A series of lower highs….50 day and 200 day sloping downward.
3. Bonds vs. Other Assets All Trending Down.
4. Japanese Stocks in Bull Market…..Yen 34-Year Low Helping Exports
YEN new lows
5. Chinese Loading Up on Gold.
From Dave Lutz at Jones GOLDEN– Huge bets by Chinese speculators on rising gold prices have helped super-charge the precious metal’s rally to an all-time high this month, in a sign that Asian traders are beginning to eclipse their western counterparts in their influence on the bullion market. Long gold positions held by futures traders on the Shanghai Futures Exchange (SHFE) climbed to 295,233 contracts, equivalent to 295 tonnes of gold. That marks a rise of almost 50 per cent since late September before geopolitical tensions flared up in the Middle East. A record bullish position of 324,857 contracts was hit earlier this month, according to Bloomberg data going back to 2015, FT reports.
6. AMD -31% from high …200-day in play
Tech/AI name about to test 200day
7. Spotify Massive Free Cash Flow Growth
8. Effective Fed Funds Rate Over 5%…..Savings Accounts paying 0.5%
Data from Standard & Poors shows personal providers of home and auto insurance have been losing money for a few years now:
The payouts exceed the premiums earned from customers.
So what happens from here?
Used car prices are coming down after the dramatic re-pricing during the pandemic. Hopefully, that will filter through to lower prices and lower premiums now that supply chains have healed.
It’s harder to see the other problem areas improve in the years ahead.
We Americans love driving massive trucks and SUVs. With new technologies, our vehicles are becoming increasingly complex. Unless we ban smartphones while driving, I don’t see a path to a road full of better drivers until we have fully self-driving cars.
And natural disasters only seem to be increasing in their frequency and severity.1
It’s difficult to envision a scenario in which insurance rates drastically decline to levels consumers were accustomed to.
My only financial advice is to shop around when your insurance comes due and you see higher premiums.
And get used to paying higher insurance prices, especially in certain states.
4. Same Story Fund Flows…Investors Buying Large Cap and Selling Small Cap
From Dave Lutz at Jones
5. No Move Up Small Cap vs. QQQ
6. Tesla Market Cap Today vs. November 2021
Jim Reid Deutsche Bank
7. Ferrari Vs. Tesla
This chart compares Ferrari stock RACE vs. TSLA
8. Threads just dethroned X, according to this key metric-Business Insider
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg before Congress, alongside Linda Yaccarino of X and Shou Zi Chou of TikTok.
Threads is now consistently surpassing X in daily US users, data shows.
While X’s user base remains relatively flat, it still has Threads beat on monthly users.
Threads is still gaining ground with users and could be on its way to becoming bigger than X.
Meta’s newest app, launched last summer on the back of Instagram’s tech, has seen daily active users grow consistently since November, according to usage estimates from Apptopia. Threads is a direct rival of X, formerly Twitter, which has struggled to maintain its user base since Elon Musk acquired the platform about 18 months ago.
Now, Threads has more daily users in the US than X, a trend that’s been ongoing since December, when Threads became Apple’s most downloaded app.
“Threads DAUs in the US passed X in December 2023 and it has not looked back,” Thomas Grant, Apptopia’s VP of research, said. It’s currently the third most downloaded free app on the Apple App Store, while X is in 41st place. In the Google Play Store, Threads is in 12th place among free apps, while X is in 44th place.
9. Covid Response (20% of GDP) vs. Marshall Plan (5% OF GDP)
Torsten Slok, Ph.D.Chief Economist, Partner The Marshall Plan was 5% of US GDP, and the US fiscal response to covid was 20% of US GDP, see chart below.
When you’re first starting, you may or may not have a job. You don’t have any money. You’re at a complete uncertainty about your career.
What I learned early on is that if I put in the effort, I can learn almost anything. It may take me a long time, but by putting in the effort I taught myself technology, I taught myself to program. … It was time-consuming, painfully so, but that investment in myself has paid dividends for the rest of my life.
I learned that learning truly is a skill … and that by continuing to learn to this day, I can compete and get ahead of most people, because the reality is most people don’t put in the time to learn … and that’s always given me a competitive advantage.
And here’s the thing. Research on achievement and success by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck shows that most people embrace, whether consciously or not, one of two mental perspectives on talent:
Fixed mindset: The belief that intelligence, ability, and talent are inborn and relatively fixed. Someone with a fixed mindset might think, “I’m not good at sales, so I probably shouldn’t try to start a business.”
Growth mindset: The belief that intelligence, ability, and talent can be learned and improved with effort. Someone with a growth mindset might think, “I don’t have any sales experience, but with a little time and effort I can surely develop the skills I need.”
Embrace a fixed mindset — assume that you aren’t (and will never be) particularly smart, or skilled, or adept, etc. — and whenever you find yourself struggling you’re likely to quit. If who you are — and will always be — isn’t good enough, why try?
Embrace a growth mindset and the world — with time, effort, and dedication — can be your oyster.
Because, at least in part, embracing a growth mindset can also change your brain at a neurological level:
A study published in Psychological Science foundthat people with a growth mindset exhibit a higher Pe (error positivity) waveform response, which correlates to paying greater attention to mistakes — and makes those individuals much more receptive to corrective (whether internal or external) feedback.
A study published in Social Cognitive Affective Neuroscience found that a growth mindset was related to ventral and dorsal striatal connectivity with the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (the brain region responsible for learning and self-control), therefore improving error-monitoring and behavioral adaptation. (In non-researcher-speak, wiring you to better learn from your mistakes.)
A study published in Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience found that a larger Pe difference helps people perform with greater accuracy after making mistakes. Why? People with a growth mindset aren’t as afraid of messing up along the way, because they see making mistakes as part of the developmental process.
Yep: Embracing a growth mindset wires your brain to be more willing to make mistakes. To be better at accepting feedback. To be better at correcting and, more important, learning from mistakes.
Given time, having a growth mindset won’t be a conscious decision. It won’t be a mindset you’ll need to remember to embrace. At a neurological level, it will be how you operate.
As our brain is plastic, it is able to undergo reorganization and development. Growth mindset relates to brain processes, and brain processes relate to motivated behaviors.
Likewise, motivated behaviors can affect cognition as motivation shapes what and how people think.
Add it all up, and changing how your brain functions means you won’t have to remember that mistakes are part of the process. You won’t have to remind yourself that learning new skills is hard. You won’t have to remember that, with time and effort, you can become something you curently are not.
You won’t even think about it.
Because the neural pathways you’ve built will do it for you.
Torsten Slok, Ph.D. Chief Economist, Partner Apollo Global Management Equity analysts continue to increase their earnings expectations to the S&P500, see chart below. There are simply no signs of a slowdown in corporate earnings, the economy continues to power ahead fueled by easy financial conditions, and this is an upside risk to inflation over the coming months.
8. Natural Gas and Nuclear Top Sources of Electric Power
Farnam Street -Success is often a product of environment.
While a polar bear might thrive in the Arctic, it would not thrive in a desert. People are no different. The person who excels in one environment fails in another.
Understanding how environments impact performance changes how you hire. Employees who thrive in one environment easily fail in another if their performance was contingent on the workplace conditions. This is why hiring a superstar away from a competitor, without understanding the role of environment on performance, often fails.
1.Not Many People Would Win This Trivia Question—Gold Outperformed S&P on 100-Year Basis.
Jim Reid Deutsche Bank Gold has got a lot of attention in the last couple of months. It’s now up around +17% since the start of March, making it one of the best performing global assets in that time frame.
In today’s CoTD we give a brief annotated history of Gold. Regular readers of my long-term studies will know that my big picture view on inflation has always been based around gold. When you have a gold standard where money is linked to gold you don’t get long-run inflation, since the ability to create new money is constrained by the fact it’s linked to gold. But when you break ties with Gold, inflation is always likely to be just around the corner when viewed from a longer-term perspective, as that constraint disappears and the temptation to create more money eventually wins out. So in a world of fiat money and high debt, Gold is always going to be an attractive part of a portfolio. The fact that it’s out-performed the S&P 500 this century, even with US equities seemingly bullet proof, tells you a lot about the macro environment we’ve seen this millennium so far.
2.Gold vs. S&P 5-Year…Gold Wins.
3.S&P Pullback by Sector.
4.Equity Risk Premium
I am not an expert is this chart
5.KRE Regional Bank ETF
Closed back below 200-day
6.China Selling U.S. Treasuries.
Zerohedge For the 9th month of the last 11, China’s Treasury holdings declined in February (the latest TIC data), dropping by $22.7BN. Additionally, it has now been 24 of the last 28 months that China’s Treasury holdings have declined, now back at practically its lowest level since June 2009…
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Foreign holdings of U.S. Treasuries surged to a record in February, its fifth straight monthly rise, Treasury Department data released on Wednesday showed.
Holdings totaled $7.965 trillion, up from a revised $7.945 trillion in January. Treasuries owned by foreigners rose 8.7% from a year earlier.
Holdings of Treasuries grew the most in Belgium, by $27 billion, to hit $320 billion. Japan, the largest non-U.S. holder of Treasuries, increased its U.S. government debt to $1.167 trillion, the largest since August 2022 when the country’s holdings were at $1.196 trillion.
Investors have been alert to the threat of Japanese intervention in the currency market to boost the yen, which plunged to a 34-year low of 154.79 per dollar on Tuesday.
The Bank of Japan intervened three times in 2022, selling the dollar to buy yen, first in September and again in October as the yen slid toward a 32-year low of 152 to the dollar.
In September and October 2022, Japan’s Treasury holdings declined $131.6 billion from $1.196 trillion in August.
China’s pile of Treasuries also fell in February to $775 billion, data showed. The monthly decline of $22.7 billion was the second biggest among the 20 major countries on the Treasury’s list.
Holdings of Treasuries by China, the world’s second largest economy, have been declining, reaching $763.5 billion in February, the lowest since March 2009.
Britain listed its Treasury holdings at $700.8 billion, up about $9 billion from January.
The benchmark 10-year Treasury yield started February at 3.863% and ended the month at 4.252%, up nearly 39 basis points. Yields rose as a slew of solid economic data was released that month, reflecting expectations that the Federal Reserve will delay cutting interest rates.
Major U.S. asset classes had inflows during the month, the data showed.
On a transaction basis, U.S. Treasuries posted inflows of $88.8 billion, up from $46.3 billion in January.
Foreign buying of U.S. corporates and agencies persisted in February, with inflows of $52.7 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively.
U.S. equities showed a minor inflow of $400 million, compared with outflows of $15.4 billion in January.
Overall, net foreign acquisitions of long- and short-term securities, as well as banking flows, showed a net inflow of $51.6 billion in February, up from outflows of $30.8 billion the previous month, Treasury data showed.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Richard Chang)
8.House panel says China subsidizes fentanyl production to fuel crisis in the United States—Communism Sucks
BY KEVIN FREKING WASHINGTON (AP) — China is fueling the fentanyl crisis in the U.S. by directly subsidizing the manufacturing of materials that are used by traffickers to make the drug outside the country, according to a report released Tuesday by a special House committee focused on countering the Chinese government.
Committee investigators said they accessed a government website that revealed tax rebates for the production of specific fentanyl precursors as well as other synthetic drugs as long as those companies sell them outside of China.
“Through its actions, as our report has revealed, the Chinese Communist Party is telling us that it wants more fentanyl entering our country,” said Rep. Mike Gallagher, the Republican chairman of the special House committee. “It wants the chaos and devastation that has resulted from the epidemic.”
In November, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced a resumption of bilateral cooperation on counternarcotics with a focus on reducing the flow of precursor chemicals and synthetic drug trafficking. But the congressional report raises questions about whether China is following through.
The report’s findings were released Tuesday as part of a hearing examining China’s role in the fentanyl epidemic in the U.S. Most overdose deaths in the U.S. continue to be linked to fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Inexpensive fentanyl is increasingly cut into other drugs, often without the buyers’ knowledge.
For starters, less happiness, more loneliness, and worse sleep.
KEY POINTS
The typical American breakfast is notoriously unhealthy.
What the brain prefers us to eat for breakfast, and when, is not always good for the rest of the body.
Frequent breakfast skipping was associated with lower happiness, loneliness, and poor sleep.
The mantra “eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper” could help.
In online forums, some bodybuilders seem convinced that skipping breakfast will not harm the body or interfere with adding more muscle mass. Some contributors to this myth suggest that our hunter/gatherer ancestors did not eat breakfast because they had to start hunting for breakfast as soon as they woke up.
In reality, we do not know what our ancestors ate for breakfast, but I would not be surprised if they tossed down some raw roots, nuts, and seeds before heading out onto the savannah to find food. Still, what we know about breakfast, in general, suggests these particular bodybuilders are incorrect.
What is Breakfast?
The typical American breakfast is notoriously unhealthy. As a result, some proponents of the “skip breakfast” ideology defend their position by arguing that breakfast does not involve eating nutritious foods.
Americans indeed tend to prefer a nice blend of fat, salt, and sugar for breakfast. Donut stores are positioned along the most popular routes to work because that’s what we want to eat in the morning.
What’s more, most American adults, when queried, perceive that typical American breakfast foods are well suited for breakfast despite their poor nutritional value. People feel that more nutritious alternatives that they usually consume at lunch or dinner are simply less appropriate for breakfast.
Consequently, people are reluctant to include more nutritious alternatives to their breakfast selections. This likely explains why the cereal aisle at my grocer offers only one brand without added sugar.
Should You Eat Sugar at Breakfast?
Yet some sugar at breakfast may be a good thing. Sugar is an effective cognitive enhancer—you can read Your Brain on Food for more on this topic—and studies of people who ate breakfast found that increased blood sugar improved memory function. The improvement in memory function correlated with blood glucose concentrations.
In contrast, skipping breakfast adversely affected the ability of subjects to recall a word list and a story read aloud. They also had difficulty recalling items while counting backward. Skipping breakfast did not affect intelligence, just memory.
Fortunately, the decline in memory performance associated caused by skipping breakfast was reversed by the consumption of a sugary beverage. It appears that the consumption of simple carbohydrates with a high glycemic index, e.g. cereals and donuts, influenced memory abilities by temporarily increasing blood glucose.
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The Physical Effect of Unhealthy Breakfasts
However, what the brain prefers us to eat, and when, is not always good for the rest of the body, and a bad breakfast can have mental and physical consequences.
There is a relationship between eating an unhealthy breakfast and abdominal obesity and body mass index (BMI). Further, some indicators of mental health—including self-rated health, body satisfaction, and life satisfaction—are significantly related to breakfast quality. Age and gender also play a role: Girls and older people have a higher risk of diet quality negatively affecting their mental health.
Interestingly, skipping breakfast of any type significantly increased the probability of depression, stress, and psychological distress in all age groups. Frequent breakfast skipping was associated with lower happiness, loneliness, short sleeping, long sleeping, restless sleep, and poor academic performance. Eating and sleeping are clearly related to good mental and physical health.
What if I Delay Breakfast Until Later?
The body is influenced by our daily rhythms of eating. One recent study examined the effects of eating the majority of each day’s calories later in the day. Overweight women were divided into a breakfast group (700 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 200 kcal dinner) or a dinner group (200 kcal breakfast, 500 kcal lunch, 700 kcal dinner) for 12 weeks.
The breakfast group showed greater weight loss and waist circumference reduction. Fasting glucose and insulin decreased significantly in the breakfast group. Average triglyceride levels decreased by 33.6 percent in the breakfast group and increased significantly in the dinner group.
Skipping breakfast and then overeating in the evening appear to play a significant role in weight gain and obesity. Furthermore, people who skip breakfast report not feeling as satisfied by their food and being hungry between meals.
If this sounds like you, then it may be time to enjoy breakfast again—and overall, the take-home message from many human studies is to eat a big breakfast and a small dinner. I suggest the new mantra: Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dinner like a pauper.
