Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 1:28:25 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,090
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 1:41:30 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,090
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 2:13:49 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
Posts: 4,090
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 2:24:22 GMT -8
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Post by CdnPhoto on Oct 13, 2022 4:29:05 GMT -8
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Oct 13, 2022 6:30:35 GMT -8
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 7:54:45 GMT -8
If fewer people lost their luggage, and people knew when their luggage would arrive on the pickup thingy, people wouldn't be as interested in putting trackers in/on their luggage. My guess is that they had some bad press over some luggage that someone tracked, and this was some PR persons attempt at a solution. But the real solution is fixing the actual problems. The "when is my luggage going to be ready for pickup", when it actually makes it to the right place, is the easy one. Use the same technology, some trackers. That might even be just within the airport, throwing a "tracker bag" at the front and end of the line, or maybe even one on each load from the plane. Nothing too complicated. Grab the data and put an ETA up on the screen at the pickup spot. I don't fly much, but coming back from Europe 3 years ago, with 3 younger kids at something like midnight, it sucked to not have our luggage ready for us after going through customs and everything. Especially since luggage still had to be scanned when you left the area. Maybe we waited 20 minutes, though it felt like at least 30, after a 30-60 minute post-de boarding queue through customs. (ahhhh, first world problems) The second, of luggage going to the wrong place or not making it on time to the first, has multiple issues. I think most of the time it's late connections where someone barely makes it in time, but their luggage doesn't. But the human error part of it could be minimized through technology. Optical scanners have gotten better and better, for a bar code or QR code/2d bar code. But you could also go with various trackers. At first you could also probably build some of the cost into the early adopters, but given how low of a price some of the solutions are now (security chip in a 15 year old car key, shoe or bib tracker on a runner in a race), it's probably a better perk, starting with the frequent fliers. If reusable and cross-airline compatible, a $1-$2 luggage tag wouldn't slow much adoption. AirTags have more advantages, including once the luggage it outside the airline's control. But this does seem like a challenge they could jump at, instead of something they flub with a PR misstep. In other news, I helped a friend cut a few downed trees at the cross country ski routes he has set up. He said this year they are going to have live updates for grooming, where the person running the snow cat runs a tracker on their phone, and then captures the routes as they are done, updating the website to show which have been done in the last 24 hours, 48 hours, or more. He said this is a setup normally for ski areas. Pricing is $200 to set up, and then $600 per year. For what it should be able to do, this sounded like a good deal, even for a non-profit club area like this (they might be at ~20 kM of route). Wow, that's a change in color for the stock and market. I won't say the 'C' word, but do hope there is good volume and followthru. I don't expect closure for a long time, but getting off the bottom would be nice.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 8:52:34 GMT -8
On the inflation front, it's good to look at various things and see why the inflation is happening, along with how much lag there is in the system.
Housing is an easy one. They look at rent, which is a trailing indicator. People are general in contracts, so even if all prices were going up 10% today, it would take a while. If everyone was in 12 month leases, it would take a full 12 months to fully bake in, and then 12 months to fully flatten even if there were no further price increases. With single family houses, pricing is partly in relation to valuation, so it has the same trailing issue. Even if house prices are flat or down in the last few months, and fewer sales are occurring, rentals are still being repriced upwards to take into account current valuation. And without excess inventory, there's not a lot of competition to drive this down.
The trash truck guy from WM was early this morning, and moving. Due to many people having bear boxes or wildlife resistant trash cans, they don't use an automated dumper on the truck most of the time, though it would still help with 2/3rds of the houses. He was taking both my trash, and my green waste bag (negating the whole reason to separate them, aside from the feel-good side that I would have had if I didn't see him). He said they were short 3 routes because they just couldn't find people. I would have talked to him some more, but that would feel greedy given the circumstances.
OTOH, I ran into a friend at the grocery store last night who runs a painting company and a snow removal company. This type of combo is common here, due to what works in multiple seasons, with another friend runs a snow removal company and a dumpster/bulk trash removal company. A neighbor's snow removal quote with this second company just went up about 10%, so I asked this first friend about how much he was raising rates. He say most were up 15-20%. He has a good, well-seasoned staff (mostly that do both snow removal in the winter, and painting the rest of the time), but he has to pay them more to keep them. And then pricing on other things has gone up significantly, such as fuel, control motors, and tire chains for his fleet of Holder Trackless snow blowers.
All-in-all, most of these things that have gone up will stay up, but some things like housing rental and these snow removal contracts only get updated once a year. If they are just now putting in the price increases from the last 12 months, and it's another 12 months until price adjustments, then there are 12 months of lag in the system. Some things might have already started that time cycle, like an apartment rental for 12 months that was adjusted 6 months ago. But either way, many of these things take a long time to adjust, just like the general feeling on gasoline that prices are quick to rise, but slow to come down.
It would be interesting to break down the CPI into it's parts, give a guesstimate on the instantaneous vs trailing nature of each part, look at the percentage of each part, and look at the monthly updates from the last 12-24 months to see how and when they increased. Someone out there is doing this, to get a better prediction on when and how the CPI will change. It shouldn't be that difficult, but would take some time and effort.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 8:59:36 GMT -8
In other news, Fed chairman Jerome Powell, after months of frustration trying to control inflation through interest rate increases, has decided to take the extreme step of canceling Christmas. He now realizes that the joy of giving is the foundation of inflation and must be brought under control. Once Saint Nicholas and his staff are standing in the unemployment line then and only then will our economy be on the path to recovery. Extreme measures for extreme times.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 9:24:14 GMT -8
In other news, Fed chairman Jerome Powell, after months of frustration trying to control inflation through interest rate increases, has decided to take the extreme step of canceling Christmas. He now realizes that the joy of giving is the foundation of inflation and must be brought under control. Once Saint Nicholas and his staff are standing in the unemployment line then and only then will our economy be on the path to recovery. Extreme measures for extreme times. Did you just say he wants to give paid time off at xmas? Sounds like a win/win. I'm really tempted this year to go the other way, and be a ski instructor. The math really sucks if you know the system, $80-120+ per person for 2 hours, 6 people in the class, lift tickets and equipment extra, but the instructor gets $15-20/hr. Still, it could be fun. And it sounds a lot more interesting to me than a friend of a friend who sold his tech business, and is now working at the state beach, at the ticket booth and cleaning bathrooms and such. Still, it sounds like he enjoys it as a hobby, and gets a kick out of it when someone slips him a Starbucks gift card as thanks. Ohhh, but then the moral dilemmas would hit. At the end of the season, would I have to take unemployment so that the Fed would see their plan was working? Like playing go-fish, "Got what I wanted!". Ouch!
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 10:09:05 GMT -8
Netflix about to have an ad-supported levelWe watched one movie with ads on it this summer, through Amazon, and it was not done well. Maybe it was on Hulu? The frequency got greater and greater, and they repeated. Netflix says they are aiming at 4-5 minutes/hr, which at first sounds like a lot but isn't too bad if you think of normal TV, with 20-23 minutes of a show in a 30 minute slot. It's possible to do it well, and I used to sometimes watch movies on TV stations. This seems like a prime place to take on targeted ads, allowing for fewer ads per hour if they are targeted, or have some sort of feedback. The interesting thing about binging on a show on a paid plan now is not having any commercials, so not only does it fly by quicker and go right into the next episode, but there aren't the natural breaks to run for a snack, go to the bathroom, or do some other quick task. Apple Card Will Soon Let Users Grow Daily Cash Rewards While Saving For The Future"Apple Card users will be able to grow their rewards in Apple Wallet by automatically depositing their Daily Cash into a new high-yield Savings account from Goldman Sachs" No mention of the "high-yield" rate, even under footnote 1. But it makes sense, for Apple/Goldman and the card user. Metaverse Woes: Meta Platforms Can't Even Get Its Own Employees Excited About the MetaverseI didn't even read this one, finding enough value in the title. But this is another one from TMF, and the sole comment so far on Yahoo makes it sound like this is similar to that recent TMF article on Apple, of "throw controversy out there, to bring in page hits". And that is a thing, when paid per article, likely with a reward structure for excessive hits. (EDIT: Ok. Read/watched it. I hate being forced to watch a video to get the info that could easily be typed, but I did. And while he only referred to the other piece, multiple times, saying that employees aren't using Horizon, and he really just had a bunch of doubt about the whole thing, it was worthwhile. Often one leader doesn't go on to leading the next. And I also wonder, because of that buzz I mention next, if the name was changed too soon. But while he didn't talk about it, it did really get me thinking about all the ways to get a user to use targeted ads, or tying brands into a game, metaverse, or what not. Taking a left at the building that says Taco Bell and then a right at the Coke billboard? Especially on something you repeat, with each respawn? What about going to the points room, watching targeted ads to get points, which then lets you have the golden armor or whatever. Do it right and it's like the supposed feeling around a green vs blue message. Get it to be cool, and rake in the extra ad revenue. It really seems like these places aren't being very creative about getting people to opt in to targeted ads) Still, like Tim, the challenge is in showing what this Metaverse is, and why people should care. And part of that is timing, the right thing at the right time. I'm sure no one wants to show their cards too early, but at the same time getting some buzz out there is good.I wouldn't be surprised if the thing that works these days is "social but in person", similar to a 4 person mario-kart or Dance Dance Revolution tournament, but also including others online. The question is not just where things might be 20 years out, but also 5 years and one year. It would be interesting if the "social" company ends up pushing something done more in isolation, whereas Apple's AR preference might be better suited to also interacting with others IRL.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 10:25:18 GMT -8
Discover Card should be worried.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 12:03:38 GMT -8
where inflation is, and isn'tThis Yahoo article has a good chart showing the sections that have high inflation, and the ones that don't. Interesting to see appliances down near the bottom. One of the videos that auto-played, but not the primary one, had a chart showing the last year and a half of overall CPI figures. One of our cats walked across the keyboard and made the page skip back, right while I was looking at it, but it looked like YOY numbers changed to about 6% and then higher, starting in Oct '21. It seems like unless further price increases happen, the CPI might start stepping down on its own within the next 2-3 months. Things like airfare (top of the list) and new/used cars (bracketing the average) seem likely to step down more, as supply/demand potentially changes. There's no givens these days. 'nuf said. Nice to see the green stick around thru closing. AAPL volume was move than average. FWIW, S&P/Nasdaq both had below average volume, according to yahoo.
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Oct 13, 2022 12:36:44 GMT -8
I’m mostly confused, which is my normal state, as I thought that I had read that the CPI numbers had come in high, as inflation is gaining. Inflation going up means interest rates are going up and stock market goes down and my account balance also goes down, sad face. But I see green. Has someone changed the rules on me again? I know, another sucker’s rally. I’ll take it.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 13, 2022 16:57:58 GMT -8
I’m mostly confused, which is my normal state, as I thought that I had read that the CPI numbers had come in high, as inflation is gaining. Inflation going up means interest rates are going up and stock market goes down and my account balance also goes down, sad face. But I see green. Has someone changed the rules on me again? I know, another sucker’s rally. I’ll take it. Well, in looking at the mid-term (no, not the midterm) timeframe, especially for big funds wanting to make some profit somewhere, there's got to be a bottom at some point. How do things look in the future? 1 month out? 2.5 months out for EOY? 6 months out? 12 months out? I can't say my magic 8 ball is fully accurate, but I've been looking at making a bit bet if the payoff potential is right. Risk/reward. I was being boring, looking at 2025's, ~2.25 years out. First at AAPL, but occasionally at the indexes. The CPI wasn't quite where the printed word wanted it. But what about the whisper numbers? And how to play the system, especially the "common man"? I think some managers were ready to leap with big money, so putting in a "down 2%" number gave a good point to get in. FWIW, Blue always said that it took downward movement to get the volume up so that buying could happen. Or something like that. I've thought that the best time to start a fund, if going for good results but not as worried about initial capital, is in a downturn. The capital will come in when the fund is in the top 25% or 10% or whatever. It's like someone setting up their 401k choices, and just looking at the little 1, 3 and 5 year comparisons that are given. What to pick? Who really knows if this is a false bounce? But I can see "ok, the numbers are bad, but not terrible. Let's buy" mentality. Lots of unknowns out there, and things that likely won't be finished anytime soon. But if your job is to take some risk for some potential reward, for yourself, a small client list, or a big fund, you've got to take some risk sometime. Maybe today is the day? EDIT: At least 2 articles from Bloomberg that I read on the stock app, and this one by Bloomberg off of yahoo, give a variety of reasons but note hitting the 50% retrace from the ATH and the 2020 low, along with the 200 DMA. They also mention closing puts. In general, just like a lot of the time, there are a bunch of possibilities out there. It used to be that a person or group could just change their stance or feeling. Now it's also that some AI or program could change it's stance or "feeling".
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chinacat
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Post by chinacat on Oct 13, 2022 18:48:05 GMT -8
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Dave
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"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Yogi Berra
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Post by Dave on Oct 14, 2022 3:04:04 GMT -8
Thank you 4apple for that reply. Human emotion’s can be very fickled at times and so very unpredictable. I think at times Mr. Market is just looking for that silver lining, hoping for a return to profitability, if only for a season. I would guess that large funds feel huge pressure to close out this year with at least less loss if not a profit for their investors. Maybe this is a good indication that capitulation hasn’t been achieved yet indicating that there is farther to fall and for many another opportunity to find an exit. Just a thought.
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4aapl
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Post by 4aapl on Oct 14, 2022 7:08:19 GMT -8
Thank you 4apple for that reply. Human emotion’s can be very fickled at times and so very unpredictable. I think at times Mr. Market is just looking for that silver lining, hoping for a return to profitability, if only for a season. I would guess that large funds feel huge pressure to close out this year with at least less loss if not a profit for their investors. Maybe this is a good indication that capitulation hasn’t been achieved yet indicating that there is farther to fall and for many another opportunity to find an exit. Just a thought. I think it's just the chaos and illogic involved when so many people are trying to beat everyone else off the line. Imagine a traffic light a thousand lanes wide so everyone is on the line, but everyone is trying to preempt the light change and get off first, going for it while it is still showing red. There's going to be all sorts of false starts, and it will be a disastrous mess. That's kinda where things are. The people that wait around until they see green, and then even wait a few seconds to look up and down to make sure there is no one coming into the intersection late (advice given out by the DICE guy at a presentation at the National Lab. I don't remember the rest of the show, or what DICE stood for, but I remember that advice and use it), they aren't going to be the stock market leaders. But they could still do very well, with a lot less risk. Speaking of crazy, here's a down wave today. Someone is probably doing well trading into and out of this. Glad I'm not attempting it, even if it is tempting. I have too many other things on my plate at the moment.
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