[Note: This material is for educational and entertainment purposes only. It does not recommend investments of any kind. Use a professional and licensed advisor or broker when making investment decisions]   In the last few days, I have read articles on marketwatch.com, a Wall Street Journal site, that have done well to explain why stocks are where they are. We are into uncharted territory again–well it can’t be “again” and “uncharted territory” at the same time, but it’s new so perhaps “everything old is new again.”In order to make sense of the current market environment, I have to reflect back on the environment of the Tech Bubble in 2000. I was working a trade desk and right in the middle of the mania—the insanity of

[Note:  This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Investment decisions should be made with the help of a professional.] In my most recent “Markets” post (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/the-boy-who-called-wolf-was-right-just-when-everyone-stopped-listening), I offered two different charts and trendlines as  key support levels. The second level (5-yr chart) held, and the resultant bounce from the 4100 level sparked the market’s greatest November rise in decades, driving indexes near to the old highs of a year ago (see 6-month chart below). There are at least three reasons for the “upward crash”: Many sophisticated market players had bet on the market to go down and sold short (“buy low, sell high” but first borrow stock then sell it. They then buy later—-and preferably lower–to return the borrowed shares and pocket the

[Authors Note–Please Read: This piece is for education and entertainment only. ] I am not the boy who cried “Wolf!” –Besides, one wolf does not a disaster make. Actually, I like wolves; they are beautiful, intelligent and have complex social structures. They work together hunting and caring for the pups. Many of the First Peoples’ cosmologies depict the wolf as an important fellow traveler  who has suffered a fate not unlike their own: misunderstood, removed, contained, and demonized (as exhibited by the folktale in the case of the wolf). [By the way, I am reviewing a series about the Navajo  called “Dark Winds” in the Movies section of this blog.] In this early phase of AI, this age of robo-advisors, and investment professionals who only

[NOTE: This material does not represent investment advice in any way. It is for educational purposes only. Investing is personal. See your investment guru before making decisions.]   ABOUT 40 YEARS AGO, while spending time in France after college, I hitchhiked south to Madrid to visit my Aunt and cousins.  While I did experience the Prado and the Guernica there, I also attended a bullfight at the Plaza del Toros.  I bring this up because a bullfight, while arguably brutal,  is a pageant and there is a process about it. A matador does not enter the ring prepared to face a fresh fighting bull. The bull is systematically weakened by picadors on horseback who spear the animal’s neck and shoulder muscles to reduce its ability

  [Note: This material is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Discuss your specific risk-tolerances, needs and strategies with an investment professional] ANY STOCK MARKET–even the over-supported and resilient US stock market–will sooner or later see to it that every successful trading or investment strategy fails miserably.  Right now, there’s a good chance that “buying the dips” and other bullish strategies will fall from fashion in the coming months.  This may also include investments in intangible or digital properties or currencies or meme stocks that became a source of easy wealth for millions of investors–most of whom aren’t aware that markets can go down or that value is not derived from a message board or chat thread. A former colleague of mine, Peter H. (R.I.P

[Note: this material is for educational and entertainment purposes only]   STOCK MARKET MANIAS are like champions in their fields: they do not go down without a fight. In August of 2020, I posted how the current  extended mania or “super bubble” represents decades of Federal Reserve Bank policies that led to a stock market seemingly incapable of falling for any stretch of time (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/a-mania-to-rule-them-all/). The explanations for its longevity range from conspiracy theories to mass psychology to economic science: It is a self-fulfilling prophecy and a vicious cycle; no one sells because they are continually rewarded for buying and holding shares It is “propped up” by $1.4 trillion in QE per year (12 times $120 billion/month) and ZIRP or “zero-interest rate policy” at the

    THE PRESENT has the unique quality of being so imposing–so suddenly familiar–that despite more surreal or otherworldly events that history will deem “tumultuous” or “cataclysmic,” people never quite view themselves as living in a time of great change. Of all the happenings in the US that have broken the rules of logic, sanity,  or even common sense in recent years–and they are legion–one stands out to me. But first, I am going to list things that, twenty years ago, I would have sworn could never happen in the US during my lifetime: The US electoral system elected a “reality” TV show star who had filed for bankruptcy a number of times, had no political experience, and claimed to never read books. He also

[Note: This content is for educational and entertainment purposes only. Consult a professional before making or changing investments.] Did the Coal-Mine Canary Just Byte the Dust?  NOTHING EXEMPLIFIES today’s progressive abstraction of reality and value  better than bitcoin–or say better than cryptocurrencies (bitcoin is the largest of many).   Over the last few hundred years, systems for a medium of exchange (and store of value, etc.) went from physical gold and silver coins to paper currency (notes) that did represent some quantity of a valued commodity (e.g. pound sterling or gold standard US dollar) to a completely confidence-based currency (“fiat” currency e.g. most world currencies today) to bitcoin (a unique algorithm among a finite supply of them). As I looked back on the economics class I

[Authors Note: This material is for entertainment and educational purposes only. Consult an investment professional about your personal investment needs and preferences for risk] I HAVE BEEN AN AVID OBSERVER  for thirty years as markets have made their seemingly inexorable rise despite manias and crashes and soaring national debt. I read about historical markets and the concomitant calamities and mostly booming recoveries therefrom.  I wish I had a dollar for every conspiracy theory and every method of prediction or forecasting I have come across. I even had a financial radio show in 2005-6. All of my guests–many of them prestigious–predicted the crash to come, though two years early.  The current market condition–like much of what else has happened in the last five years–continues to have

  ONLY TWO WEEKS AGO, when I posted The Sun, the Moon, and the Truth (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/1838-2/), it hadn’t occurred to me that the financial sector might slip in at the back of the alternate reality parade and march into make-believe with other swarms of society.  In hindsight, there was already a “mania for the ages” in progress (https://www.moviesmarketsandmore.com/a-mania-to-rule-them-all/), and what is a mania if not an alternate reality and a distortion of truth–in this case truth as value?  One source I trust cited a pandemic-induced surge in day-trading as a source of fuel for the markets (most day-traders play the “long” side only–they are buyers who follow an uptrend or  “momentum traders.”).  This surely helps to explain the near vertical rise in the S&P500 index