Market Opening -- Wednesday, December 13, 2023

Locator: 46293INV.

Market: seventh week of gains -- if we get a seventh week of gains in a row that will be the first time in six years (needs to be fact-checked) -- but the point is --- well, you know what the point is.

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Misery Index

Misery index: yawn. Link here. Color me "shocked." I never knew the "misery index" was still such a big deal but if you a search on "X" you will see how big a deal the "misery index" still is.

As for me I never paid much attention to the "misery index." It was a campaign slogan, a meme at best. 

I would argue that the degree of misery was much, much worse during the French and Indian War, the Revolutionary War, the US Civil War, WWI and WWII, just to name a few periods in which life for most Americans was quite miserable.

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More

OPEN:

• Dow: down 17 points
• Nasdaq: up 35 points
• AAPL: up another 83 cents
• CVX: up slightly
• NVDA: up $2.70
• MSFT: up $2.55
  
• and, that, folks is my portfolio.
• the best thing I ever did was get serious about investing, starting in 2020.

Pet peeves, investment:

• the Buffett is god meme; see chart of the day below
• ETFs: another scam

Disclaimer: this is not an investment site. Do not make any investment, financial, job, career, travel, or relationship decisions based on what you read here or think you may have read here.

All my posts are done quickly: there will be content and typographical errors. If anything on any of my posts is important to you, go to the source. If/when I find typographical / content errors, I will correct them.

Again, all my posts are done quickly. There will be typographical and content errors in all my posts. If any of my posts are important to you, go to the source.

WTI: $2 away from a 52-week low and gasoline still well over $2 / gallon.

• what gives?
• that's called "services inflation"
• two components of inflation:
• services
• product
• services inflation will be stubborn
• services inflation includes retailer shenanigans

Chart of the day: ARKK -- Cathie Wood (68 years old) vs Warren Bufffett (93 years old) -- one year ago we all had the same information. 

With current investment philosophy -- if both Cathie Wood and Warren Buffett (and his successor) stay the course, respectively, ARKK will blow away BRK over the next 25 years, when Cathie Wood will be same age as Warren is now. Exactly.

See disclaimer above.

Buffett: by the way, can't sell HP fast enough. He's pretty much out of his HP position. CNBC ignores the story. Of all consumer product companies of which I interact, my least favorite is HP. I saw this ten years ago; amazed how long it took WB to see it.

Buffett portfolio watch: link here. Seldom updated any more. Lost my interest in BRK when I started posting "Chart of the Day.