The January Price Shock Nobody's Pricing In
My neighbor runs several small businesses in Chicago. Good guy. Really good friend. We text all day long. Yesterday, he told me something terrifying. He's been talking to his friends who own small businesses: cleaning, plumbing, real estate… They're all saying the same thing: This is the last year they can keep prices contained. As…
Do You Want to Get Punched in the Face?
I take my daughter to the dojo three nights a week. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. Karate lessons. She's twelve now and getting serious about it. The sensei is a stud. Six foot four. Second degree black belt. Great guy. Really knows his stuff. Every month they give the kids a word to learn. A principle to…
Why Block Dropped 17% on a 100% Earnings Beat
Block reported earnings yesterday…and CRUSHED it: Fifty-four cents per share against a 25-cent estimate. The stock dropped 17%. You might think that's irrational. I'm telling you it's the most rational thing the market has done in months. Everyone celebrates the beat…The algorithms are reading something else entirely. They're measuring transaction volume. Payment processing velocity. Consumer…
Why Algorithms Are Rotating to Shorts at 6550
The Fed's quarterly interest payments just went vertical. Not rising steadily. Vertical. Logarithmic. The kind of exponential curve that appears right before systems break. Since 2008, their debt service has compounded at rates that would bankrupt any private company. But the Fed isn't a private company. They can print money to service debt…until suddenly they…
When Momentum and Trend Disagree, Your Account Gets Destroyed
Intel rallied four dollars in a single day last month... Every technical indicator screamed overbought: RSI hit 80 MACD extended Price stretched far above moving averages. So you shorted it...And the stock ripped another six dollars against you over the next week. You focused on momentum while ignoring trend. When these two forces disagree, you're…
The Market Broke Today (But Not Where It Matters)
The S&P dropped 40 points this morning. Norwegian Cruise Lines cratered 13% despite beating earnings. Palantir got demolished. Uber broke its algorithmic channel. Even the dippers hesitated for the first time in months. Every technical indicator on the daily chart flashed red. RSI rolled over. MACD crossed negative. Money flow reversed. The momentum that carried…
The Amplitude Wave That Will Crush Your Account
When you turned on the radio as a kid, you had two dial settings. AM and FM. AM stands for amplitude modulation. It's a signal compression technique where electronic waves cycle between maximum and minimum boundaries. The wave expands to peak amplitude. Then it contracts to minimum. Then it expands again. The S&P 500 follows…
Weekend Editorial: The $27,000 Problem
My wife came home from the doctor this week. Annual mammogram. Routine checkup. She had a benign form of breast cancer three years ago. Got treated. Got through it. Now she goes every year like clockwork. She walked in complaining about the bill. The copay. The deductible. The out-of-pocket costs that keep climbing no matter…
Why I Just Bought the Most Hated Stock in Retail
Lululemon collapsed from $516 to $165 in two years. Everyone dumped it. Money managers rotated out during quarter-end window dressing. Retail traders avoided it because the chart looked like death. I stepped in and bought 50 shares at $165. Not because I love yoga pants. Not because I'm bullish on retail. Because the math stopped…
We’re Running Out of Market Fuel
The Fed cut rates by 25 basis points yesterday. I don’t care. Because underneath that celebration, two Fed governors dissented. They're raising doubts about cutting again in December. That matters more than you realize. Markets aren’t running on fundamentals or technicals right now. They’re running on fuel. And the Fed just signaled they're running out. …