"The problem with movies and books is they make evil look glamorous, exciting, when it's no such thing. It's boring and it's depressing and it's stupid. Criminals are all after cheap thrills and easy money, and when they get them, all they want is more of the same, over and over. They're shallow, empty, boring people who couldn't give you five minutes of interesting conversation. Maybe some can be monkey-clever, some of the time, but they aren't hardly ever smart."
Dean Koontz
Stocks retreated today, the last day of April.
Gold and silver moved lower.
The Dollar was sharply higher.
The VIX rose.
It looked like a day of reversals.
The talking heads were making noises about inflation.
There will be a Non-Farm Payrolls report next week.
Have a pleasant weekend.
Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev
"It is precisely this — high-powered computers and the swagger of those who operate them — that is causing worries over high-frequency trading’s increasing sway. 'The markets used to be about capital formation,' said Mr. Quast, the consultant. 'Now 80 percent of trading is driven by some form of statistical arbitrage. We are buying into a statistical house of cards that could unravel very quickly.'”
Landon Thomas, Inquiry Stokes Concern over Trading Firms that Shape Markets, 3 September 2009
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
“Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society to justify and extol human greed and egotism.”
Gore Vidal
They were running the stops in the metals and big cap tech today.
There were some wide ranges in prices.
The better to skin the small specs out of their positions.
Kind of reminds one of end of month action.
Get right. Sit tight.
And stop listening to fools and shills for the moneyed interests spouting nonsense.
Have a pleasant evening.
But after recovering some on the open they managed to head into the green by the end of day.
The Dollar moved lower on Fed dovishness.
Yeah I bought back in on the dip in the miners, yesterday and this morning. It just seemed to be the thing to do.
Stocks were mixed.
The tech behemoths were reporting after the bell.
It was every bit of 90° here today. And the tree pollen is putting a green film on everything.
I picked a bad day to do some heavier work outside.
Yikes!
Well, rain off and on for the next couple of days.
And all work seems heavy to me anymore, even planting trees.
As my mentor used to say, starość nie radość— 'old age is no joke.'
Have a pleasant evening.
