family took care of her. When a person grew old, the family supported her, and her children were her pension fund. When a person died, the family took care of the orphans. If a person wanted to build a hut, the family lent a hand… But if a person’s illness was too grave for the family to manage, or a new business demanded too large an investment, or the neighbourhood quarrel escalated to the point of violence, the local community came to the rescue.

The community offered help on the basis of local traditions and an economy of favours, which often differed greatly from the supply and demand laws of the free market. In an old-fashioned medieval community, when my neighbour was in need, I helped build his hut and guard his sheep, without expecting any payment in return. When I was in need, my neighbour returned the favour. At the same time, the local potentate might have drafted all of us villagers to construct his castle without paying us a penny. In exchange, we counted on him to defend us against brigands and barbarians. Village life involved many transactions but few payments. There were some markets, of course, but their roles were limited. You could buy rare spices, cloth and tools, and hire the services of lawyers and doctors. Yet less than 10 per cent of commonly used products and services were bought in the market. Most human needs were taken care of by the family and the community.

On a small scale level like that, people were held accountable when they leached off the system. Families and communities were also the enforcement structure of this social insurance. Gossip was an important function of accountability. You can bet people talked if someone balked at their duties. The next time they needed something, they might find themselves in a bind.

But in addition to the obvious replacements like police, welfare, and corporate jobs, there was the matter of replacing the emotional aspects family provided. Governments and industry teamed up to give us a solution.

Markets and states do so by fostering ‘imagined communities’ that contain millions of strangers, and which are tailored to national and commercial needs. An imagined community is a community of people who don’t really know each other, but imagine that they do. Such communities are not a novel invention. Kingdoms, empires and churches functioned for millennia as imagined communities…

The two most important examples for the rise of such imagined communities are the nation and the consumer tribe. The nation is the imagined community of the state. The consumer tribe is the imagined community of the market. Both are imagined communities because it is impossible for all customers in a market or for all members of a nation really to know one another the way villagers knew one another in the past…

Consumerism and nationalism work extra hours to make us imagine that millions of strangers belong to the same community as ourselves, that we all have a common past, common interests and a common future. This isn’t a lie. It’s imagination. Like money, limited liability companies and human rights, nations and consumer tribes are inter-subjective realities. They exist only in our collective imagination, yet their power is immense. As long as millions of Germans believe in the existence of a German nation, get excited at the sight of German national symbols, retell German national myths, and are willing to sacrifice money, time and limbs for the German nation, Germany will remain one of the strongest powers in the world.

But we can keep what we like about government and markets, and do away with what we don’t. We can form new “tribes” that give us actual mutual aid which communities once gave. We can move to or create villages that match our needs and desires.

That way, we interact with warm institutions. Structures we are a part of and can influence. They are made up of people we know, and have real relationships with.

The government gives us imagined communities in order to control us. Nationalism makes sure we are ready to fight the next war, providing bodies and wealth to fuel political ambitions.

The market gives us imagined communities as a way to sell to us. Apple users are part of an exclusive club that signal they are wealthy and hip. Doesn’t that make you feel fulfilled?

But what about a community of people who are all passionate about farming, making their own products, and trading goods and labor? We can keep our smart phones and internet access, just like 10% of the village economies of the past relied on outside merchants. But when it comes to our water, electricity, food, hygiene products, and even entertainment, it is already quite easy to provide all that on a community level.

Now that the world has been so voluntarily centralized by the internet, we can decentralize in ways that benefit us. We can create little communities without becoming hermits. We will be free to come or go as we please, no forced labor, false choices, or communist utopia. Just voluntary groups who offer warm alternatives to dictatorial and industrial institutions.

I don’t want my barber to remove my appendix when I get appendicitis. But I wouldn’t at all mind my neighbor providing my children’s education, with the help of the countless resources on the internet.

We are now in a position to meld the best of both worlds. We can reach back and choose what was great about pre-modern community governing structures. And we can hold onto the technology and civilization that we like in today’s world.

Society is like a pendulum which swings from one extreme to another. But each sway loses some energy and brings us closer to equilibrium.

The advance of industry gave mankind countless benefits. But at some point, it went too far. We need to learn how to reintegrate warm institutions into our lives, without doing away with the benefits that large scale industry has provided.

In a sense, humanity was once so dependent on small scale warm institutions that we stagnated, and could not advance. People suffocated as the pendulum stopped and reversed.

Once we finally did break free, we lost all touch with warm institutions. Cold institutions replaced the family, and now many feel alienated and depressed.

Can we find an equilibrium? Can we meld markets and governance into family and community life in a way that both frees us from the tyranny of government and corporations, but allows us to remain free individuals?

The Pendulum is Ready to Swing Back

Radical experimentation in governance is required to heal society and correct the trajectory. Stagnation is the best we can hope for with the current model of government and corporate collusion.

We need to restore the community structures of the past. We cannot simply do away with institutions people rely on and expect no turmoil. Rather, a model of a better society needs to be created.

This is why the next movement that will drastically improve civilization will be a period of decentralization of institutions, marked by voluntary association.

via http://ift.tt/2vAAXfC TDB