VIX & Giggles

Professional overthinker of markets. Sharing charts, signals, and poor life choices. Not financial advice (trust me).

[The Maverick of Wall Street @TheMaverickWS]

The whole "Oh we made AI so powerful, somebody gotta slow us down" is bullishit cover for "We overbought infrastructure, running out of cash and need an excuse to slow down without crashing our inflated valuations"

[VIX & Giggles @LoganMicNight]

@StockOptions888 Guide!!

[VIX & Giggles @LoganMicNight]

@SRxTrades I must get in with you and your buddies. Learn your ways...

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

Maturing is realizing that we are all sIaves to the bottom 20 percent of society, far more than we are to the top 1 percent.

[End Wokeness @EndWokeness]

Justice Sotomayor: It is racist to prefer more Scandinavian migrants vs more Somalians, Haitians…

Net lifetime contribution to economy:
🟢Scandinavian migrants: +$557,000
🔴Caribbean migrants: -$675,000
🔴Somali migrants: -$1.1 million

Crime per 100k residents:
🟢Scandinavia: 700 per 100k
🔴Somalia: 3,200 per 100k
🔴Haiti: 3,300 per 100k

Average IQ:
🟢Scandinavia: 101
🔴Somalia: 68
🔴Haiti: 67

Literacy rates:
🟢Scandinavian migrants: 99%
🔴Haitian migrants: 65-70%
🔴Somali migrants: 40%

[Wall Street Mav @WallStreetMav]

The value of most college degrees is rapidly approaching $0.00.

80% of the degrees are completely useless. It doesn’t provide job training. It is barely educational.

There are a few exceptions such as medicine, engineering, etc.

It seems like 80% of universities should close.

We have too many people who are wasting years of their life going into debt for worthless degrees.

[The Redheaded libertarian @TRHLofficial]

Modern problems require modern solutions.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Their scam worked for decades

[Marc Porter Magee 🎓 @marcportermagee]

I don’t think people have fully absorbed just how big the declines in student enrollment are going to be.

Eight states are projected to experience DOUBLE DIGIT declines by 2031.

[Anthony Pompliano 🌪 @APompliano]

I have been saying for years that prolonged bear markets and multi-year recessions have been outlawed.

They simply won't happen again in our lifetime because the central bank has perfected the QE playbook.

The risk is not recessions, but rather currency debasement.

[Adam Carolla @adamcarolla]

True

[Rothmus 🏴 @Rothmus]

No comparison. Capitalism beats socialism every time.

[Jaimee Michell @JaimeeUSA]

Reality dating show idea:

Liberal feminist women who want to "free Palestine" are sent to live with a Muslim man in the Middle East for 6 months.

[Jesse Kelly @JesseKellyDC]

I am legit so excited to watch this whole predictable story play out.

It’s like watching Old Yeller for the 20th time. You know what’s coming. But you’re still watching.

[Christian Heiens 🏛 @ChristianHeiens]

Since Trump took office, over 352,000 Federal employees have been fired, resigned, or retired and were not replaced.

The Federal workforce is smaller today than at any point since 1966.

[vittorio @IterIntellectus]

US fertility reached 1.57 last year, the lowest ever recorded, and the WSJ explanation is "uncertainty about finances, relationship stability, and the political climate"

my great grandma had eleven children during the second world war, in a country being bombed, in a house with no running water, on rations.
poor people have always had kids. the poorest people on earth right now still have kids and the financial excuse is a story we tell ourselves because it makes us feel good and the real one is unbearable

the real mechanism is that we got rich enough to redefine children as an expense instead of the point. somewhere in the last fifty years the cultural goal inverted and a child stopped being what life is for and became a line item competing with the lifestyle. once you frame it that way the math never works, because the math isnt supposed to work. that's the point

we are living in the richest moment in human history and we decided to use the surplus to buy ourselves out of the future. the most prosperous civilization that has ever existed is committing demographic suicide at the altar of personal optimization and comfort, and the official line is that we cant afford it

the birthrate is a lagging indicator of a civilization that forgot why it was alive

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

The IRS data on this tells the whole story in two numbers.

California lost $12 billion in adjusted gross income to outbound migration in a single year. New York lost $9.9 billion. Florida gained $20.5 billion. Texas gained $5.5 billion. That's the baseline before any of these new taxes passed.

California's response: propose a 5% wealth tax on billionaires. Six left before the ballot measure even qualified. Larry Page bought $173 million in Miami real estate and moved his family office to Delaware. Sergey Brin, Peter Thiel, Steven Spielberg, Don Hankey, David Sacks. $536 billion in taxable wealth gone. A Stanford study found the projected revenue dropped from $100 billion to roughly $40 billion just from confirmed departures.

Washington's response: pass its first-ever income tax after having zero for its entire history. 9.9% on millionaires. Howard Schultz left for Florida the same week.

Hochul's response: publicly ask someone to go to Palm Beach and recruit rich people to come back.

For every dollar the wealth tax collects, California loses an estimated six dollars in future income tax revenue. The exit tax is the policy equivalent of locking the door after everyone already climbed out the window.

[Aylo @alpha_pls]

The S&P 500 triggered a rare technical event today, gapping above both its 50D and 200D moving averages simultaneously.

This looked weird to me, so I did some digging.

Since 1950, this specific signal has occurred only four times. In every instance, the index faced significant pullbacks shortly after. The average three month drawdown following the signal is -9.51%, with the worst three month drawdown reaching -12.92% during 2018.

Historically this has always been an exhaustion gap rather than a sustainable rally.

Maybe this time is different.

[Tom Kratman @TKratman]

From Martin Iles, reposted:

Having lived in the USA for nearly two years, I've realised something.

The USA and the remainder of the Western world are no longer aligned.

We all laugh and mock when the Americans say, "Freedom!" because we truly think we're as free as they are.

Wrong. We're not. Not even close. The laws, the mindset, and the behaviour, is totally different in this regard.

Most of all, the governments are totally different. The USA's convictions around core freedoms are on a scale we do not share.

Meanwhile, Donald Trump wins the popular vote, the electoral college, the House, and the Senate... a man who, in every other Western country, is held in open derision, if not contempt.

For these and other reasons, we are not the same.

Yet the West, including Australia, fully expect to rely on the USA for our very survival.

If the world turns bad (which will happen - only a question of time), then the whole West, without America, is toast.

So, you may ask - if we're not very aligned ideologically, then it must be that we bring something to the party militarily?

Well, no... actually... we don't matter that much militarily.

The USA has about 470 ships in its navy, including 11 aircraft carriers, 69 submarines, 75 destroyers... plus 110 new ships in the pipeline.

Australia has about 30, including 3 destroyers, 7 frigates and 7 outdated submarines. The UK does a little better, with about 60.

Meanwhile, the US has over 14,000 military aircraft. A staggering number.

Australia has 252 military aircraft. The UK has 556.

The US army has just shy of 1,000,000 uniformed personnel in its military. Australia has about 45,000.
The USA spends 3.4% ($968 billion) of its GDP on defence. Australia spends 2% ($36.4 billion). The US spends as much as the next 15 largest military-spending countries (including China) combined.

The USA has a fighting culture. The men shoot things (a lot) and hunt things, the veterans get favoured in everything from parking spots to boarding planes. A uniformed young man is thanked in the street a dozen times a day.

"Oh, the Americans and their guns!" we say, in our smug way. Yes, they have a warrior culture. We do not. We don't have to, because we're a leech on theirs.

How many young British men are willing to fight for their country? Now ask the same regarding young American men. The difference is about as wide as it could be.

Militarily, we don't offer squat.

Meanwhile, look at the way Australia works against America's interests by loving on China. China made us rich and we stay close. This is a Marxist regime with expansionist aims.

Again, you have to spend time in the USA to realise just how vast a gulf there is between us on China.

Europe, too. They let China have their way everywhere from Germany to Greenland, all the while importing Islam and sending their own people to court for saying hurty words.

Somehow, we have landed the deal of a lifetime with the USA that says, "when the baddies come, you'll save us ok?" Because we can't save ourselves.

And we live in peace. But we keep gnawing away at freedoms, keep enabling China, and get flabby and disinterested about our military because Uncle Sam's got it.

And, let's be honest, Americans are widely looked down on. To add insult to injury, we don't think that highly of our protectors.

So, the USA is finally saying "enough." I am here, I can tell you what the vibe is, and that's it. Trump is doing what people want in this regard. They're over it.

And we come across all shocked and hard done by. We behave like people with no self-insight at all.

Yes, the global alliance system is all over the place now. From America's perspective, it's about time.

And I must say, though I be a proud Australian, I am forced to agree. Something has to change.

[Lee (Greater) @shortmagsmle]

I’m noticing a lot of foreigners who seem to not understand why we’d risk hundreds of lives, spend millions of dollars, and sacrifice several aircraft to rescue one guy. And the reason they don’t understand is also the reason people can’t be made American by a piece of paper.