Waiting for Moment “R” – Wandering Archetypes

Again, AI offered a warning to me about column length: “The piece has at least five columns’ worth of ideas trying to ride in one wagon.”  Yes, perhaps so. But that’s the Muse for you.

No, we are not going to share the 40-page ChartPack posted for Peoplenomics.com subscribers.  But we will mention that one of our recent concerns is how people miss the decline of stocks that pay actual (cash to shareholder) dividends.

See, there are two things that happen when dividends decline: First, the only way to make money in stocks is by running up prices.  Second: this effectively puts a cap on bonds. With a line around the block to buy a bond with a half-ass good interest coupon it does things to rates.

Size Matters

A couple of decades back, my consigliere thought I was wrong (yeah, unthinkable, right?) when I asserted that the stock market was “bigger than the bond market.”

But (and we both learned something) they were – at the time – roughly equal.  Thing is?  That ship has kept on sailing.

America’s stock market now towers over its corporate bond market: U.S. corporate bonds outstanding are about $11.5 trillion, while the market value of U.S. corporate equities is several times larger, running into the tens of trillions.

We’re clearly in the 1929 Replay’s “All the real gamblers moved to Wall St.” The long shift away from cash dividends and toward buybacks and price appreciation is solid and undeniable.  As investors became conditioned to seek returns through rising stock prices instead of steady dividend income, equities gained relative appeal. Bonds lost some of their old “income vehicle” advantage. Warren and the late Charlie Munger sure noticed, though.

That doesn’t prove dividends alone shrank the bond market, but it does fit the broad capital-allocation story.  Which changed the overall mindset from “investing” to “everyone gambles.”

Here’s how the bones were rolling, in the alley out back, before the bell.

The 200 day moving average is kind of a “big deal.”

Not Magic, But…

The 200-day moving average matters because a lot of institutional money treats it as the market’s long-term trend line — not magic, but a widely watched risk filter.

When tech is above the 200-day, many fund managers are more comfortable adding exposure, defending existing positions, and explaining to committees that they are leaning with the primary trend; when it falls below, the same line often triggers de-risking, tighter stops, reduced gross exposure, or at least a pause in fresh buying.

It also matters because breadth work often tracks how many stocks are above their own 200-day lines, making it a quick read on whether a rally is broad and healthy or just a few glamour names doing the lifting.

In that sense, a test of the 200-day is less about chart mysticism than about institutional psychology, risk control, and whether big money views the trend as intact.

Is the reason for mentioning this the next two data points which are today’s side-order with coffee?  No.

Look at today’s date.  That means tomorrow is “Friday the 13th.”

Moment “R” – Data and Triskaidekaphobia

The problem is in trying to estimate Moment R.  The Recognition Moment comes when the human herd finally spooks and tramples the financial fences that have kept us all penned up and answering to one local or regional rancher, or other, for almost a century.  Before that? The world had frontiers and many people “just left.”  But that doesn’t help much this morning.

Nothing to see here (he said pointing to trade figures). Key presser snip?

“The U.S. Census Bureau and the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis announced today
that the goods and services deficit was $54.5 billion in January, down $18.4 billion from $72.9 billion in December, revised.

Or here, either (pointing at Unemployment filing data).

Tomorrow we’ll wait for the (dollar valuation influenced) GDP and stay up early for the monthly Personal Income and Outlay figures.  Where the value of your home is figured in as “personal savings.”

Al Capone should have had such accountants.

Trouble in Hormuz

You’ll have to pardon your cynical editor for this. But, we are terribly amused with English state media – run by the country whose irresponsible statecraft back when – comes out to tell the world What is the Strait of Hormuz and why does it matter? Heavy-handed British lines on maps have continued to be problematic.

Examples?  You betcha.

If you want just the short list of British cartographic hangovers still rattling world affairs, start with the Radcliffe Line in India/Pakistan, hurriedly drawn in 1947 and still echoing through Kashmir, border militarization, and even water disputes; add the Durand Line, the old British India–Afghanistan boundary that Afghanistan has never fully accepted and which still feeds Pakistan-Afghan tension and border violence today; and, at the grand strategic level, the Sykes-Picot-era carving up of the Ottoman lands, where European line-drawing helped harden the modern map of the Middle East in ways that never matched sectarian, tribal, or historical realities on the ground.

Punchline, please? When people joke about British officials with rulers and maps, they’re not entirely joking — some of the most consequential “just draw it here” decisions of empire are still producing bills payable in blood and instability.

So when British state media offers insight, we find a large salt block in the pasture before reading further.

Not that Hormuz Doesn’t Matter

I never said it didn’t.  You can’t “float 20 percent of the world’s crude past” every day and not expect trouble.

Iran effectively closes Strait of Hormuz as U.S.-Israel strikes continue. And while we’re still deliberating what (if any) reality remains in social comments from Fearless Leader.

Speaking Fearless

He’s running interference for (whoever the GOP runs in) 2028. Post on Truth Social“:

“Gavin Newscum’s interview weeks ago was, perhaps, the most self destructive interview I’ve ever seen. In one fell swoop, he took himself out of even being considered as the Presidential Nominee of the Crazy (as proven at the State of the Union Address) Democrats. He said, in a speech, he was dumb, had low Boards, can’t read, has dyslexia, and has a mental disorder — A Cognitive Mess! On top of that, Black People are angry because he is obviously a racist. While we all want to be politically correct, having a mental disorder is not a positive campaign event. Also, this was a politically suicidal act. The only thing he didn’t say is he is losing his look, but nobody wants to say that about one’s self. He is no longer a viable Presidential Candidate! President DJT”

Fearless might have missed this: Newsom is not dead at all. In the current RealClearPolitics average for the 2028 Democratic nomination, he is running second at 20.7%, behind Kamala Harris at 28.3%; and in two of the most recent polls in that average, he actually led — 24% to 18% in an Echelon poll from Feb. 19–23, 2026, and 19% to 18% in a Yahoo News poll from Feb. 9–12, 2026.

Kamala?  Oh, Lordy, please, no.  (Can we have a drink and talk about it?)

Around the Ranch: Wandering Archetypes

I must be reading Andy’s comments too much. Because there’s a certain state of elevated awareness when domain adjacencies smack you upside the head.

Just this morning, I noticed in the news flow Bud’s Chicken & Seafood opens new Boynton Beach restaurant.  Andy – who lived out in the Alki area of Seattle, no doubt drove past Spud Fish and Chips up there.

Bud’s is on the opposite diagonal of the country – Spud on the other.  The kind of thing that walks through the archetypes – you notice – and just have to ask “Is that a clue to how randomness works?”  (I’ll have to get back to you…)

Welcome to IMAX-like Dreams

Reader d’Lynn – our undefeated high-stakes private poker kingpin (since retired) – posted a really interesting dream about being on a fast trimaran sailboat (west coast to Hawaii downhill run) where his dream is absolutely worth reading here.

The second part of d’Lynns dream is here.

My consigliere and I have been tossing this around.  Would a nuclear event – late night totally dark -even be visible at 1,100 miles?  I pushed the question out to the AI stack.

“At 1,100 miles, the first question is pure geometry: from near sea level, something has to be extremely high to be seen over Earth’s curvature. Using the standard horizon formula, an observer a few feet above the water would need the luminous event to be on the order of 150 miles up to have direct line of sight at that range. That means a normal surface or low-air nuclear burst is a poor fit. Classic nuclear clouds are far lower than that: The Effects of Nuclear Weapons gives a typical 10-kiloton air burst cloud height around 19,000 feet, and even larger nuclear clouds are generally discussed in the tens of thousands of feet, not 150 miles.

So your consigliere may be closer to the mark if the dream image is interpreted as a sudden brilliant sky-flash rather than a directly seen “object” at the horizon. Meteors and bolides produce very bright flashes high in the atmosphere, and NASA notes even small meteoroids can create fireballs visible hundreds of miles away. But even there, 1,100 miles is a long stretch for a direct view of an ordinary meteor at normal luminous heights; the cleaner physical fit for that kind of distance would actually be a high-altitude detonation — something way up in the upper atmosphere — not a conventional nuke near the surface. So the physics answer is: ordinary nuke, probably no; ordinary meteor, also doubtful at 1,100 miles direct line-of-sight; very high-altitude event, yes, that’s the one category that works cleanly.”

Putting on my deer-stalker cap (Sherlock) we therefore deduce that the first strike of WW III will be – if this dream has any precognitive layers to it – a coordinated HEMP strike.  Above the Kármán Line to pretend it was not an attack on U.S. soil.  “Two of our nuclear powered satellites were just taken over by hackers!” kind of thing. Warning to the world, deniability…

And the explosion, seen in the dream, off in the direction of Hawaii? Not exactly over (but close enough) to Hawaii and with San Diego or the Seattle .mil complexes in the footprint…

OK, but the catch is that it is not a neat gray-zone trick. It would be extraordinarily escalatory, hard to hide, and likely harmful to the attacker’s own space interests as well. CSIS and ODNI both frame a nuclear detonation in space as indiscriminate and devastating, not as some clean “hackers blew up two satellites” cover story. So: might an enemy think about it? Yes. Would a rational major power prefer murkier first moves first? Also yes.

Today’s point to all this?  Odd how “wandering archetypes” roll out perception threshold events. Sometimes as a quiet question up to “waking self.” Other times premiering overnight at the Megaplex between our ears.

Quakes and pole shifts first, anyone?

Dow futures now down almost 400 so, yeah.  200-DMA approaches.  That’s a dandy solvent for Happy-Endings theories, though.

Write when you get rich,

[email protected]

(After the spellchecker? “The Muse is still driving, but the wagon wheels are on straight.”) How many classics would never have been written with AI scoring content?)