Just a note on the ES futures profile. Even though it doesn't inform the broader market, it's a fair indicator of how traders perceive value at any given SPX level. Those two long spikes from 26 and 27 December are still being balanced out and that is taking a while because of low participation.
Hi @Ekult, the mistakes are just the result of trading and typing at the same time. I just make notes of the moves throughout the day and try to summarize my take at lunch or asap after the close. I know you all can find all this stuff elsewhere but I sympathize with your having just crawled out of bed all bleary-eyed and wondering what the crazies did to put the index 50 or even 100 points north or south. I am sure there are many other typos but I figure you all will sort it out.
Heck only knows what he's up to but maybe we'll find out by Monday. The partial government shutdown will start to have implications for the broader economy and parties to the argument are working this weekend. I sometimes picture a Scarface-like scene but with cheeseburger wrappers and doughnut powder all over the desk. His little friends are in Ankara, DPRK and Moscow but he would like to hang with them at the WH rec room or maybe in Palm Beach instead of dealing with the Democrats.
The new Speaker of the House is playing the grade school teacher to the president's naughty boy in the back row; the one with half dead frogs and slingshots in his pockets. Youth's cuteness becomes adulthood's bane. While the president defines the parameters of his burgeoning manhood, the speaker gently explains that "we are not doing a wall". She could approach him in private and tell him the truth: whether you're crazy or just pretending to be, the outcome can't be pretty and is dangerous if you've got life-altering power. She could go further and tell him what she probably thinks: that he's a pitifully ignorant narcissist who is using a very narrow frame of life reference to navigate a complex world and that he is being used by those who employ chaos to ensure their ends. That last part would hit nerves and go over like lead; she'll just quietly maximize her own point of reference like our longsuffering teachers once did.
Conservatives in the tradition of Scruton, Buckley or O’Rourke might not want a kindy teacher making economic or foreign policy decisions but they would not advocate for what's going on here. Some sense that the party has been hijacked - in part - by personalities who believe that self-interest is a pure and noble thing in itself, rather than merely a questionable but very real aspect of human nature; one to be dealt with in the context of a broader struggle to make a decent life accessible to everyone in the long run. Other mutineers are honest, hardworking folk who are reacting to progressive policies that pushed political correctness and to the edge of sanity. As @roberter1 once implied, borders - virtual or otherwise - are an extension of cultural homogeneity and ancient value systems. Selfishness is part of being human, but it is not, imo, something to be exalted in the way that some worship the collective at the expense of the individual. If humanity is a writhing, evolving organism then what part of that virtual body is the current president? Don't answer that. I guess every organ has a purpose; but we do have a built in autoimmunity that sometimes overreacts -- but which ultimately protects us when something is clearly not working. We humans didn’t get this far by chance.
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