Bullish Indicator For The Economy? April 10, 2024

Locator: 46972B.

WTI: slightly above $86. Whoo-hoo! Trading in the $85-range, jumps a dollar today and at $86.22 at the close. That's a pretty big jump when it was already trading a at pretty nice level.

Amazon: turns green just before the market close and near an all-time high. Speaks volumes about the market -- along with Nvidia today.

Energy sector hits "record high" before pulling back a bit -- CNBC crawler.  And they "all" pay a nice dividend.

There's always a bull market somewhere: XPO up 300% year-over-year; stock price at near all-time high.

Mom-and-pop investors: does anyone really think we'll remember today one year from now? Huge buying opportunity. I know I took advantage of it. This could be a great day for tax loss harvesting and re-jiggering one's portfolio. 

For the past six months, I've been maximizing tax-loss harvesting. Next step: scrutinizing poor performers even if they don't show a loss to see if there's a reason for selling, moving on.

The Schwab tools are amazing to help sort this out.

Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market, I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.

See disclaimer. This is not an investment site.

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.

Reminder: I am inappropriately exuberant about the US economy and the US market, I am also inappropriately exuberant about all things Apple.

CHOMPS

First time I ever heard of this company -- advertised on day "everyone" was watching CNBC!!

Gluten-free. Great gift for family members who enjoy beef jerky. 

Ordered on Amazon. Will arrive in day or two. 

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The Bat Cave
The Book Page

The Bat Cave is absolutely awesome. I continue to read the biography of Lord Byron and watching CNBC in the background. Josh Brown is a 21st century Louis Rukeyser.  Josh has it exactly right, and he talks in a language one can easily understand. 

But back to Lord Byron.

In early 1816, Lord Byron flees England to flee his creditors, and perhaps his foundering marriage.

Apparently one flounders first, loses an "l" and then founders. 

Byron's route: Dover to Ostend with his doctor-friend Polidori, and two trusted servants. Destination: Switzerland, home of Rousseau. Sounds like a Shakespeare play.

In Belgium, visits Waterloo. Byron greatly affected by the huge loss of human life and Napoleon's defeat.

Along the Rhine, past Koblenz and Karlsruhe; Ehrenbreitstein mentioned, the fortress that overlooks Koblenz.

Then, on to Secheron, a suburb, on the northeast side of Geneva, and more specifically, the Hotel d"Angleterra (the English Hotel) on the southernmost tip of Lake Geneva, almost literally on the lake itself.

Late May, 1816: Byron met Percy Bysshe Shelley for the first time. Both were poets, somewhat competitors for top billing. Sexual tension was high. Mary Shelley grew up in a family in which the parents promoted "free love" or polyamory.  The two poets were mid-to-late 20s while the women were still teenagers, albeit just a year or so from 20 years of age.

"That day -- the day Percy and Byron met -- marked the beginning of a season that would change all of their lives profoundly and alter the course of English literary history; the summer of Chlde Harold III, The Prisoner of Chillon, and "Darkness," of Percy Shelley's "Mont Blanc," of the modern vampire novel (thanks to Byron and his doctor-friend Polidori between them), and, above all, of Mary Godwin Shelley's Frankenstein." -- Andrew Stouffer, 2024.

First question: in the bigger picture, what was going on in Europe in 1816?

Google Europe 1816, first hit:

It happened more than two centuries ago, but its impact remains enormous. Historians have credited the infamous "year without a summer" of 1816, at least indirectly, with the invention of the bicycle and the writing of the classic novel Frankenstein. 

In April of 1815, Mount Tambora exploded in a powerful eruption that killed tens of thousands of people in the Indonesian island of Sumbawa. The following year became know as the "year without a summer" when unusually cold, wet conditions swept across Europe and North America. 

Since 1913, researchers have suggested that the two events were linked. Now a new study shows that thee cooler temperatures of 1816 wouldn't have been possible without the volcanic eruption.

What was going on in the US?

And global events in general? Link here.

How old was the US in 1816 -- President-elect James Monroe would be only the fifth president of the United States, only forty years from 1776.

Break, break. I took a break to re-read the introduction to The Annotated Wuthering Heights -- a book I've read at least once completely and numerous parts of it several times. Outlined the entire novel some years ago.

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Shelley's Frankenstein, George Eliot's Middlemarch, and the Brontés trilogy. 

I think between her sophomore and junior year in high school, I will introduce the Romantic Period to Sophia and read / study the above novels.

From the Bat Cave: