Since my foray into taking unsolicited stock advice from friends who didn’t do well. I listen, but verify it from the way I look at things, in my humble manner.

So on this beautiful Sunday, after speaking to my parents (did you call them?), here are some thoughts.

First, call your parents. Let's just say a miracle happened with my in-laws today, and nothing else really matters.

Now back to some back-of-the-napkin thinking:

During any bull market, that is a period of time where amazing gains for those who risked a few dollars, some areas don’t do well.

Like software stocks that have crashed 20-60%

So if you hear people talking about the 2000 tech crash, well, it already happened to the winners of that era! Just not the indexes.

So that means some investors have already entered bear-market territory.

And maybe institutions that have the big money miscalculated and threw the baby with the bathwater.

So who am I not to have a quick peek?

Besides stock charts that may show some pause in the sell-off

Here are three other things to look at:

1. Is it trading higher/lower than the popular indexes like Sp500 or Nasdaq100

2. What’s their growth picture looking like? Let's use the PEG ratio.

3. Compelling story

Looking at #1, I didn’t realize that it is not part of the Nasdaq-100 because it trades on the NYSE. That alone may reduce demand.

Look at the advance/decline of the Nasdaq 100 and notice its current highs, but not the SP500 (not shown)

So what’s its growth? PEG ratio… which is simply the Price to Earnings of the stock divided by its expected growth rate.

P/E is static. And the growth rate is yours, management’s, or some analysts’ opinion of their bright future.

Back-of-the-napkin math using a 60 P/E and 15% annual growth says that growth never ends.

The math is fine if the story holds beyond the 8-year window. If growth decelerates to 10% in year 9, the multiple collapses and the return are punishing regardless of what happened in years 1–8.

So, at conservative metrics, don’t touch.

This is where some “color” on the growth could help, and where social media and the old-guard newspapers may shed some light.

WSJ interviews the CEO who most definitely wears his sunglasses at night.

https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/servicenow-ceo-builds-new-business-model-around-ai-3c103d86

Insiders and the President are buying

(Don’t ask me how the President has time to buy stock, no idea)

Barrons had a nice technical picture on the company

https://www.barrons.com/articles/servicenow-adobe-software-tech-stocks-1e3ba05b?adobe_mc=MCMID%3D34682638095657428643442342877214847942%7CMCORGID%3DCB68E4BA55144CAA0A4C98A5%2540AdobeOrg%7CTS%3D1779627103&_gl=1*18wlsp5*_gcl_au*MTM4NjM3NTczOC4xNzc3OTAyMTQ4*_ga*NzA4Njk3MDQuMTc3NzkwMjE0OA..

And this account shows some very positive growth picture

I saw a 60 p/e, but maybe the forward p/e is 21.

If so, it’s really cheap like this guy is saying.

Since this company is huge and vast, and on “sale,” this is a company that most definitely will participate in the rally once investors begin realizing that AI won’t replace software.

Now if that doesn’t occur, I think the market will price it in to reliable earnings and not growth. That’s why the uptrend is broken.

Loss of pricing power does this, but if things are revaluated as my banker friend assumes, it’s going to do very well.

Have an opinion?

Share it in chat, love to hear.

Make it a wonderful afternoon

Eric

If I didn’t read it out loud or didn’t skim-read the article, then it’s not shared here.

I hope to start my podcast again and share how I imagine the writers use their words.

It is one reason I paused my book club: reading aloud one time doesn’t mean I understand what was said. So it’s actually time-consuming to read and digest a more dense, yet well-written, prose on what makes up a currency.

And I don’t care who you are…

JR Tolken, Scott Bessent, or AOC

What makes up the value of our currency excites anyone. But it has to be in the right frame of mind and with the right intonation.

Since when has Europe been united?

What will the wealthy spend money and value their time with?

AI and the economy that supports it are not understood. This post, without help, gave me some stock tips and some understanding of the companies and their history.

With AI, I was able to better understand the images and the companies. It’ll probably take me another week to finish the article. Don’t worry about reading everything; focus on what matters and get it down pat.

I prefer an article to book marketing “cheat sheets” so I can understand the thinking process.

Fabian's Substack

Untangled

Dear visitor, by reading this article, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to the disclaimer outlined on this Substack…

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15 days ago · 27 likes · 2 comments · Fabian

Throughout the country, the business executives are acting”now” as the adults in the room, but to whom?

The people in power don’t care what they have to say, and the ones in business vote with their feet.

Who are they speaking to?

Trump embraces Unions, and wouldn’t it be funny if Unions became Republicans?

In theory, Unions are great. Since we outsource all business, we outsource our labor to a union and negotiate with one representative.

While I don’t exactly agree that our debt and bond market is out of hand, but I can’t rule out being wildly wrong on this one. This is a good thought piece:

QTR’s Fringe Finance

The Bond Market Is About To Break Washington

The bond market is beginning to force reality onto Washington, and it may ultimately force an end to the Iran war long before politicians or diplomats are willing to admit it…

Read more

5 days ago · 232 likes · 26 comments · Quoth the Raven

The old Anglosphere used to carve up nations like they were cheese, so who's to say it won’t happen again?

Will Trump trade Taiwan for Cuba and Venezuela? Cubans and Venezuelans are very educated.

The Rod Martin Report

Cuba is America's Taiwan

This analysis is free, but with Premium Membership you get MORE. Join today…

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9 days ago · 43 likes · 7 comments · Guest Author

What makes the news? Here is how fear over logic takes hold and how not to get sucked in. Zerohedge mentioned this writer…

Trust the Evidence

The News-to-Death Ratio Strikes Again

There is a peculiar arithmetic that governs modern health reporting, one that has very little to do with actual risk. Hans Rosling captured it neatly during the 2009 swine flu episode, when he calcul…

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18 days ago · 121 likes · 19 comments · Carl Heneghan and Tom Jefferson

And let’s end it today with 65 great quotes.

A great quote, to me, is not a sound bite but actionable intelligence on something that is a roadblock to getting you to where you want to go.

The Honest Broker

65 of My Favorite Quotations

Some time ago, I shared a list of favorite quotations—suitable for all occasions. I’m finally getting around to publishing the second installment…

Read more

4 days ago · 256 likes · 48 comments · Ted Gioia

I probably missed a handful to share so pardon me as I learn to communicate myself with readers new and old.

Spend Saturday with meaning, you aren’t going to be able to take it with you

Eric

And with the digital age, my limited time, and the flood of saves and bookmarks on my account, I would like to add one to this wonderful filter that I learned from Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons (the longest-running sitcom, either animated or not)

Groening's rule:

If you won't say it out loud to another person, delete it

Stop and say things out loud in your social media stream. Instead of listening to a podcast, make what you read and think about come alive.

If you aren’t willing to breathe it, then it’s probably not worth your time.

Try it, and you’ll see how hard it is.

When you start to talk, you’ll want to start talking to other people, and then all of a sudden, you get a network going.

So where did I learn this? From a documentary on Groening’s favorite comic anti-hero and inspiration for Homer’s bald hair.

Reid Fleming World’s Toughest Milkman

Don’t worry if you haven’t heard of him; no one has, and that’s the reason for the documentary to get the word out.

If you had happened to see the strip and flip through it, you most likely would have passed. It didn’t come alive, at least to me.

But when I saw the documentary and heard the backstory and the famous celebrities say the words on the page out loud, it clicked.

They made it come alive, unique to each of them.

The irony is, I can’t find Matt Groening getting into character, and yet I swear that I did. But he is the reason I watched the documentary, so he gets the credit for pulling me in.

After watching this clip, look at who was attached to be in a movie of this character?

With each one of these actors, you can 100% hear their voice in your head. Very unique.

It’s time I argue that we stop allowing other voices in our heads and start creating our own.

When you read out boring text, you will quickly know if it truly is. And what is supposed to be amazing doesn’t sound that good in reality.

It’s like reading a book to your son, but now to ourselves.

Our generation has grown dumber, so getting us out of our mess will require some one-on-one time with yourself and a good book to kick-start your imagination.

Instead of running a 10k, try reading one.

Eric

Everyone laughed at this pop star falling to earth as if they didn’t have weaknesses, and more than that, they overlooked how George was caught through entrapment by the popo.

This is the exact situation that plays out in IPOs and, before that, in SPAC land.

This is an additional monthly indicator to see what’s hot in the marketplace and what is most definitely overpriced and sizzling.

So what is an IPO?

It’s when big banks and corporations, and Chamath Palihapitiya, get together and take businesses public for as much as the public will be willing to pay for the TAM (total addressable market) of it.

Not the real value, but the total and maximum it can have in the future.

The game is how high will it go before you get off the train. That’s it.

Many just trade it for one day and get out.

We will be seeing the biggest IPO of them all with Elon Musk’s SpaceX with ChatGPT and Anthropic a distant second.

Space has an allure for investors and is a perfect match between expectations and reality.

I mentioned Chamath Palihapitiya earlier as the pre-COVID market topped on SPAC (a compliance-light IPO) issuance, and where he was the king of them, selling space travel through Virgin Space.

When the stock collapsed, he told the disgruntled investors it was a tax write-off.

And that is indeed what IPOs are: tax write-offs.

But you can use other people’s manic desire to learn and observe the overall market's health and the period we are in.

Like margin debt, this is another area of hot money to observe and see how the results play out.

You can download this PDF plus more data by clicking the image.

No one is saying it’s a scam, but Wall Street knows your sin and they will definitely provide a service you so desire.

All documented in triplicate and looked over by the sharpest legal minds on the beat.

It’s a gamble for sure, but the speculation is in using the data to skew the results in your favor.

Have a great Thursday afternoon,

Eric

PS. If you like my content subscribe, I’m finishing up some usable booklets for your own reference and lots of other wonderful stuff on tap.

The markets and the headlines began to reflect that reality.

Another indicator is how much margin investors take to buy stocks. It’s the equity version of home flipping.

You are using the bank's money to turn profits quickly.

Here is a headline you may have seen but overlooked.

It’s saying that a possible top is in order when Koreans are betting it all on higher prices.

Of course, the data in Korea is much less euphoric than in USA

The Korean market, after crashing last year, rallied 350% and hasn’t done anything for 16 years.

The headline to me with this chart says that Koreans are sensing an economic turn around.

Now, if we JUST look at the SP500 to margin debt in the USA, it definitely doesn’t look healthy.

https://en.macromicro.me/charts/415/us-margin-debt

But it does say that if the trend of debt drifts high, the market tends to commensurate.

And, of course, vice versa.

This is a chart no one really talks about, and you can’t play games with this data. So watch the trends to see where it may lead.

I do feel that while people pick stocks, you gotta kind of know where the money will flow to in order to elevate your stock holdings

Make it an insightful Wednesday. I’ll be dealing with two teens in the back of my car for 10 hours.

Eric

If the stock market goes up but our purchasing power goes down, maybe the stock market is just a place where folks are playing the monetary version of hot potato?

Speaking of potatoes, no one is a farmer anymore. No one is an industrialist. We are all playing monetary games.

It’s the only thing I can think of why we have the luxury of ideas that don’t tend to make a country great or sustainable.

So my second question is: Is the market in bubble territory?

It sure looks like one

If you look at the news and a regular chart of the SP500 or Nasdaq, the price has only one way to go.

And even the President is getting in on the action, if judged by recent news reports:

But it’s not priced in physical assets, like Gold

Despite what Benjamin Graham and others want, gold doesn’t seem to be disappearing from our notion of value. Gold truly has intrinsic value.

Gold has tended to do a good job in reflecting true government data, inflation, fear, and geopolitics.

Look at this chart of the Dow Jones Industrial Average…the longest-running stock index worldwide, and makes up 30 of the largest corporations in the USA.

Until recently, all TRUE stock market peaks (in recent memory) occurred when gold was undervalued. The ensuing years led to a recession and true uncertainty.

A true stock market peak is different than a monetary stock market peak, where monetary stimulus and hot air by Silicon Valley and the media help spark the mania.

A true stock market peak is when real companies are priced above perfection and take a while to return to normal. You know a true stock market peak because those companies are still with us today (just look back and you’ll see). While monetary leaders tend to go extinct.

We have bastardized our labor force, our population growth, and slipped poison into our education system. The only way out is for our wonderful machines, made up of binary code (0/1), to be objective truth-finders in any science, so we can get back to being a great social and economic force.

A real bubble is when the majority doesn’t realize we are in one. We are experiencing trauma from monetary booms and busts.

If the uptrend from the 1900s breaks, just focus on commodities. It won’t matter what stock you pick since they’ll underperform hard assets.

Until then, we are still in a 100-year bull market and at record highs, but not bubble highs.

Be optimistic (just not overleveraged)

And what if China? Korea? And the USA kick-start a global bull market altogether? Have we truly seen anything like it?

Eric

I didn’t know what I was looking at initially, then I realized it’s a parody of the gigachad white man

According to ChatGPT, the Chinese version is attempting to communicate that:

China can sit back while the U.S.:

• overreacts,

• fights internally,

• prints money,

• changes policy every 4 years,

• gets distracted by social/media drama,

• or exhausts itself geopolitically.

Meanwhile, China is portrayed as:

• patient,

• strategic,

• manufacturing-focused,

• thinking in decades instead of election cycles.

So the humor is:

“America is sprinting around chaotically… and China thinks it can win simply by waiting.”

Even patriotic, Jack Posobiec, part of the media that is more favorable to Trump, shares the contrasting negotiation tactics:

Let’s break it down from a different view of geography:

Buffett and Xi are country folks. Cold-hearted, but homespun. They are both the image of patience and compounding.

Buffett worked in New York once with the legendary Benjamin Graham and then went back home to start a hedge fund.

Xi spent time in America as a lad, but never in New York.

From the mightiest US company that owns boring stuff to the Chairman of a vast country with thousands of years of history, change is not something you want.

You want everything as it was, and compound growth and power.

Dr. John Rutledge said it plainly: “China thinks in centuries. Americans think in soundbites.”

The meme’s point is tight. America overreacts, prints money, fights itself, and flips policy every four years. China waits.

Beautiful thesis.

And makes a lot of sense since the mightiest US company (Berkshire), which owns boring stuff, to the Chairman of a vast country with 1000s of years of history, change is not something you want.

You want everything to be as it was, with things compounding growth and power.

Yes, a wonderful wish, but it does not reflect the reality of our universe

Nor how the US keeps growing. The more the US looks like a mess, the more powerful it is.

Conflict is what keeps the US together.

Peace, Hosseinas, and Utopia will never exist in this country that has the right to pursue happiness.

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

-Thomas Jefferson (the writer of the Declaration of Independence)

Thomas Jefferson knew this when he became a New Yorker as Secretary of State to George Washington, because any New Yorker knows, since it was known as New Amsterdam, that anything can change in a New York minute, and why, despite it all, it hasn’t fallen into a ball of flame with all the incessant corruption.

Peter Navarro, a famous economist and advisor to Trump, dubbed Trump’s quick manner as “Trump Speed,” but it’s really how any successful New Yorker moves, and I guess why even the head of Citadel is remiss to move completely out of the city.

Buffett and Xi are playing basketball like they are up 20 points and can coast over the opponent without realizing the opponent is going to outhustle them and beat them at the buzzer.

Just observe New York professional sports to see what’s up

The world is living in socialist times, while our White House is moving in a New York minute.

Anything can happen, you realize…

in a New York minute

The irony is that Buffett, the patient country gentleman, owns shares in the institution that most embodies New York's belief in its own permanence.

I just don’t believe the NY Times, nor New York, has the monopoly-esque location that the Washington Post of yore did.

The Gray Lady and its readership forgot their relationship with each other.

With a new generation, and New York possibly losing its dominance, the NY Times could crash in stock price, especially if the lawsuits and accusations of treason by the President amount to anything

In particular, this company, as Buffett owns shares of the NY Times, and he is not a fan of the current resident of the White House.

Regardless, shouldn’t there be a discount for this risk?

Do you really believe it should trade at wild all-time highs?

There may be cheap puts to buy if a market crash occurs. Lets watch and see

I’ll conclude with a comment by Stonewall Jackson, who was the great leader of the Confederacy, who, despite the odds, held his ground. You can’t think in centuries when the man, your enemy, is about to defeat you.

The question I wonder is if he understands that he is schizophrenic?

Many investors exhibit this pattern:

Experienced to novices

They want to participate in legendary bull markets but are afraid to get burned, so they wait it out until some kind of top forms and get in…

stocks that are considered “blue chips” but are trading at 52-week lows, and pay a nice dividend.

What we refer to as dogs.

The growth and momentum investors focus on the horses. The prime breed.

The reason I refer to this investor as two-faced is that the allure of safety and a 5% dividend is the same mania that has investors clamoring for a trillion-dollar company that will go up higher than the day before.

Same race, different animal.

My banker friend is wonderful, and he will succeed in his investments, but I argue: what is the point of being sadomasochistic about companies whose heyday is behind them and building a portfolio around them?

Nike, Pfizer, Campbell’s, Kraft Heinz, etc

Are they truly low risk?

While I am not the biggest fan of making predictions, I am a fan of finding the lowest risk investment on any given day and build a portfolio around that.

I do like dividends, though

(who doesn’t?)

But there is an art to it.

The art isn’t finding a 5% yield. It’s knowing which 5% is a gift and which one is a sinkhole.

The basics are covered wonderfully and are worth the price of a subscription to WSJ.com

If you follow me or read my post, I have shared a few insights over time.

Subscribe, and I’ll share with you what I have learned about dividend yield investing. With the markets trading at all time highs, why not have a friendly voice in your head?

If you are not aware, Shaquille O’Neal made a phenomenal investment in Google before it became public and forgot that he owned it until years later.

The news media, from time to time, likes to share this about his luck and acumen. Here is the gist of it:

The way I reinterpret this is that he was alert to his surroundings and found something that interested him by observing what interests others.

Part 2 - He invested and forgot.

The press implies here that Shaq is a brilliant observer of opportunity and doesn’t need the money, “forgetting” about his investment.

I can easily say that let's hear about his duds and how they came about. Maybe he “remembered” his investment when seeing all the crap he bought. Like a one-man Softbank.

If we only hear about the winners, we have no context for his investment outlook.

Nevertheless, what this can teach you is probably better than any Warren Buffett interview you can find online.

What is it saying?

1. Observe what people are interested in and what may interest you. And

2. Do it before you see it on TV

3. When you invest, no point in looking at the price swings daily

It’s that simple.

What’s not simple is the amount of tme for it to play out which is why I write, he goes on TV as sports, others play golf,

So #4 is do what you truly enjoy.

Hope your watching a great midnight movie as I will in a few,

Eric

But it also reflects a historical period filled with misinformation, as it is now. And bring to your attention that all that glimmers isn’t gold.

And, at the end of the day, to have a little faith. The idea of a country run by the people, and of the people, not by a King, and not be commiseriat, is truly a blessing for all of us.

There was a time I was at NYU, studying film. I dreamed every day of making the great American picture. I had talent, drive, and great ideas (some even lifted by some Hollywood greats).

But what I didn’t have was the social infrastructure to go with it.

The normal way of socializing through smoking, drinking, and parties was something I didn’t partake in. And Friday evenings, a great time to be alive in New York City, I was not out clubbing with my fellow artists.

And when I did, they didn’t want to talk about movies and cinema, but had a good time and much more memorable pleasures.

puts it best as he tends to:

A few drinks build bonds that kale smoothies never will.

There was a real estate developer who wanted to become a great man in the world, but first had to claw his way out of bankruptcy.

He was anything but a private individual. He had luck, yes. But more importantly, he had friends who understood the power of a room, a handshake, a dinner. Networking wasn’t a liability for him. It was oxygen. And his creditors understood that…

That man is now President of the United States.

And this week, our paths cross.

For the first time in 250 years, at a most opportune time, a sitting President has issued a proclamation that most Americans have never heard of nor celebrate: Sabbath.

From sundown May 15 to nightfall May 16, Trump called on friends, families, and communities of all backgrounds to come together in gratitude, recognizing the sacred Jewish tradition of setting aside time for rest, reflection, and gratitude to the Almighty.

He invoked Washington’s 1790 letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport, “none to make him afraid.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/05/jewish-american-heritage-month-2026/

You also probably missed that today, the mighty Arab countries lost their control over Jerusalem. In just six days.

Before that war, the headlines screamed that Israel was finished. Here is a headline from before the war; it may remind you of recent events.

(UAR is Egypt)

Here is the headline a few weeks later. Of course, our current state of affairs would call that into question.

(Even back then, there was a Vance, the more things change…)

Today, Jerusalem is, for some, a city of conflict (my AI thought that, which I am about to correct).

The opposite is true. It, in fact, follows what Psalm 122 calls “a city uniting all.”

It is the one city on earth where the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam stand within walking distance of each other and where all three faiths may worship.

Not perfectly. Not without tension. But the access exists.

Not before the 6-day war.

I know this firsthand, and the reporters misrepresenting the facts on the ground.

Once, I was sitting at a bar in Jerusalem, an actual bar, cold beer, people laughing (I do socializing during the week and fewer deadlines than college), and there was an entire crew of CNN reporters at the next table. Not with bulletproof vests but Tommy Bahamas.

I struck up a conversation and asked them the obvious question: " Why don’t you report this?

The happiness. The joy.

They walked away, avoiding any conversation.

As Method Man (and we’ll revisit him later) says:

That is the Jerusalem story nobody tells.

The conflict in Israel is real (play on words?).

But so is the bar.

So is the laughter.

So is the fact that the city is still standing, still open, still visited by millions who leave changed by it.

That is nothing. That is, in historical terms, almost miraculous.

And…to appreciate what that means, you need time to reflect. Which brings us back to Sabbath.

Charlie Kirk was no rabbi. He was a Conservative Christian who learned the Jewish Sabbath from his friendship with Dennis Prager and then wrote a book about it.

His final book was completed weeks before he was assassinated in September 2025. His last message to the world.

Stop, in the Name of God begins with his simple declaration: “I desire to bring all humanity back to God’s design to rest for an entire day.”

All humanity. Not just Jews. Not just Christians.

Kirk had initially resisted. “I have to raise $50 million a year and do three hours of radio a day,” he told his pastor. “I will honor God by working harder, not by resting for a day.”

Then he went back to his hotel room and looked up every Bible verse that mentioned the Sabbath. He never looked back.

“Every Friday night, I keep a Jewish Sabbath,” he said at a Turning Point event in January 2025. “I turn off my phone from Friday night to Saturday night. The world cannot reach me, and I get nothing from the world. It will bless you infinitely.”

“We live in a world of fractured minds, anxious hearts, and endless motion. But Sabbath is our rebellion. Our resistance. Our return. It is the declaration that we are not slaves, not to Egypt, not to Pharaoh, and not to Silicon Valley.

We are a free people. And free people rest.”

And it’s not just him. The wealthiest man that ever existed (I think), John D. Rockefeller, said it best:

“He who works all day has no time to make money.”

He also said: “I know of nothing more despicable and pathetic than a man who devotes all the hours of the waking day to the making of money for money’s sake.”

Of course, the reality is that, monetarily, most people just don’t see it that way, and yet at some point, we change what is valuable.

My father, as he got older, tried to step back from the seven-day grind. His competitors didn’t. They succeeded more on paper. I watched that happen. It stayed with me.

To succeed in America, you have to work and work hard. That is not in dispute. But the seven-day work week isn’t an ambition.

The richest man in American history knew the difference.

And if you think the seven-day week with one day of rest is merely custom, something any determined regime could simply overwrite, history has a sharp answer for you.

Kirk covers this in his book, and the record is unambiguous. In 1793, the French Revolution abolished the seven-day week entirely, replacing it with a ten-day cycle called the décade. The logic was clean: longer work stretches, more productivity, and the Catholic Church, whose entire social architecture rested on Sunday, was broken.

Workers now labored nine days before a rest. Church attendance was forbidden. The experiment was enormously unpopular (duh AI), and Napoleon abolished it entirely by 1806. Just for that, he was a great emperor.

Revolutionary rationalism cannot outlast the rhythms built into human beings.

The Soviets tried next. In 1929, Stalin introduced the nepreryvka, the “continuous working week”, a five-day cycle with staggered days off, color-coded so that no two family members rested on the same day.

The stated goal was maximum factory output. The real goal was the same as France’s: to eliminate the shared sacred day and, by extension, the community that forms around it.

The Nazis did not abolish the week. They tried something subtler and in some ways more insidious: they colonized it. Sunday became a vehicle for state propaganda and organized ideological leisure, hollowed of its sacred content and refilled with the regime’s.

Even Ozzy Osbourne knew it. Black Sabbath didn’t name themselves after a day of rest by accident, but named themselves after the thing that terrified the comfortable and the powerful.

The Sabbath, holy or unholy, has always been the most subversive day of the week.

Kind of reminds me of the COVID experiment and its ill-kept mission creep.

Again, three ideological systems,

revolutionary, communist, and fascist,

each took a run at the calendar.

Each was forced to retreat. There is something in the seven-day structure that does not bend to political will. Perhaps by chance.

I am not sure the distinction matters. What matters is that it did not break.

Now there is a film that makes this case better than any sermon could and funnier than anything I could have written myself (I am envious).

Bad Shabbos, directed by Daniel Robbins, a fellow NYU alum and Tribeca Film Festival Audience Award winner who deserved every bit of it, starring Kyra Sedgwick and Method Man.

Yes, Method Man. Which alone earns your two hours.

The premise is simple: an interfaith couple is about to have their parents meet for the first time over a Shabbat dinner on the Upper West Side when an accidental death gets in the way.

A kind of Four Weddings and a Funeral concept, but with Sabbath playing center stage.

Every single character except Method Man has a problem they cannot solve, a dilemma they cannot escape, a version of themselves they cannot face.

The comedy comes from the collision of ordinary human dysfunction with the one day that demands you stop. Shabbat doesn’t care about your unresolved issues. It shows up anyway.

Method Man is the only one who came prepared.

Everyone else is Odysseus on their journey (you know the Greek poem in the news over whether what Christopher Nolan did is sacrilegious).

Which brings me to the real point.

We are a culture obsessed with the long journey of self-discovery. Odysseus sailed for twenty years to get back to who he was. And after all that: the sirens, the cyclops, the gods playing games with his life we still can’t agree on what the story means.

Every generation gets a new translator.

A new cast. A new rewrite with a Feminist translator. The Coen Brothers reset him in the Depression-era South.

Someone else will come along and make him something else entirely. A lifetime of wandering, and other people still get to decide what you found.

The Sabbath is the opposite of that.

You don’t travel for twenty years to find yourself. You sit down on Friday night with the people you love, and you find yourself there (and guests we need those too).

Same table. Same candles. Same faces. Every single week. No sirens. No translator. No casting change. The reset is built into the calendar. The journey lasts one week, and it always ends at home.

That is what the movie understands and what makes it funny. The characters running from themselves aren’t villains. They are just people who forgot to stop.

Method Man, as the doorman with all the answers, and possibly Angel, remind them.

You may be Jewish (probably not). You may not observe a single religious practice in your life. None of that matters. Put the phone down on Friday night. Sit with the people you love. Eat something and be grateful.

That is the whole instruction. Kirk did it. Rockefeller understood it. A sitting President just proclaimed it.

And a very funny movie on Netflix and Amazon Prime just made it undeniable.

Watch Bad Shabbos. If you don’t love it, I’ll give you a free subscription.

Good Shabbos. Make it a reflective weekend,

Eric

No, this article is not about roasting him like Kevin Hart; it's about sharing some of our chat and maybe providing some insight.

It’s clear the view of the market is a casino, and he didn’t see blue-chip companies with +3% yield. He’s already wealthy, so he just wants something for a rainy day.

He even asked me for some ideas for 20 years down the road (something I’ll share in another post).

But today, he was interested in Nike. And I said the timing is good just look at the headline.

He was confused why this should be positive, and I said, because it’s not news. This is old news, and usually old news that shouldn’t be shocking is the one last gasp before a bottom.

He then mentioned Cleveland Cliff, which now owns AK Steel, which is located in JD Vance's hometown. The steel they make is highly precise and could finally see a rally if domestic demand begins to pick up.

Tractor Supply. Is it a barometer for the farming community? What other options are there than TSCO? Or was it self-harm when it took on political viewpoints completely opposite to those of their customers?

And, Huntington Bank, where he thinks it will be bought out, as the CEO has done nothing good for the bank?

I said why not options?

I don’t understand them.

What’s there to understand?

You think it’ll be higher in 2 years, why tie up your money?

I like seeing my stocks appreciate through dividend growth

But it won't grow if it’s bought out?

Regardless of my convictions, he’ll do what he wants to do, which makes markets. What we are watching in real time is hard to define, but generational in Trump’s trip to China with its cadre of business executives.

And the Clarity Act, the crypto legislation, is set to pass in a bipartisan manner.

With banks debanking Conservatives and possibly other shenanigans, this act is a rebuke to them and…

Bipartisan.

Our definition of money is being legally changed in front of our eyes, make no mistake that it’ll be essential to understand what a currency is.

And I’ll be updating, I hope, more of the book more often through the podcast. Along with that, I’m undertaking an adventure in business and AI that I hope you will find interesting.

Have a great evening,

Eric

Today, I share a few pages of it as Gold is starting to gain some strength and there is some currency volatility.

The book by Benjamin Graham and the surrounding influences are still very important and rarely discussed, so you are lucky to have me share some thoughts you may not have considered.

In the beginning, he questions his generation's value of Gold to establish and broaden the definition of what currency is and how to make more people on the planet prosperous.

Warren Buffett saw that through stock ownership, but everything “perfect” may need a challenger, or it won’t be for long.

We are seeing a lot of the built in value of AI in private hands and only now ready to be IPO

Maybe it’s not the lust of unimaginable wealth we are aiming for but a way to prevent our purchasing power from decreasing

I. The Absurd Opening: Sisyphus at the Bank of England

• Central banker pushing gold up the mountain of credibility

• Gold isn’t backing anything, but they keep buying it anyway

• The labor is pointless, but they must imagine themselves satisfied

• Setup: Man performs ritual divorced from its original meaning

II. The Stranger Observing the System

• Detached narrator notices something odd about gold’s privilege

• Everyone agrees gold is special, but when pressed, cannot say why

• “The sun was hot. The gold was heavy. Neither fact explained the other.”

• The acceptance without justification - society’s foundational absurdity

III. The Question That Should Not Be Asked

• Graham asks: “Why not other commodities?”

• This question is reasonable, therefore it is threatening

• Society’s answer: “Because that’s how it is.”

• The rebel’s burden: seeing clearly in a world that prefers fog

IV. The Myth of Monetary Stability

• Pounds don’t convert to gold. Gold fluctuates like platinum. Yet gold is “different.”

• The ceremony continues despite the meaning having died

• Like attending a funeral for a god no one believes in anymore

• But the ritual persists because stopping would require admitting the truth

V. The Condemned Man’s Lucidity

• Graham sees the mechanism: Bank issues currency → buys gold → stores it → repeat

• If this works for gold, it works for anything

• But admitting this destroys the mystique

• The executioner’s logic: we do this because we’ve always done this

VI. The Revolt: What if We Were Honest?

• Commodity basket as currency backing

• Not because commodities are sacred (nothing is sacred)

• But because the mechanism itself could create stability

• The absurd hero acts despite knowing the ultimate meaninglessness

VII. The Officials’ Panic

• “What about emergencies?” they ask

• Translation: What if we need to lie later?

• Graham: The emergency is when lying is most dangerous

• The establishment always demands the right to make exceptions

VIII. The Desert of Real Things

• Gold, wheat, copper - all equally arbitrary as money

• All equally real as constraints

• The difference: which constraint do humans want to submit to?

• In the desert, all mirages look the same until you try to drink them

IX. Waiting for the Proposal

• Part 2 begins: Graham will show his work

• The condemned man explains the mechanism of the guillotine

• Knowing how it works doesn’t make you less condemned

• But clarity is its own form of rebellion

X. The Absurd Conclusion

• We can’t eliminate human judgment

• We can only decide where to hide it

• Graham proposes transparency

• The world chooses comfortable darkness

• One must imagine Graham satisfied with having asked the question

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be. And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life, keep peace in your soul. With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Those carefully chosen words help in a confusing world. It’s a great poem and probably a lot deeper when you think about the important issues facing the US and the World.

The full poem HERE

We are certainly living in a time when the Joker is king. Why doesn’t pick up on it?

Batman would do a lot more service if he funded schools focused on civics, science, and History (as defined as reflecting what transpired vs. a tool to further an agenda)

One can only guess what Kool-Aid he is drinking, and he’s not the only one.

ONE

While Ben Affleck plays Batman in the movies, in real life, his boss was Harvey Weinstein, and his love for police officers is not so keen when his personal views of society are represented, TRUTH BE DAMNED, in the cinema.

Personally, a great entertainer, but I sure as hell don’t want to be taking personal relationship, gambling, drinking, and historical lessons from him.

TWO

Matt Damon is the segue into my next observation.

As the feature actor in the Odyssey, there is no way the movie overcomes his star presence. The story becomes Matt Damon in ancient Greece. So what exactly does he add to this entertainment vehicle beyond his own marquee?

This star-studded cast feels less like filmmaking and more like actors banding together to sign a petition for a cause they believe in but their audience does not.

Hollywood used to spend enormous energy on historical accuracy: period pieces, faithful translations, the weight of getting it right.

Mel Gibson not only worked on historical accuracy but also had actors who could have realistically existed during that time speak Aramaic. That energy hasn’t disappeared. It’s just been redirected. Now it’s spent getting it ideologically correct.

The WASP-looking Christopher Nolan, who fancies himself a tenured professor at Harvard, sans pipe, has decided the Odyssey is his legacy move.

Fine.

But we’re not getting mythological Greece. We’re getting mythological Greece, in common English, as filtered through Emily Wilson — a translator who took deliberate liberties with Homer, modernizing language, flattening heroism, de-romanticizing the original to better reflect her own framework.

The translator, who is worse than Google Translate, has openly stated her intent and subjective nature of her translation:

THREE

In a different arena and whose customers include Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, the founder of Starbucks, a former Presidential candidate who was strongly opposed to Trump, has now come out swinging with a Wall Street Journal op-ed criticizing Seattle’s socialist business climate.

Bold move, Howard.

Except Amazon already left.

The $148 million budget gap is already baked in.

The barn door has been open for years.

Imagine him as president, sheesh.

Better to be 3 hours early than 1 minute late

FOUR

South Korea may be onto something.

A form of Universal Basic Income

by taxing AI.

I thought this was a bad idea until I kept thinking about...

“If the product is free, you are the product.”

We are not slaves.

And while we have voluntarily surrendered privacy and plenty else, there is a concept called being ripped off.

At a certain point, taking over the world through the aggregate contribution of every human being on earth is not what anyone signed up for.

Our governments were not just asleep at the wheel. They were in on the graft.

Call it what you want, but not UBI.

It sounds Marxist, and it is a demeaning word for what is essentially owed restitution.

I predict that mankind will eventually file a class action lawsuit that will make the Big Tobacco settlement look like bubble gum money.

South Korea is asking out loud what most governments are too captured to ask: who owns the upside?

Market chaos as a reaction tells you everything

https://www.zerohedge.com/ai/could-resonate-globally-korea-sparks-market-chaos-ai-tax-threat

FIVE

I thought this was bad at first that even the CEO of UAL doesn’t like to fly United until

Byrne Hobart shared a tweet about Sam Walton. And something I haven’t done as I used to.

Study what works and what doesn’t work in your industry.

And don’t be afraid to get down on your knees and see for yourself.

UAL, in the realm of airlines, may have good management, actually.

SIX

Chinese spies and Jokers are everywhere.

Funny how under the current administration, we keep seeing more Chinese influence and outright spying inside the United States. Geiger Capital put it plainly: DEI, climate regulations, wealth taxes, soft-on-crime reforms, illegal immigration, and the anti-standardized test movement.

Policy by policy. From the inside.

The great show AMC got the spying right by the wrong country in the Americans

California mayor Eileen Wang. Charged. Pleading guilty.

To an oldie but goodie - Swalwell.

There is a reason the Japanese were interned during World War II. As unsavory as it was. After seeing what is occurring now, let’s step into our ancestors’ shoes before deciding what was right and wrong.

Then there was Wesley Edens, owner of the Milwaukee Bucks, blackmailed by a Chinese divorcee who slid into his LinkedIn DMs.

Do you really think he’s the only one?

A few prominent billionaires are married to Chinese women… is there something here?

Maybe some of those questionable decisions our leaders keep making aren’t entirely their own.

Which brings us to AOC, who, someone quips, keeps getting the French and American Revolutions mixed up. Maybe she believes she’s right.

Were her circle and educators influenced by the Chinese?

The men who financed the American Revolution were the billionaires of their time.

Make it an observational day.

Eric

It’s not a stock idea article but one to be aware of and think about…

There used to be a time in Boca Raton, Florida, when there was a hurricane discount if you had ever tried to buy a condo in Boca.

There’s always a ceiling on what the market will pay because somewhere in the back of every buyer’s mind sits the possibility that a Category 4 comes through, along with CNN and Anderson Cooper showing charts that the entire state will be submerged in water.

Of course, with the influx of citizens unhappy with their local politics and what their tax dollars get them, the price has bid up, with no discernible discounts for hurricanes.

South Korea has been trading with a version of that same discount for decades.

The existential dread of North Korea and an atom bomb sitting forty miles north of Seoul has always put a ceiling on what global capital was willing to pay for Korean equities.

I wrote recently about how explosive South Korea could be from here. We saw 300% in months, and that was after a crash and a presidential crisis.

Something happened this weekend in North Korea that I believe is very important and very overlooked.

And could help portend the success of the current White House’s agenda, its upcoming meeting in China, and the great potential in South Korea (and North).

Plus a few historical nuggets you may not have considered.

Realize that Kim Jong Un has watched recently as Trump plans his state visit to China:

1. Venezuela had a forced regime change

2. Iran totally obliterated

3. Russia and Ukraine are close to reconciling

4. Cuba being embargoed

5. Politicians, like Karen Bass, closely aligned with Cuba and communism are coming under heavy scrutiny

So he did what any sane leader would do to ensure his survival: he announced an automatic nuclear launch protocol known as the dead man’s switch.

.ie if leadership is eliminated, the missiles fly without anyone having to give the order.

What most people will hear: escalation.

Here’s what a cold-blooded analyst reads: deterrence doctrine.

In the not-so-distant past, Europe also had this existential dread in the form of East Germany.

East Germany wasn’t really a country.

It was a buffer state for the USSR. The moment Gorbachev quietly signaled that Moscow wouldn’t send tanks a second time, the whole thing didn’t gradually unwind. It collapsed in weeks.

At its peak, roughly one in sixty-three East Germans was an informant. But the real weapon was what the informants produced: a population that self-censored, because they couldn’t know who was watching.

The message underneath all of it was the same message Kim is sending with the dead man’s switch:

“The system is not dependent on any single person’s loyalty. It runs itself.”

Removal of any individual piece, including leadership, didn’t stop the machine.

But it turns out the machine had always been running on one thing: the belief that it would keep running.

The moment that belief cracked, self-censorship stopped; the informants stopped informing; the border guards stopped guarding the wall; and the wall came down over the weekend.

Kim has read this case study. The dead man’s switch is his answer to it.

State announcements from Pyongyang almost never have a single audience.

The same speech does different work for different listeners simultaneously. Amateur geopolitical reading assumes the statement is literal. Professional reading asks: what behavior is this statement trying to shape, and for whom?

(I’m an amateur by the way, but thanks to AI I can punch slightly above my weight or at least I think so)

Audience One: Washington

This is the obvious read.

The message is surgical: even a decapitation strike doesn’t save you.

From a pure stability standpoint, a credible and formally announced second-strike capability is more stabilizing than an ambiguous one.

The market enjoys making drama and games over items…like a 0.25% basis cut is really going to boost the economy to the stratosphere.

Rather, the market likes clear talking points.

Audience Two: Beijing

This is the more sophisticated read, and it matters more right now than most analysts acknowledge.

North Korea fears two things with equal intensity: American military pressure and Chinese abandonment.

China today prioritizes stabilization over ideological solidarity.

When Trump sits down with Chairman Xi this week, Pyongyang watches that table very carefully.

From Pyongyang’s perspective, smaller authoritarian allies become expendable in larger geopolitical bargains. So the message to Beijing is do not trade us away.

The dead man’s switch makes North Korea harder to bargain away because the downside of instability there just got formally quantified.

This is exactly what a cornered East German Politburo member might have said to Moscow in 1987.

The difference is that East Germany had no such leverage. When Soviet protection was removed, there was nothing left to negotiate with. But it is as if East Germany did, indeed, have the bomb.

Kim has made sure that it isn’t his situation.

Audience Three: The Generals in the Room

This possibility is the most underrated and the least discussed in mainstream coverage.

The announcement may not be primarily aimed at Washington or Beijing at all.

It may be aimed at North Korea from the generals, the party officials, to the factions that might calculate that a palace coup or quiet defection becomes viable during a crisis.

The dead man’s switch solves an internal problem: it removes the incentive to remove Kim.

If the system launches automatically regardless of whether leadership survives, then taking out leadership doesn’t buy you anything.

Coup math changes entirely.

On this, the Stasi said the same thing in a different language. The system runs itself. Your individual loyalty or disloyalty is irrelevant. It worked, until it didn’t.

Historically, regimes fear the same thing: peace elsewhere frees resources for pressure on us.

This doesn’t mean Pyongyang has concluded war is imminent. It means their threat perception is elevated. And elevated threat perception produces signaling behavior.

The Boca condo analogy comes full circle here.

Cap the downside with overpriced insurance (we still have insurance, who would have thought) or a number, and suddenly the risk changes.

Kim just capped his downside with a number.

A regime that has formally committed to a doctrine, rather than leaving its responses undefined, is in some ways more predictable.

And the market prices predictability.

The ambiguity around North Korea is part of what maintains the KOSPI discount.

Not anymore.

South Korea is West Germany. More technologically advanced, more capital-rich, more institutionally capable. The companies that would participate in any peninsular integration scenario are already public and already discounted.

The question isn’t whether North Korea eventually changes. The question is what signal you’re watching for and whether you’ll recognize it when it’s subtle.

In 1989, the signal wasn’t a speech.

It was Hungary opening its border.

It was a mid-level East German party official announcing, by accident, that citizens could cross freely.

Small, ambiguous, almost bureaucratic. And then it was everything.

Watch what China does at the margins.

And any reports on border traffic. Sanctions enforcement. The tone of the state media toward Pyongyang. Energy flows. Those are your indicators.

This is one border that shouldn’t exist and it may not sooner than we think, or maybe some unimaginable thing will occur so get your popcorn.

Any North Korean and Nuke news tends to drop the market then rally hard. If a resolution in Ukraine and Iran occurs, Cuba and N Korea would be logical dominoes to focus on.

Have a great afternoon,

Eric

Why do we tend to stay in and not go to the theatre? Lately, it’s really hard to find a movie for the entire family.

From what I gather, here are the family’s unwritten rules:

**prefer no dumbed-down Animation (I even ordered Ralph Bakshi’s Tolkien cartoons to watch)

**No vulgar or explicit scene

**Light on violence and kissing (same reaction from kids)

**No politics and ideology

**Nothing too scary

**No black and white movies, especially from the 30s (they just don’t understand)

Now, if a movie has midgets, some rules will be overlooked (I have no idea, but it could be their age)

If you want, take these rules and filter them into Claude .ai and see what comes out?

The list I received was:

• Willow (1988) — Warwick Davis invokes the exception again. Straight-faced high fantasy that respects its audience. Ron Howard didn’t wink at the camera once.

• Babe (1995) — Practically flawless on every criterion. Intelligent, warm, no violence, no ideology, no romance. Holds up for adults too.

• The Black Stallion (1979) — Visually stunning, nearly dialogue-free for stretches. Francis Ford Coppola produced it. Kids sit in silence for this one.

• My Neighbor Totoro (1988) — Miyazaki is the anti-dumbed-down. No villain, no real plot, just wonder. Safe for any age.

The problem this Saturday Night everyone was tired and had to quickly find something suitable, and I found this on HBO

We watched the first episode and loved it.

It actually brought memories about when I was a kid, I used to watch NASCAR and bowling on Saturday mornings since nothing was really on.

And there was one thing that I never knew about bowling and always bugged me, how do these elite bowlers not bowl strikes all the time?

For the life of me, I never knew that the lane is altered slightly to throw them off their game, and is called oil patterns, and much like putting in golf.

And I’m thinking that with that one thought, this game could be exciting and watchable.

And possibly the beginning of a NEW TREND.

With new trends=opportunities

HBO’s Born to Bowl has 5 entertaining episodes

What these episodes show isn’t really about bowling. It’s about identity, survival, and obsession.

Men who’ve dedicated their lives to something the mainstream doesn’t take seriously, grinding from city to city for modest money.

Think Hoop Dreams meets Anvil! (a Canadian metal group that inspired Metallica and other greats)

If you liked McMillion$, Drive to Survive, or Last Chance U this is made for you.

But who made this?

Recognize the names?

They are all heavy hitters in Hollywood. What you would call trendsetters.

From A24, arguably the most culturally powerful studio in Hollywood right now, to a titan of comedy and creator of the current monster hit on Apple TV, Severance, Ben Stiller and the creators, who are all Emmy award winners.

They create not for the paycheck, but for something else, the zeitgeist.

Zeitgeist is, according to the English law firm of Merriam & Webster

“a German loanword meaning ‘spirit of the times’ (Zeit = time, Geist = spirit), referring to the invisible, dominant cultural, intellectual, and ethical climate of a specific era.

It defines the prevailing beliefs, fashions, and attitudes that shape a society during a particular, often only recognized in hindsight.”

So I did a little digging and saw that there is ONE bowling stock in the world, and also the owner of the tournament events (normally very valuable if it becomes popular)

The stock stinks. No one is investing in it because it’s not as hot as semiconductors.

But things begin to change if a bid occurs, and the downtrend is broken. $9.00

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

For me, we look for athletes who are like us. Most sports are in a different stratosphere, and so are the ticket prices. Things can change.

When you see our athletes, who we cheered for, altering their lifestyle and viewpoints, it makes it tough to know what is real anymore.

From Travis Kelce to the Rock, we kind of want to see some consistency.

Travis Kelce news

https://poprant.indiatimes.com/trending/did-travis-kelce-attend-met-gala-solo-as-taylor-swift-prepares-for-wedding-viral-sam-smith-comparisons-leave-fans-confused-kansas-city-chiefs-are-worried/amp_articleshow/130835899.html

Rock news

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lifestyle/style/dwayne-johnson-wearing-skirt-met-gala-2026-masculine-men-1236587535/

Apparently, the Kelce news was “fake” but the reason people believed it was that it sounded about right. Disappointing.

Our future heroes are going to be the everyman like this fella in the documentary.

Absurd you say?

Isn’t and many other cultural accounts reminding us about a time and hopefully the present of family values and institutions?

If so, one of those institutions was bowling.

Bowling was huge.

Bowling had its golden era first.

Then cable arrived, fragmented the audience, and the sport never found its analog in the new media environment. By 2000, the debt-riddled PBA sold for $5 million.

And, ironically, streaming through HBO will revive it.

So, for this fine Mother’s Day, ask your wife if she wants to go bowling, and you’ll know if we are early or not.

Make it a grateful and appreciative day,

Eric

Unfortunately, Spirit, with all its talents, couldn’t win friends and influence people since it crossed the mean girl Elizabeth Warren.

Would reading the book by Dale Carnegie have changed her life?

But at the bar, they are all equals, and no one knows who they are. So cheer up, the ever-depressed Spirit; they wanted to see what they were worth.

Here is where it gets interesting: after flirting, the men in the bar were keen on Spirit and not the other two.

Now, why would that be?

Intel has surged to all-time highs, quickly

Occidental has bounced back from the abyss with higher oil prices

And Spirit is no longer operating,

Credit quality

In this example, the suitors knew that Spirit had a better spirit than the other two.

Oddly enough, when Spirit stopped operating, and I read that their assets can be configured for AI, I wanted to buy their corporate bonds pennies on the dollar.

Usually, my broker won’t have those in inventory, but he did, and Spirit was trading above its par value.

Par is the price the company MUST buy the bonds back. So that means that Spirit is better off dead than alive to the creditors.

And yet when I looked at Intel, the price for some of its bonds is still below par!

That means, in addition to the yields, you will get an additional upside upon redemption.

Example. You bought Intel bonds at $980, and they redeem at $1000, you made $20 extra.

Why is that?

I am not sure.

The same with Occidental Petroleum, whose bonds used to trade at 12% yield now hover, I believe, around 5.5%, and with Buffett’s huge stake in the company

You just never can account for men’s tastes

Have a great Saturday morning

Today, I asked my A/C man how business is

“It’s getting hot here.”

That’s a double entendre on summer, and with the upcoming heat, more demand for the a/c and maintenance.

From that one joke, I understood the basics of his business.

That’s very good intel.

What happens if the intel from two witty people is at odds?

Photonics and Semiconductors, and I’ve been lucky to find two people to put things

in enough “lite” so I can have confidence in my positions, but what if they are on two sides of the same stock?

vs. this wild account on X @bubbleboi

Let’s look at AAOI, which is up, I think, 400% on the year.

The stock went down after earnings and

So who is @bubbleboi?

And here is his philosophy

But my go-to Photonics guys wrote:

He is an OG tech guy and shares pictures with guys from Sun Microsystems (heard of them?) and shares at no cost ideas that moon like cryptocurrencies in the hottest sectors of the market

And of course, if you subscribe, you get to learn and dig deeper into these companies and models

To be frank, you need to focus when reading it.

I felt I was waiting again for my cracked iPad to be prepared, and entertaining myself by understanding the layers and complexities of the touchpad part of the iPad

What engineers can do is unreal.

But like a good poem or Rembrandt, time is required for you to truly appreciate

So what do you do?

Buy? Sell? Dabble?

Well, first, understand both players' logic. I learned a new hack with AI on pre-earnings releases (which you should have a look at)

Second, realize that short selling is tougher than optimism in the hot sector.

Also, @bubbleboi is anonymous and wildly bullish on Intel and Sandisk, so he could be shitposting as well.

And lastly both contributors make NO GUARANTEES and it’s up to you to do what makes sense to you

Regardless, like in politics, there are two sides, but as a businessman and entrepreneur, you can’t take sides except on the one that leads to sustainable profits.

Learn from everyone

but get in a business that is hot.

For me the only thing that would crash everything is the computer crashing all the time when you want an immediate response.

When I went to get the price quote f AAOI the monitor froze

At a certain point no one will use computers if all the cookies and cache just prevent you from enjoying and consuming

Every time I use my iPhone, the app freezes after a new update.

That’s not cool, and I don’t see it getting better.

AI and faster communication will be with us, but the faster the setup, the more annoying any hindrance to connecting with the web will be.

It’s like breathing air in a restroom vs. a hot summer day.

Make it a pleasant Friday evening.

Eric

“Besides your looks, what else do you have going for you?

This is a great question, from relationships to investments: nothing breaks the ice like what you imagine.

Asking point-blank what else is there than the face value

and discovering a response

A case in point that got me thinking about this in the first place…

Warren Buffett asked a simple question

Is that it? Is Amex a one-trick pony?

I didn’t think much of IAC, Barry Diller’s company, and saw it go up without my participation

Now let’s look at an old Blue Chip company at higher levels than its 2000 bubble price

Great, you’re fantastic. What else do you have cooking?

It’s not sufficient in life to take things at face value. You most certainly can get by in life, but to live a life that’s memorable, you do need to ask this question.

And…

That is why you have to have a routine to your investing to spot potential aberrations that may be minor at first.

I have no idea what the market will finish the day or do tomorrow, but I shared a brief assessment of options and extremes.

Do not assume that markets will crash as a result; that was the old Eric, looking for a “crash” on every corner.

Nope, when I see high prices, I want to know more.

CNBC won’t cut it. You have to ask yourself, not Becky Quick

Stay tuned - my nice little compact weekly routine on the markets should be hot off my fingertips soon.

And have a question, join our chat.

Make it an impactful day by going up to the biggest, scariest dude you see in the bar and ask him

“Besides the scary act and the gun in your sock and the knife in your pocket, what else do you have?”

You may have made a new friend, or the doctor treating you.

Nevertheless, you will get a story out of it

Eric

Wanted to share some brief insights on what the big data is saying.

And one possible hedged trade…Something I haven’t discussed recently.

A hedged trade is when you buy one thing, expecting it to go up, while selling another item, expecting it to go down. And if both go up or down together, you are expecting outperformance of one or the other.

With commission-free trading, this is easier than ever.

At the moment, it’s like the movie Christmas in July, as the markets are just giving and giving gains, like it was 2000, 2007, 2019.

Why do I mention Christmas? Because that is usually the time the markets are virtually bullish and liquidity low and the Put/Call ratio are at lows

And yet it’s not Christmas time.

So will the markets only go up?

No.

The entire market is bullish now, and you don’t want to be stuck in a crowded trade.

So you can short the market (bet prices go down), close trades, put on some insurance options (as you can see NO ONE is buying insurance puts on their stocks), or HEDGE your trade with a laggard index.

Remember

Bulls make money (Jim Cramer)

Bears make money (hasn’t really been proven lately)

But hogs get slaughtered (if you don’t have friends in Washington)

The breadth picture, which shows what the cumulative view of stocks is doing, is diverging from the index highs.

https://www.marketinout.com/chart/market.php?breadth=advance-decline-line

But the volume of the stocks has surged.

See anything interesting?

What I see is that the FTSE, the UK index is underperforming the general markets and US in particular.

So a sell off should make it underperform and unless the big macro data is not picking up on it, it shouldn’t go up as much as the big US markets

Sooooo…..

Long SPY

Short EWU

The problem with hedged trades is that you need more money in your account to make it worthwhile.

Today, I would be wrong by 0.94%

Of course, you will want leverage

Well, that requires options, or margin, and more time than a free daily email.

But there is hope, paid subscribers should be expecting a blueprint of some hedged ideas after my wonderful blueprint on weekly investing is finished.

Stay tuned.

And in the quest for riches, where do we turn to?

What market to focus on?

Like the sailors of yore, we follow the siren's song, right?

Instead of following the money, I propose following the. song.

That beautiful rhythm I spoke about yesterday that Michael was the antenna for.

Maybe can do a deep dive, to see if that rhythm and beat Michael Jackson is famous for reflect the economy, and culture in past historical epochs.

As I’m American and biased, I was looking to see if MJ would spearhead the bull market ahead, but he’s dead. None of our current music is original; it's the digitization of the real world. So I searched Google and found that Justin Bieber is our modern-day MJ, as he is the only true global superstar who started at a young age.

Putting into AI, I asked for similarities with MJ

Maybe?

His music is catchy, and I liked the recent album, especially Daisies, as the lyrics are playful.

At my age, I really don’t care to admit it.

But I don’t think Justin awakens the imitators and movements that got him inspired to be a performer. So, talking to someone the other day, I found my answer.

K-Pop.

I was listening to the hit song, Soda Pop, and asked her if she liked the song from the big Netflix hit and Academy Award-winning movie, K-Pop Demon Hunters

“Don’t understand the lyrics.”

Then it hit me

(Like gravity attempting the moonwalk)

To this day, I have no idea what MJ sang most of the time, and K-Pop, without any real memorable lines, has swept the world for over a decade now, and we didn’t realize it.

From Gangnam Style to now…

And as I mentioned, history rhymes, not repeats

(Isn’t rhythm a rhyme?)

Do you remember what happened in the 80s?

The Japanese market surged….

SONY was the Apple of its day

It was so bad that one of the hit 80s songs thought we were turning Japanese

The NIKKEI saw a huge market boom that only emerged recently.

I am going to wager the 300% move that the Korean market has made so far this year is the beginning of a Korean decade.

The leading stock for me to play it is PKX

Posco is a steel industry behemoth that Berkshire once owned.

It is also BIG into Lithium which informed his loyal readers.

He also recently posted on X that batteries must be on hand at a data center for uninterruptible service

Batteries need Lithium.

Ships, industry, and data centers need steel.

If Korea is to grow from this area, then construction is back.

There is a lot more to culture and what you consume with both your mind, mouth, and time than you realize.

And each individual is an antenna to the world around them, never discount it;

You’re special. Maybe not as wealthy as the next guy, and boy, you would like to be him.

But special and unique nevertheless

Never discount the potential you have and the potential of a great investment or trend.

Rule #1 - Don’t ruin your day

Always make it a great day because Joe is surely not going to do it for you. He has enough low self-esteem to let you know how successful he is.

Eric

PS. If you like some of my daily thoughts, subscribe. Paid members will receive special perks over time.

Either way, I appreciate each and every one of you, which is why I’m sharing with you thoughts I find amusing.