Generational Dynamics Forum - New Site

Nothing suspicious about it.
Load up farm animals with antibiotics for decades, end up with endemic antibiotic-resistant bacteria.
Evolution in action.

Your swamped pick them out the damned door math raycist morons already know this. Right?
They cannot Steward there own stupid ass until the inner city colt revolution active measures zombies take out the trash.
Woke broke and starving is a hell of plan they got going in your esg cults.
The Minister of Nature and Nitrogen Policy says starve over the pond.

Any current EU member NOT working on an exit strategy are morons.
The swamp cults have assured failures.
Past epic stupidity since before 1973.
Not rain running down your back morons.
Marx’s Reflexivity Theory.

Any way it went off the rails as the Coinage Act of 1965, Pub.L. 89-81, 79 Stat. 254, enacted July 23, 1965.
The red diapers are now red depends and Hell bent in the wasting process in plain site from the swamp tard.
You are the target.
Toe Tags are up. Democrats now call for the SCOTUS to be destroyed or manipulated for profit only.

They will say the fire was brought under control within 15 min.
No fire fighters got needle sticks on there boots on the way in.
They seem to be increasing but we will wait for averages on fires again.

Year Homicides Wounded
2021 850 3,746
2020 797 3,451
2019 520 2,292

BISH zones are spilling out. The BISH enclaves are real and growing.
There's no risk of a recession. It's already been guaranteed.

Marx’s Reflexivity Theory just adapted to Soros Reflexivity Theory.


Fri Apr 30, 2010 11:02 pm
The multiplier effects of a global production bounce should lead the world back to growth by late ‘09. However, when the intoxicating
excitement of inventory replenishment and stimulus fades, the West will reawaken to the reality of a consumer leverage binge now infecting the public sector as well. In addition, the recovery forces at work (cost-cutting and zero interest rates) subject households to an abstemious 50-year low in private sector wages + dividends + interest income. I’m not sure markets understand the consequences of that yet.

No they do not understand the infection.

The only question is when. For those of us not on the verge of retiring, the sooner we have this day of reckoning and get it over with, the better.
http://mises.org/markets.asp
In closing the question is measuring confidence from arrogance and what I see today is this malady on its course.

Then he goes on to explain why 2% growth won't be coming back. Yes we did in spades.

The pareto effect is real to a point more than not are still looking at Platos shadow on the UBI and MMT collapse.

Working independently of W. Edwards Deming (who focused on the use of statistical process control), Juran—who focused on managing for quality
went to Japan and started courses (1954) in quality management. The training began with top and middle management. The idea that top and middle management needed training had found resistance in the United States.

As H forwarded and suggests also not just that economic growth was a one-time thing centred on 1750-2050, but also that because there was no growth before 1750, there might conceivably be no growth after 2050 or 2100. The process of innovation may be battering its head against the wall of diminishing returns. Indeed, this is already evident in much of the alleged innovation sector.

In our view the politics of envy has taken over here as they take off elsewhere so it was said with products no one wants or can afford here, or there also. You pissed on and in the tea party cup. We are closed loop. TINA, TSTS, FOAD, BLMLCS, Bob Bish, FOMO. Remember the four soils.

Reflexivity - There are two types of reflexivity: personal and epistemological. Personal reflexivity refers to how a person's values, beliefs, acquaintances and interests influence his or her research or work. Epistemological reflexivity attempts to identify the foundations of knowledge and the implications of any findings. Yea we are all dumb. Everyone at the time thought he was crazy. The economic overheating as Burry noted.
The plan is dislocations.
You are here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8lViJ1ejCfc

zerohedge
@zerohedge
Nasdaq Explodes Higher Amid Unprecedented Gamma/Futures Double-Squeeze

https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Reflexivity&atb=v240-6&ia=web
https://gdxforum.com/forum/search.php?k ... sf=msgonly

And yet, he perseveres, and is possibly one
of the few people in the world to do so.
He's essentially trying to show that Keynes's maxim can be beaten, and
that he can stay solvent longer than the market can remain irrational.

Income Trust* div BTZ $0.083900 only small position other than book four short still open
80.39% cash

John wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:28 pm ** 29-Aug-2020 World View: The Dance

Higgenbotham wrote: Sat Aug 29, 2020 6:16 pm > It's interesting that most Wall Street analysts have S&P price
> targets below the current level of the market. Just read that last
> week Citi raised their year end S&P price target from 2900 to
> 3300. Ed Yardeni is usually pretty bullish and his year end target
> was 3500 last I saw. Another person who's usually pretty bullish
> is Tony Dwyer and he's simply maintaining a target of 3300+ last I
> saw. That doesn't imply his target is close to 3300; he's just
> saying that in this environment it is too difficult to accurately
> set an upper target, if I understand correctly.

Higgy, I'm sure you're already aware of what I'm about to say, but
it's worth saying anyway. I listen to all these guys on CNBC and
other channels, and it's obvious that they're all completely full of
crap. I don't care if it's Yardeni, Dwyer, or any of the others. They
don't have the vaguest clue what's going on, and they'll say whatever
they have to say to get on TV.

Actually, there is one "expert" whose quote was accurate. This was in
2007, and Citigroup’s chief executive, Charles O. Prince, said he's
still going full steam ahead with credit and leveraged deals, because
"As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and
dance. We’re still dancing."

That was true then, and it's true today, even though the dance is
really "The Dance of the Musical Chairs."

It's typical for every Wall Street analyst to have a price target on the S&P that is higher than the current level of the market, usually much higher, and today we have the opposite (the exception is Kostin at Goldman, who recently raised his target to 3600).

I don't really know what that means. It could mean that every current year end target will be higher than where the S&P ends up, as these folks are typically overly bullish. If that's the case, the S&P will have to move down a lot.

Along with that, many billionaires are either silent or saying they're skeptical of the stock market. Leon Cooperman and George Soros have recently indicated skepticism. Here are some bullet points from Cooperman's interview:

Wall Street legend Leon Cooperman told Bloomberg on Monday that the Fed has created a "real speculative bubble."

The hedge fund manager said he's "uncomfortable" at the moment because the market is not focused on the amount of debt being created in the nation. Cooperman emphasized that the US has piled up $21 trillion of debt in its 244 years, and said it will probably end 2020 with $27 trillion in debt.

"That is a growth rate in debt far in excess of what the economy is growing at and I think that's going to be a problem down the road," he said.

Cooperman also said that the US has had artificial support for the economy since 2008, and he sees this as a negative.

The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate to near zero in March to soften the economic fallout of the pandemic. Cooperman said low interest rates are indicative of a problematic economy, and that zero interest rates are creating a "very speculative tone to the market."

"What I've not fully appreciated is what a zero-interest rate environment does for stocks. I was focused on the fact that we've had zero interest rates in Japan and Europe and their stocks are five or six multiple points below the United States market," Cooperman said.

The investor also mentioned that he is not buying bank stocks soon even though he believes they're cheap at the moment. "I'm concerned about financial conditions generally so I'm not adding to my banks," Cooperman said.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... 1029528783

Cooperman got out of the hedge fund business and now just focuses on managing his own money.

So on the one hand, while we are reading about billionaires having benefited from the bubble, financial billionaires (people who have made their billion in the markets, in other words) are generally indicating that they are not involved, or not getting more involved in stocks. Soros said last week that he isn't in stocks now:

Pivoting to his legendary approach to financial markets, Soros acknowledged that we’re caught up in a bubble fueled by Fed liquidity, which has created a situation that he now avoids. He explained that “two simple propositions” make up the framework that has historically given him an advantage, but since he shared it in his book, “Alchemy of Finance,” the advantage is gone.

“One is that in situations that have thinking participants the participants’ view of the world is always incomplete and distorted. That is fallibility,” said Soros, who made a killing shorting the British pound decades ago. “The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate and distorted views lead to inappropriate actions. That is reflexivity.”

He went on to say the market, which he no longer participates in, is sustained by the expectation of more fiscal stimulus along with hopes Trump will announce a vaccine before November.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/georg ... 2020-08-12

Also interesting to go back 3 months and listen to what Tepper had to say:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/05/13/d ... ly-99.html

I haven't heard anything to the contrary from him since.

ZIRP = quicksand with repressionary intent --- or to view the intent some consider the usury question http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Magna_Carta zirp back then solved more bias routes than actual "interest" can cure
NIRP = tar pit for savers to chase yield
Publicly traded corporations = dinosaurs bones picked clean with effective tax rate regimes

Repressionary asset stripper regimes as the NEO tools qued up for the desolations boulevard to the
formless asymmetric solution.

The objective isn't to control the conflict, it's to control the debt that the conflict produces.
You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything.

"The New World Order will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down ... but an end run on national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault."
-- Richard Gardner - Council on Foreign Relations Journal, April 1974, Page 558

That original piece of paper was inspired by more than you considered.
Thatcher was correct until and with the simple point it was papered over by the paper tigers. Until the Sheep come for there lunch money nothing will ever and never change. As we alluded to the MIC will figure this out as Greshams law once again just as the so called barbarians did earlier which we call spoils to the Praetorian victors.
http://www.annearundelcounty.com/Milita ... -1760.html
The pograms know the sheep will never trample the wolves just as water erodes the mountains to the sea. Amos was correct that they will seek and never find it.


http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... tion-syria
As we noted the erosion of trust was confirmed by the French and Germans today.
I agree with the GD analysys to the extent Assad is a genocidal supported maniac.

"biological terrain and infectious illnesses" Aug 02, 2013 : It's clear today that development in Russia didn't go the way the West anticipated. Russia became the perfect KGB state. 80% of government officials are former or active KGB officers, including President Vladimir Putin himself. The objective of the Soviet regime was to overthrow the United States as the world's leading power. The Soviet KGB fathered state-sponsored terrorism. The PLO was dreamt up by KGB. In 1960s a new element was added to the Soviet/PLO war; international terrorism. Today's international terrorism was conceived at the Lubyanka.
As Yuri Andropov once explained to Ion Pacepa, the Muslim world was a Petri dish in which the Russians might "nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought." KGB General Alexander Sakharovsky once said to Pacepa: "In today's world, when nuclear arms have made military force obsolete, terrorism should become our main weapon."

No different point of view of what Churchill indeed conveyed back then.

http://gdxforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php ... tin#p23980
Old was correct with the premise of or else, with the stratagem already seen as the naive numbskulls posit poker investment as arbiter gains and and dinosaur commodity hedges opportunitys as the fed had to mandates 25 percent caps as common sense in CEF for LP's.
You will learn what is, and is not, and what will be. As we seen the skinned sheep where to be gutted. The VIX tarpits was covered early and hopefully the lessons learned.

The irony from very old reports from the Muslim Brotherhood and the Mufti was we will toss 65 million in the quest for Allah and his will. No amount of logic will solve common sense.

Traits are induced, or as we note polished for results to be brief. As for 1929 Leviathon that was induced, or to say unleashed to meet competion in my view.

http://gdxforum.com/forum/search.php?ke ... sf=msgonly no accidents really exist since 1202 we ponder rather clearly.

Reflexivity - There are two types of reflexivity: personal and epistemological. Personal reflexivity refers to how a person's values, beliefs, acquaintances and interests influence his or her research or work. Epistemological reflexivity attempts to identify the foundations of knowledge and the implications of any findings.

So far, the wars in the Mideast have been Muslim versus Muslim as was noted for many years. Only granted in the percentage of view
since the Reichs regiments willing to serve another death cult for pragmatics purposes.

As for the local enigmas.
http://www.christianpost.com/news/evang ... ds-145483/

Since politics is local and our local poverty rate is going up what lessons was learned when the red pills kicked more to the curb?
http://www.democrats.com/why-mccain-failed further back
http://www.politicususa.com/2014/01/27/ ... onest.html
No we find both as cesspooled maniacs up to their noses asking do not make wave since shut up for four years as normal minds understand over four decades as we seen as a death cult now also bathed in foetal haemoglobin and stem cells and simply depraved with anywhere anytime and any for reason. The demographical sets understand the undercurrents clearly and the consequences.

THE PHOENIX PRINCIPLE
AND THE COMING DARK AGE
Social catastrophes – human progress
3000 BC to AD 3000
Marc Widdowson

First published 2001 by Amarna Ltd, 35a Chaucer Road, Bedford, MK40 2AL, United Kingdom

pp. 140-143

Chapter 17 - Defining dark ages
Decline and collapse

It is now possible to provide a concise definition of a dark age.

DA1 A dark age is an extended period of significantly reduced integration, organisation and cohesion. (From an individual’s perspective, social bonds may become more intense in a dark age. However, overall cohesion is reduced because the social network extends much less far. See Figure 15-1.)

Having defined dark ages by DA1, the model of integration, organisation and cohesion immediately indicates the specific features that one would expect dark ages to display. For example, disintegration implies conflict and disorder (P2), which are clearly aspects of dark ages. The classical Greek poet Hesiod deplored the post-Mycenaean age as an era of futility and violence. Disintegration also implies the removal of protection (P1). Certainly, Britain’s dark age followed the withdrawal of the Roman legions, whereupon public safety evaporated and villas everywhere were looted and abandoned. Some other dark age characteristics that ensue from the present model are as follows:
• Less centralised control (=disintegration).
• Less trade (=disorganisation).
• Less social differentiation (follows from loss of political hierarchy and economic specialism (E1)).
• Lack of grand projects (P7).
• Smaller territories (P3, P8).
• Loss of specialised knowledge (E3).
• Proliferation of styles in art (S1, S4).
Few things are more characteristic of a descendant society than the emergence of a squatter mentality. This also follows from DA1. When disorganisation forces people to be self sufficient, they can at best erect only crude shelters, in which there will be few refinements or utilities. If people continue to live within fine old buildings then it is inevitably in a degraded fashion. State societies as a whole are no longer viable during a dark age, since such a high-scale ensemble can be maintained only with high levels of integration and organisation. Hence, a dark age must also result in the loss of characteristic state institutions. Without writing and education, though, few records are produced and much knowledge is simply lost. This is why dark ages are dark. They leave no account of themselves. They are blank pages in the historical record. Thanks to the loss of monumental architecture and the general breakdown of the economy, the material culture of such periods is also sparse and non-durable. Archaeologists are in the dark almost as much as historians.
DA2 Dark ages leave few records and they are periods of obscurity in historical retrospect. The characteristic features of a dark age add up to a time of poverty, low aspirations and low achievement. There is endless petty violence and a moral free-for-all. In this sense, the descent into a dark age can be described quite fairly as a process of cultural degradation. When people from still ascendant societies contemplate one that is verging towards a dark age, or already in a dark age, they are bound to regard it as hopeless and dire. Administrators sent to Greece from Constantinople, during Europe’s barbarian era, described it as a god-forsaken hole that offered none of the rudiments of civilisation to which it had formerly contributed so much.1476 Those who experience a dark age develop attitudes to match. To reduce cognitive dissonance, they tailor their expectations to what their means can afford. There is a harder, less self-indulgent outlook on life. People renounce material comforts and rely more heavily on other-worldly fulfillment. At the same time, devoid of rulers, they develop habits of freedom. They have little to lose from conflict and are quite willing to participate in and perpetuate the troubles. Hence, a dark age will seem to be a time that emphasises asceticism, spiritual values, fierce independence, and the martial spirit. This complex of attitudes is bound up with the prevailing social conditions to form a logical ensemble.1477 Life must be simple when people are poor, and naturally people will then value the simple life. During a period of decline, before the arrival of a dark age proper, the processes of disintegration, disorganisation and discohesion, which have already occurred in reality, begin filtering through into perceptions. There is a growing popular consciousness of social deterioration, and this also provokes certain characteristic attitudes. At one extreme, there are those who actively endorse the way that old habits and old symbols lose legitimacy (S6). For them, whatever was fine or heroic about the old order no longer appears as such and instead approval is extended to things that were formerly regarded as common, debased, uncouth and immoral. The Cynic school, which was spawned by the decay of classical Greece, typifies these philosophies that enshrine disdain and positively uphold depraved behaviour. Diogenes declared that he was a citizen of no state, expressed contempt for patriotism and asserted the naturalness of sexual activity by masturbating in public.
An opposing reaction is typified by the Stoic school. This was also spawned by the decay of classical Greece and became popular again in Rome as the empire’s troubles mounted. It emphasises a resigned attitude to the difficulties of life and the need to maintain personal standards of conduct in an imperfect world. This philosophy provides solace to those who continue to cherish the old legitimacies and for whom the negation of these legitimacies is disorienting and depressing. As perceptions catch up with the reality, people comment on their problems at length and many of them may deplore the direction in which they see things moving. Such concern implies not so much conviction about the shape of the future, as fear for it. People can find it hard to believe that their former advantages are really lost forever, and they cling to the notion that the decline may be reversed. In a letter preserved from fifth century Roman Gaul, the author writes about mounting chaos but nevertheless expresses the hope that it will be a passing phase. The concern with decline is symptomatic of it. As G K Chesterton observed, fit people do not worry about their health.1478 If perceptions were to remain positive and confident, the reality might indeed recover from a decline. However, when there is more wringing of hands than any practical attempt to seize the initiative and overcome the problems, a society is essentially doomed. Reflexivity (TC11) also implies that negative perceptions may only further corrode the real situation. The entrenchment of pessimistic expectations is a sign that distinguishes an incipient dark age from more transient dips in a society’s fortunes.
DA3 Belief in decline is a component of it.
Creativity and continuity
To say that dark ages involve cultural degradation presents a negative impression, which would probably accord with most people’s picture of what a dark age involves. However, the optimistic side of a dark age is that, by restoring perceptions to the reality, it forces the members of a social group to arrive at a more realistic picture of the world and their position within it. This is helpful since it provides a firm foundation for future progress. The breaking down of old certainties presents an opportunity for new ways of doing things to emerge. Conservatism is replaced with radical inventiveness, and diverse ideas may be able to flourish. At the same time, the dark age serves as a kind of testing ground. Nothing is ruled out solely on principle, although only the most successful ideas will persist and be developed. Hence, the dark age yields not only new ideas, but also better ones. During the last days of the second world war, German planners were considering the re-building of Berlin after the war had ended. They thought about moving the capital to a new site. It soon became clear, however, that this would be prohibitively difficult because of the way that road, rail, gas and electricity networks all converged on the existing capital. Even if Berlin were removed, its image would be visible in the rest of Germany’s infrastructure.1479 This illustrates the way that a society’s entrenched institutions can inhibit its freedom to evolve and advance. Very far-reaching destruction may be needed before it becomes worthwhile to consider a wholly new direction, so that people can build things up from scratch. Yet without such destruction the society may be trapped down some sub-optimal developmental route or cul-de-sac. Hence, a dark age is a time of great creativity and progress. Innovation is always in some ways inherently destructive. Edward Gibbon made this need to destroy in order to advance a central theme of his study of Rome’s decline and fall.1480 The economist Joseph Schumpeter characterised economic depressions as periods of creative destruction that are essential to economic progress.1481 Sweeping away outmoded firms and industries is painful but it has to be done to make way for the next major advance. A dark age is the same phenomenon writ large. It is a time when society is thrown back into the melting pot. Wornout institutions are broken down and obstacles to social progress are removed. Fantastic opportunities then emerge as people re-build integration, organisation and cohesion. A dark age is certainly not a sombre time for everybody.1482 For those who have talent and initiative, the dark age offers many rewards.
DA4 A dark age is a time of creativity. Old and inappropriate institutions or ideas are replaced with new, more realistic ones. It follows that a dark age should not be regarded simply as an accident into which societies fall by misfortune. Rather dark ages are an absolutely necessary and integral part of the historical process. They deliver long run benefits. Without dark ages, human societies would have stagnated long ago. Traditional policies of preventing forest fires have similarly been recognised as counterproductive. Preventing fires only causes undergrowth and dead wood to build up and clog the forest, which not only harms its ecology but also provides a growing supply of combustible material. Periodic fires, often set by lightning, are essential to the health of the forest. Some tree species even require a fire so that their cones will open and they can complete their lifecycles. This is not surprising really. Forests existed for a long timebefore humans became involved in managing them.1483 A forest fire is a good analogy for a dark age. It clears out dead wood. It consumes the old institutions that have become harmful to progress but are so ingrained they are virtually impossible to change smoothly. This seems to be a very general process in nature, and history is just one illustration of it. Another example is found in the fact that damming rivers, and thus preventing flash floods, means that they become clogged with debris to the detriment of their flora and fauna. Floods are necessary to restore a river’s health. Similarly, in biological evolution, mass extinction events have been followed by bursts of speciation as life rushes into the many niches that have been created. This logic of destruction followed by creative recovery is a general feature of complex systems. Dark ages imply renewal and growth. After a dark age, the old civilisation is never simply revived. There is a qualitatively new configuration, and this is largely discontinuous with what went before.1484 The longer and deeper the dark age, the more radical the new configuration. That is to say, significant change requires a significant dark age. The place where destruction begins and proceeds the furthest is likely to make the earliest and most complete recovery.1485 This is the phoenix principle. Catastrophe comes before progress. One cannot occur without the other and the greater the catastrophe, the greater the progress. On the other hand, the old ways seldom die out completely. There is continuity in some cultural elements.1486 For instance, Roman language, law and other institutions survived in barbarian Europe, albeit transformed. On the broadest view, world history shows obvious progress despite the many setbacks.1487 Few major technologies were lost when Rome collapsed,1488 or at least they were easily re-invented. Superimposed on the ferment of integration, organisation and cohesion, therefore, there is an overall improvement in technology and in human institutions.

Marx’s Reflexivity Theory = what we already know.
Minsky=what we already know.
Beta=naive political economy actors
Mises= three choices of firms as actors
Seven years ago they got wiped out in Communist Bubble
Seven years ago they got wiped out in Tech Bubble
Seven years ago they got wiped out in Housing Bubble
America has to atone for three things and will decline
and the three things above have nothing to do with it.

abs wrote:...
There is no chance that the "quants" are going to all of a sudden change their code and rewrite their trading programs. Not to mention, these programs are extremely complex and would likely take a long time and great expense to unwind the inner workings of any of these models and make the needed changes to the code base.

My take away is that, as worldwide financial instability continues to climb, and volatility continues to rise back to extremes, that these automated trading bots will undoubtedly continue to amplify extremes on both sides, up and down, in turn creating a massive and uncontrollable feedback loop. The irony is that this is actually very consistent with George Soros' writings the one major point of differentiation (again credit to John) is that the bots have human nature coded into them, are completely inflexible and do not grow weary, they just keep trading. In effect this is Soros' concept of reflexivity hard coded and highly scaled. Absolutely frightening to consider the full ramifications.
...
Andrew

Some excellent comments Andrew. I am a programmer of very limited skill (I mainly code in Perl with a bit of Javascript and PHP to output and control my millions of web pages or dozens of sites). One thing I've learned about computer programs is that I have to be in charge of them and I assume the majority of programmers are of the same mind. There should be "bottlenecks" built in that allow such control fairly easily. The exchanges themselves are a great place to throttle the speed of transactions; you simply wait 1 second for each transaction to be completed or something like that. Simplicity is the answer but human greed and a lack of true fear and understanding of what might happen is the enemy of the solution.

I was watching Fast Money yesterday because it's where I get my take on what the "Masters of the Universe" crowd is thinking. I was impressed by how seriously they were taking this and at some of the suggestions thrown out. But if implemented and trading is slowed down I think that it just changes the timeline and not the end result. The end result, IMO, is that we have created false wealth and fudged prosperity for over two decades and we have yet to own up to it and pay the piper. Now more than ever I believe that the DJIA will eventually reach all the way down to its last bear market high of around 1,000 before a new bull market filled with "great values" takes hold.

Think that's crazy? Using a level of 150 on the S&P 500 all it would take are earnings flattening at $25 for a few straight years to give us a P/E ratio of 6, which historically would be right in line with great values that could lead to a new secular bull market. Considering the fear now associated with the stock market and the lack of returns over the past ten years this seems not only reasonable but highly likely. The only missing ingredient is a dose of reality and a few more days like yesterday will take care of that.

As for those who insist on using other measurements than trailing 12 months P/E (such as PE 10) you need to understand how warped the past 10 (and 20) years have been in terms of false earnings. That fact makes most people think we could never get back to those historical valuations but in fact make it MORE LIKELY we will get back to, and below, historical valuations.

Fred
http://www.acclaiminvesting.com/

The latest report on Bloomberg referencing comments by Larry Leibowitz, the COO of the NYSE, has a quote stating that the automated trading platforms amplified the downside pressure after the initial decline in the morning and that there was a lack of liquidity in the market(s) when it happened.

I think that, once again, John deserves credit for stating in advance, and repeatedly, that the automated trading programs would likely be involved in the next major market crash. I have seen many comments from John referencing this point over the last 1+ years and it should be obvious to all that this is just the proverbial "shot over the bow". There is no chance that the "quants" are going to all of a sudden change their code and rewrite their trading programs. Not to mention, these programs are extremely complex and would likely take a long time and great expense to unwind the inner workings of any of these models and make the needed changes to the code base.

My take away is that, as worldwide financial instability continues to climb, and volatility continues to rise back to extremes, that these automated trading bots will undoubtedly continue to amplify extremes on both sides, up and down, in turn creating a massive and uncontrollable feedback loop. The irony is that this is actually very consistent with George Soros' writings the one major point of differentiation (again credit to John) is that the bots have human nature coded into them, are completely inflexible and do not grow weary, they just keep trading. In effect this is Soros' concept of reflexivity hard coded and highly scaled. Absolutely frightening to consider the full ramifications.

I am still short the market and I am not impatient. I realize that it may take some time for the markets to really begin moving down again in earnest.

I think today may have made some investors a little skittish. My sense is that many felt the markets had moved up too fast and too far and were expecting a correction. The question remaining is if these big investors will believe this was the correction they were waiting for and will "go all in" or if they will now become a little more conservative and take some money off the table.

Many retirees that I speak to feel trapped. They need income to live on and feel they have to stay invested in something that yields enough cash flow to stay afloat without eating their principal. It is truly a horrendous situation for anyone in that situation where they know it's a terrible market but don't have much choice but to stay in it!

Andrew