If this doesn’t happen, I’ll literally kill myself.
Rates going down means nothing at all — total garbage and obfuscation. A sinking rate environment, not coupled with sinking stocks, isn’t a reliable indicator. As a matter of fact, I believe it to be a glitch.
What’s important to remember are the key drivers to stocks.
Oil — bullish
Junk bonds — bullish
Leverage Loans — okay, not great, but still semi-bullish
Technicals of stocks — great
Remember to ensure participation by tethering (extra Bogged) your portfolio to the market. This means you should not own bullshit micro-caps or any stocks with negative correlations to the market. Go with the sheep; they know where the tall grass is hidden — quite delicious and nutritious.
Heading into next week, the only thing that can change my mind is an Apple warning. This is earnings warning season, so be on guard for that. I’ll be closing out my Quant portfolio for March, a supreme winner. Final stats will be posted on Monday. For the month of April, I will be allocating half into value stocks, and also TLT. I am doing this against my better judgement. This is what the strategy says I should do — so I won’t fight it.
I want to see if oil can accelerate into the $60’s, and if gold will continue to break lower. I am heavily long NUGT, and several frackers in my trading account and like both — but will quickly sell them if the trends flag. These are not tightly correlated to the overall market. The Nasdaq can run 5% next week and I can lose money in frackers and gold. This is what I’m saying about owning stocks tightly correlated to the market.
Own larger cap stocks, preferably in tech or healthcare, for optimal performance.
Time to go clean to the olde garage.
Ciao.
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People aren’t worried enough to hold cash…yet…apparantly. So yeah. Higher would be my call.
But I think that call is more dicey than it seems.
“I say,” Jadwin observed, “I saw an old fellow outside in your customers’ room just now that put me in mind of Hargus. You remember that deal of his, the one he tried to swing before he died. Oh—how long ago was that? Bless my soul, that must have been fifteen, yes twenty years ago.”
The deal of which Jadwin spoke was the legendary operation of the Board of Trade—a mammoth corner in September wheat, manipulated by this same Hargus, a millionaire, who had tripled his fortune by the corner, and had lost it by some chicanery on the part of his associate before another year. He had run wheat up to nearly two dollars, had been in his day a king all-powerful. Since then all deals had been spoken of in terms of the Hargus affair. Speculators said, “It was almost as bad as the Hargus deal.” “It was like the Hargus smash.” “It was as big a thing as the Hargus corner.” Hargus had become a sort of creature of legends, mythical, heroic, transfigured in the glory of his millions.
“Easily twenty years ago,” continued Jadwin. “If Hargus could come to life now, he’d be surprised at the difference in the way we do business these days. Twenty years. Yes, it’s all of that. I declare, Sam, we’re getting old, aren’t we?”
“I guess that was Hargus you saw out there,” answered the broker. “He’s not dead. Old fellow in a stove-pipe and greasy frock coat? Yes, that’s Hargus.”
“What!” exclaimed Jadwin. “That Hargus?”
“Of course it was. He comes ’round every day. The clerks give him a dollar every now and then.”
“And he’s not dead? And that was Hargus, that wretched, broken—whew! I don’t want to think of it, Sam!” And Jadwin, taken all aback, sat for a moment speechless.
“Yes, sir,” muttered the broker grimly, “that was Hargus.”
There was a long silence.
Jadwin stood there in the centre of the others, hatless, his face pale, his eyes congested with blood. Gretry fronted him, one hand upon his arm. In the remainder of the group Landry recognised the senior clerk of the office, one of the heads of a great banking house, and a couple of other men—confidential agents, who had helped to manipulate the great corner.
“But you can’t,” Gretry was exclaiming. “You can’t; don’t you see we can’t meet our margin calls? It’s the end of the game. You’ve got no more money.”
“It’s a lie!” Never so long as he lived did Landry forget the voice in which Jadwin cried the words: “It’s a lie! Keep on buying, I tell you. Take all they’ll offer. I tell you we’ll touch the two dollar mark before noon.”
“Not another order goes up to that floor,” retorted Gretry. “Why, J., ask any of these gentlemen here. They’ll tell you.”
“It’s useless, Mr. Jadwin,” said the banker, quietly. “You were practically beaten two days ago.”
“Mr. Jadwin,” pleaded the senior clerk, “for God’s sake listen to reason. Our firm—”
But Jadwin was beyond all appeal. He threw off Gretry’s hand.
“Your firm, your firm—you’ve been cowards from the start. I know you, I know you. You have sold me out. Crookes has bought you. Get out of my way!” he shouted. “Get out of my way! Do you hear? I’ll play my hand alone from now on.”
“J., old man—why—see here, man,” Gretry implored, still holding him by the arm; “here, where are you going?”
Jadwin’s voice rang like a trumpet call:
“Into the Pit.”
“Look here—wait—here. Hold him back, gentlemen. He don’t know what he’s about.”
“If you won’t execute my orders, I’ll act myself. I’m going into the Pit, I tell you.”
“J., you’re mad, old fellow. You’re ruined—don’t you understand?—you’re ruined.”
“Then God curse you, Sam Gretry, for the man who failed me in a crisis.” And as he spoke Curtis Jadwin struck the broker full in the face.
Gretry staggered back from the blow, catching at the edge of his desk. His pale face flashed to crimson for an instant, his fists clinched; then his hands fell to his sides.
“No,” he said, “let him go, let him go. The man is merely mad.”
But, Jadwin, struggling for a second in the midst of the group that tried to hold him, suddenly flung off the restraining clasps, thrust the men to one side, and rushed from the room.
Gretry dropped into his chair before his desk.
“It’s the end,” he said, simply.
“Well,” said Jadwin, rubbing the fog from the window pane of the door, “look your last at the old place, Laura. You’ll never see it again.”
But she would not look.
“No, no,” she said. “I’ll look at you, dearest, at you, and our future, which is to be happier than any years we have ever known.”
Jadwin did not answer other than by taking her hand in his, and in silence they drove through the city towards the train that was to carry them to the new life. A phase of the existences of each was closed definitely. The great corner was a thing of the past; the great corner with the long train of disasters its collapse had started. The great failure had precipitated smaller failures, and the aggregate of smaller failures had pulled down one business house after another. For weeks afterward, the successive crashes were like the shock and reverberation of undermined buildings toppling to their ruin. An important bank had suspended payment, and hundreds of depositors had found their little fortunes swept away. The ramifications of the catastrophe were unbelievable. The whole tone of financial affairs seemed changed. Money was “tight” again, credit was withdrawn. The business world began to speak of hard times, once more.
But Laura would not admit her husband was in any way to blame. He had suffered, too. She repeated to herself his words, again and again:
“The wheat cornered itself. I simply stood between two sets of circumstances. The wheat cornered me, not I the wheat.”
And all those millions and millions of bushels of Wheat were gone now. The Wheat that had killed Cressler, that had ingulfed Jadwin’s fortune and all but unseated reason itself; the Wheat that had intervened like a great torrent to drag her husband from her side and drown him in the roaring vortices of the Pit, had passed on, resistless, along its ordered and predetermined courses from West to East? like a vast Titanic flood, had passed, leaving Death and Ruin in its wake, but bearing Life and Prosperity to the crowded cities and centres of Europe.
Frank Norris postin’ on a Saturday afternoon …
Thank you for these. Awesome. 1901 – shame he died at 32 …
I bet you $5 that record highs won’t bee seen before Easter 2021?
Sorry, Helen. I’ve already bet my limit. But if it doesn’t happen this year then Easter 2023 is my guess.