Value Investing = Watching your value stocks do nothing during a massive bull market in ponzis, only to see those same value stocks go down in a correction the same as said ponzis 🥹
source: Shrubipedia
EVER WONDER WHAT THE MOST VOLATILE PERIODS OF EACH TRADING DAY ARE, ON AVERAGE?
Me too.
I'm not gonna lie, I think this is one of the coolest things I've ever made here.
This chart shows you how volatile each rolling 30m period is over the course of an average 24 hour trading day. I even tested it out over high VIX and low VIX environments.
Did you think the first 30m of the day were the most volatile? That lunchtime was boring? Check it out.
Huge thanks to the guys over @massive_com for the data to run this. All times on this chart are Central.
"There's a particular torment to watching investors do exactly what they "shouldn't" - and keep getting rewarded for it. Momentum has been crushing mean reversion for a decade and a half. Melt-ups are visible in semiconductors, Mag7, gold, silver and commodities. Crowding is at extremes. Everyone feels it: the instinct that this can't possibly continue, the sense that buying what's already going up is both dumb and, somehow, the only thing that has worked. It has the unbearable lightness of a trend that refuses to mean revert" - Matt King
If on:
▶ January 3, 2000
▶ You put you and your wife's $250,000 life savings
▶ Into $NVDA stock
You'd have:
▶ Gotten divorced in August 2002
▶ When it was down 88%
10-YEAR US TREASURY HITS 4.5% FOR THE FIRST TIME IN 302 DAYS
How rare is this? Well, since 1970, this is only the third time that the 10y has been below 4.5% for at least 200 trading days before going back above it.
You probably want to know how the S&P 500 $SPX did after those events so you can freak out and place some emotional bets, right? Boy, do I have you covered.
Here's how the stock market did 3mo, 6mo, and 1yr later after the only two other times this happened since 1970.
BUT @ODDSTATS, THAT'S A LOT OF WORDS AND I HAVE THE ATTENTION SPAN OF A POPTART, CAN YOU TRANSLATE THIS FOR ME?
Of course. 10 year bonds just did something for only the 3rd time since 1970. The last 2 times it happened, the stock market kept going up. Colorful numbers below. Never bet on anything that has a historical population of 2.
A reminder that can object to raising taxes on the rich even if you aren’t rich because you think it’s a bad policy, just as you can object to tariffs even if you aren’t an importer.
The diamond engagement ring was invented by an ad agency in 1947. Before that, only 1 in 10 American brides got one. The company behind it, De Beers, was worth $9.2 billion three years ago. Today that number is $2.3 billion, and its owner is trying to find a buyer.
In 1940, diamonds were a luxury for the rich. Nobody proposed with one unless they had serious money. De Beers had a warehouse full of diamonds and no customers, so they hired NW Ayer, an ad firm out of Philadelphia. A copywriter named Frances Gerety came up with four words: “A Diamond is Forever.” NW Ayer paid Hollywood studios to write diamond proposals into movie scripts. They planted stories in gossip columns about which rock some actress just got. They invented the “two months’ salary” rule, the idea that a man should spend two months of income on a ring. None of that existed before. It was all marketing.
By the 1990s, 8 out of 10 American brides wore diamond engagement rings. Then De Beers did it again in Japan, going from 5% to 60% in 14 years. Advertising Age called it the greatest advertising slogan of the 20th century. They were right.
The whole business ran on one trick: make diamonds seem rare. De Beers controlled most of the world’s supply but only released a small amount each year. That artificial shortage kept prices sky-high. And the “forever” in the slogan had a second job: if nobody resells their diamond, supply stays tight and prices stay up.
Lab-grown diamonds blew that apart.
You can now grow a diamond in a lab that is the same thing, atom for atom, as one pulled out of the ground. Costs 80–85% less. In 2019, only 6% of engagement rings in America had a lab-grown stone. By 2025, that number was 61%. That’s from The Knot’s annual survey of 10,000+ newlywed couples. People are buying bigger rings (1.9 carats on average, compared to 1.6 for mined) and keeping the savings.
De Beers saw this coming. In 2018, they launched their own lab-grown jewelry brand called Lightbox, priced at $800 per carat. The idea was to make lab-grown look like cheap costume jewelry so people would still pay a premium for “real” diamonds. Prices tanked 90% anyway. By 2025, American grocery stores were selling lab-grown diamond rings for $200. De Beers shut Lightbox down last May.
Since 2023, De Beers has lost nearly $7 billion in value. It lost over $500 million in 2025 alone and has about $2 billion in diamonds sitting in storage that nobody is buying. Its parent company, Anglo American, is now in what they’re calling “advanced discussions” to sell off the whole thing. A 137-year-old company, dumped.
The greatest ad campaign ever made convinced a planet that a common carbon crystal was worth two months of your salary. The product that’s killing it just proved you can grow the same crystal in a factory for pocket change.
$SPY 1) Thank all of you who are supportive of me launching various tiered paid services (There will ALWAYS be a free and hopefully useful @shortseller).2) I am in the process of launching (among other things) the 'Andy Finkle Pattern Recognition' Website (https://t.co/8lJMs4AtVT) - It would help me immensely if I was able to get a quote from any of my more influential followers, whom have followed my work over not weeks, or months, but years. I have MANY of these quotes already - but will not release them with attribution unless I have your blessing first....thank you again in advance for your support.
I've been nibbling on some shitcos that got washed out....index is stuck in chop right now.....don't think there is a lot of downside - be selective....
$SPY God no! when did I EVER suggest a crash???? i'm a buyer down here as we exit earnings season as I have ALWAYS stated... See my pinned tweet (It's a thread so read it all) for context