Why is Ukraine Crisis the West's Fault?

Well, Putin is indeed more stupid to invade Ukraine, which is likely bringing himself and Russia into a messy swamp. Not sure he can easily climb out of the deep trap! While Putin is definitely a bully-man against the mankind, we have to ask what has really caused the Ukraine crisis?! Maybe Prof. John Mearsheimer can provide some insight to find the answer: It is West's Fault, leading to the Ukraine crisis!  As a matter of fact, Prof. Mearsheimer had already predicted 6 years ago all the things which are happening today in 2022!!

https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4

What Idiot Joe has done is simply giving Putin more "incentives" to initiate the war. Who can be more stupid than the Idiot Joe to make it very clear to Putin that NATO dared not to directly confront with Russia if they invaded Ukraine?! I also find and share below some interesting thought about the crisis from a friend. 

【西行小宝】白痴登集团纠集西方沼泽地各国（欧盟，法，德，意，英，加）联合声明：对俄罗斯采取5项禁运措施。把选定银行移除SWIFT系统（约70%的俄罗斯银行），限制俄罗斯中央银行部署其国际储备，对发动乌克兰战争的关键个人制裁，冻结关键个人和机构资产，最后沼泽地集团还要配合打击虚假信息（另一种形式的混合战争）。

然而，不要忘了，在普金发动对乌克兰的军事行动当天，这些沼泽地集团就从俄罗斯购买了价值7.5亿美元的天然气，石油，各种贵金属。也不要忘了，上面这五项措施中没有对俄罗斯出口石油和天然气进行禁运。 俄罗斯是美国进口石油的第二大供应商。至于天然气，就更不用提了。德国（49%），意大利（46%）以及其他北欧东欧的国家有的100%依赖俄罗斯天然气。

今天，世界最大的天然气上市公司，收入在俄罗斯最大的公司，Gazprom的财务总监，忽然被发现在圣彼得堡自杀。有意思的时间，让人无限遐想。

那么，如果以上国家把俄罗斯踢出SWIFT系统，俄罗斯出口给这些国家的天然气资金怎么回收？俄罗斯是否会拉闸断气？是否会停止向美国运油？那么，这些制裁俄罗斯的西方沼泽地各国将无疑把自己推向更加困难的经济状态。

俄罗斯很早就已经发展了自己的支付系统MIR，如果本次禁运让俄罗斯成功使用MIR跟伊朗，中国等盟友顺利使用MIR，那么，这将对美元构成不小的冲击。

此外，如果俄罗斯中央银行被限制使用相当于4030亿美元（只有120亿是美元，剩下的是其他货币）的外汇储备支付，这将是更为严重的战争行为。也许，这就是为什么普金忽然推动立法，让加密数字货币成为合法货币。此外，俄罗斯的选择还有一条，就是用黄金支撑卢布。过去10年，俄罗斯一直在累计黄金，到去年12月，俄罗斯囤积的黄金已经搞到3600公吨。

因此，在未来几个星期，石油，天然气，黄金，美元及其他货币将会出现不可预见的波动。如果西方沼泽地国家只是雷声大雨点小地做做样子给普通人看，则没有大的金融市场动荡；如果沼泽地集团冻结俄罗斯外汇储备，这将是两败俱伤的行为。不但会有扩大战争的风险，也会对金融市场造成更大的影响，也许会引发全球金融市场超级震荡。

With respect to the market reactions, it is not the time to sell everything due to panic, especially those long term investments. See below some major crises in the history and how the market reacted and moved on following each crisis. I personally placed some open orders to buy into panicky selloffs in the past week, for which I also posted my thought in my chat groups. After two days panicky buying following initial panicky selloff when the news broke out that Russia started the invasion, I took the short term gains off the table and am starting to bet on the downside low testing in the days ahead. This is a very fluid situation that moves the market in either direction constantly following each piece of news, negative or positive. But betting against each extreme is usually a good strategy with higher odds to gain!

What would happen if the markets crashed?

The cover of the Economist... one of the all-time great indicator sources, is a great contrary indicator. 

Right now, a rather bearish headline on the cover of the Economist amidst a hawkish Federal Reserve narrative... in the same week that the U.S. and U.K. are the only Western nations sounding the alarm over a possible Russian invasion of Ukraine, is about as good of an anecdotal "buy" signal as you're likely ever to see, if you have a contrarian mindset!

Of course, no one knows whether it's a short- or long-term signal – or any kind of signal at all.  Just wait and see😜 

Only cryptos can save the truckers

It is an incredible story to read! I cannot believe Canada has depraved (堕落) to such a police state under Trudeau, but don't just believe this will not come to you in the US or any other countries. As long as the left-dominated authority is in power, all those countries will deprave sooner or later. Therefore it becomes more critically important to hold some cryptos that may save you some day.  ****************************************************************************************** Bank Runs in Canada? With the world reopening, and even US blue states repealing mandates, how optimistic should we be? In my view, a little bit is warranted but not that much. There are huge pressures from high places right now to institute a social credit system in the West. If your politics are wrong, or you accidentally become an enemy of the state, they can freeze your accounts and essentially starve you and your family. This was a wild conspiracy theory last year. Now it is very obvious that this is where many governments want to go. We've seen many examples just in the past week. Don't Be Charitable! The truckers in Canada deployed the crowd-funding platform GoFundMe and raised $9M, until suddenly the platform said that they would not distribute the money yet, pending the release of a clear plan on what the truckers were going to do with it. Many of us immediately smelled a rat. Sure enough, a few days later, GoFundMe announced that it would not give the money to the truckers but rather to other charities of its choosing. In other words, it would steal the money. That outraged many people, among them Elon Musk, and the Internet blew up in fury. At that point, GoFundMe returned all the money back to the donors. In the next act of this drama, the truckers went to GiveSendGo, a platform that seems more independent and that pledged to give the money to the truckers. With no promotion or even a clear link on Google on where to send money, the new method raised even more money. This was entirely thanks to uncensored networks where people were sharing information. But the story was far from over. The platform was hit with denial-of-service attacks from malicious actors and then hacked. The thing went down hard and had to be rebuilt. The data on donors was leaked to the government and then to the Canadian Broadcast Company who contacted donors under the guise of "doing a story" on the funding. It was a clear attempt at intimidation. The Minister of Finance got into the act and essentially declared that anyone using these to provide funding to the truckers were engaging in illicit activity — essentially terrorists. Without missing a beat, the Minister of Justice for Trudeau went further to declare that anyone who has given large figures through these platforms "should be worried" about having their bank accounts frozen. So there we have it on record: the Canadian government has declared that it can freeze anyone's bank account and seize the contents based on their political views or charitable actions. In the midst of all of this, Trudeau declared emergency powers that allow the government to do this to all for non-compliers, and do so without any court order.

Crypto To the Rescue The next step in this astonishing drama: crypto. The platform TallyCoin somehow and almost miraculously navigated all the compliance regulations and became a viable way to use crypto to crowd fund, thus bypassing banks (so long as you don't convert your crypto to dollars). Very quickly, the platform raised $1M for the truckers. This was all put together by a group of truckers calling itself HonkHonk Hodl. That means, of course, hold crypto don't sell. Almost immediately, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (Canada's FBI) sent letters to many crypto exchanges demanding that any assets flowing through their systems that are known to be intended as donations to the truckers must be reported immediately. At the same time, the truckers are being told to leave. Yes, all these actions are clearly political, clearly totalitarian, and clearly relying fundamentally on the control of finance to shore up regime power and crush political opposition. Yes, crypto can help bypass the system, but it still must deal with three huge barriers: 1) the exchanges and platforms deal with enormous burdens in regulatory compliance, 2) the onramps to obtaining crypto are ever more intrusive, 3) the offramps to moving crypto out of digits and into cash are highly regulated. None of this is the fault of crypto. It is a failure of the transition. As we go to print, we are watching very carefully for signs of a run on Canadian banks. This is what happens when the government starts threatening to seize funds. The outage reports at the Royal Bank of Canada look rather extreme, and ATMs are starting to announce new hours. Many Twitter users are reporting that the ATMs are empty. This could get very ugly very fast. What if there is contagion? (As an aside, the one word hardly spoken during this incredible drama is Covid. It was never really about a virus.) The Great Transition On the matter of compliance, the burdens are stunning. For any nonprofit organization to receive crypto and turn it into cash, there are only a few options out there. Getting approved requires piles of documentation and approvals. Clearly regulators are doing everything possible to throttle this sector and progress in FinTech generally. Since 2013, I've written about the possibility of a fully private monetary system. It seemed like a wonderful ideal. Someday, we will get there. But the transition has become extremely complicated, as government authorities attempt to use their existing regulatory hold on conventional money and regulated exchanges to institute a China-style social credit system. Even now, I cannot believe that I just typed those sentences, which I used to hear only from very fringy commentators. Now the fringe is the fabric. Anyone who has not paid attention to the conspiracy theories of the last year has failed to anticipate most of the news. Many of the world's wisest minds have observed that the main means by which powerful states seize and retain control is through the money of the realm. Guns help. Prestige helps. But in the end, it's the control of money that keeps the people in servitude. It's nothing short of an inspiration to observe how blockchain technology is finding ways around this problem. I've been spending time examining Solana's Switzerland-based platform for decentralized finance and contracts and it's truly remarkable. The proof-of-history protocol seems to have provided a solution to the scaling problem that afflicts many blockchain tokens, giving us astonishing speed (710K transactions per second, or 50 times credit cards) while ensuring transparency, almost zero fees, and no censorship.The more time you spend with the mind of architect Anatoly Yakovenko, the more impressed one is. So yes, there seems to be a strong basis for the astonishing rise of the token SOL. Truckers, Crypto, and the Future If you find all this stuff a bit mindblowing, I get it. Crypto was once for geeks only. Now it has become a tool for saving the working class from obliteration by hegemonic forces within the ruling-class financial structure. The workers' revolution is taking a different path from what anyone in the 19th century could have ever imagined: from diesel to crypto to freedom. Or so we can hope. Jeffrey Tucker

The Holy Grail Breakthrough!

SpaceX Starship Presentation 2022 Summary 

Putin is making fun of the idiot!

I have lately posted quite a few blogs, making fun of the biggest idiot on the earth😜 Apparently this has infuriated some leftists who reported to the WC company, which has then blocked my blog site from being opened directly from WC. I'm actually happy as this shows my blog is an effective weapon to fight against the leftists💪🤗 I will continue to do what I think is right. As for the blog, simply open it via a browser and nothing has changed. Or you can simply save my blog site for regular visits instead of using the link. You can also consider to join my Telegram group where no one can block my blogs:

Here is the link for "DW  谈股论金": https://t.me/joinchat/SgYa_xNrjTNHk9cS51ke0A.    

Today, we see another panicky selloff due to the seemingly increased chance of a war between Russia and Ukraine. But more and more I think this is just a fun play engineered by Putin, aiming to tease the mentally retarded idiot Joe. I don't think Putin is that stupid to start a real war. After all, Putin is already getting what he wants, a platform to discuss security guarantees in Eastern Europe, and increased political power in Ukraine... simply by moving some tanks around and waiting. But Idiot Joe has been fooled into firmly believing that a war is imminent😂

Part of the reason that I don't believe a war is imminent is that I have a source of information directly coming from someone physically on the ground of Ukraine who grows up and works there. They of course have first hand knowledge about the reality in Ukraine. Here is what they are saying now:

It's very calm here. You would never know anything was going on...

I'm hopeful the situation will find a solution. But no matter what happens, it won't be today (Feb 16)– it's a very complex problem that the media doesn't go into the details about. It won't be solved anytime soon.

People in Kyiv are even posting funny messages on social media sites, joking and asking things like what time the Russians are planning to invade so they can avoid the traffic jams that may occur... 

One important point we can cover easily today... all the tanks and additional equipment that have been reported moving near the Russia-Ukraine border... Well, just know much of that equipment has been in place since last April....

But the hryvnia, Ukraine's currency, hasn't budged significantly lately... It is trading at 28-to-1 to the U.S. dollar, not materially different than it has over the last two years.

Another important indicator to watch is obviously oil. If a war is really imminent, it will go to the moon but today oil is actually coming down a bit and its trend looks really ominous....meaning it is trending down, not up! As such I'm adding more positions to short oil and energy stocks these days. 

I can be wrong of course, which will simply mean Putin is more stupid than the idiot!!😇

An extremely rare dual pullback in stocks and bonds

A rare dual pullback in stocks and bonds has investors in a tizzy (by SentimenTrader)

It's been a heckuva year for investors, and not in a good way. The overwhelming majority of investment wealth in the U.S. is tied to stocks and bonds, and both have been broadly hit. Neither asset class has provided ballast to the other.

We saw earlier this week that high-yield bonds have suffered heavy selling over the past month, on par with some of the worst declines in 15 years. It's not just junk bonds that investors are selling, though. Investment-grade bonds, municipals, Treasuries - all have suffered.

This sell-everything mentality has created an unusual situation where both stocks and bonds are losing ground simultaneously.

It's extremely rare to see both stocks and bonds in a pullback at the same time, defined as a 5% decline from a 52-week high. Starting late last week, the total return in the S&P 500 and Bloomberg U.S. Aggregate Bond Index were both more than 5% off their highs. 

These dual pullbacks were a good sign that whatever macro concerns were driving the selling was mostly overdone. The S&P did suffer some losses in the months ahead, especially in 2008 as the final bout of panic hit markets. 

It's been mostly a tailwind for the bond market over the past 40+ years, so it's not a big surprise that the total return on the Bloomberg U.S. Bond Aggregate was mouth-watering. 

BBB Is Dead in toilet!

Biden's Build Back Better Is Dead, Dead, Dead (by Jim Rickards)

Biden pushed through a pandemic relief package early in 2021 consisting of $1.9 billion of handouts for Democrat pet projects. Although the bill was dressed up as COVID relief, the money actually went to Democratic states with no strings attached, and to teachers' unions and other favored constituencies. Some money went to support jobs; but the cost came to $275,000 per job (according to estimates) with most of the benefit going to the top 20% of income earners. With hindsight, it looks like a huge waste of money. But, at the time it got bipartisan support due to the perception that it was needed to fight off the worst economic effects of the virus. Some Democrats warned at the time that the spending was unnecessary and would lead to inflation, but they were mostly ignored. One of the voices warning about inflation was Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Later in 2021, it came time to consider another relief bill called Biden's Build Back Better plan. This was even more of a boondoggle than the first relief package. This plan includes the Green New Deal, Medicare for All, pre-school for all, and more money for childcare, school lunches, and some student loan forgiveness. You can debate the merits of these individual programs. But there's no debate about the fact that this has nothing to do with pandemic relief. It's just another multi-trillion giveaway by the Democrats. The original costs of this were planned at about $3.9 trillion. It was scaled back to around $1.9 trillion, but even that involves a lot of accounting gimmicks; the true cost is not far from the original $3.9 trillion once the gimmicks are removed. And once again, Joe Manchin is sounding the alarm about inflation, as described in this article. It's clear that the high inflation we are experiencing now is partly due to the 2021 package of $1.9 trillion in giveaways. If the economy is running close to short-term capacity in terms of labor markets and manufacturing ability, and you throw $1.9 trillion at it, inflation is the predictable result. Another $1.9 trillion will guarantee the inflation grows worse and the Fed will have to tighten even more to snuff it out. That will practically guarantee a recession or a market crash, or both. Fortunately, Joe Manchin has said that Build Back Better is "dead, dead, dead" as far as he is concerned. The Democrats will still try to push this through in smaller chunks of perhaps $450 billion each. Investors need to focus on this. Whether it's done all at once or in small chunks, the result will be the same over time. Make sure your portfolio includes some gold, energy stocks and real estate so it will be robust to inflation and resilient in the face of a market crash.

Idiot's mumble

The market tanked when a warning came: "Russia will invade Ukraine on Feb 14!"

That was what happened last Friday and the market believed the warning and ran away with panic. The problem is that this was the mumbles from an idiot, who has no real clue what is going on around him, not to mention around the world. While it is really a joke with an idiot sitting as the president (faked one of course) for the country, unfortunately we have seen and will continue to see more and more such nonsense sagas. We saw the chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan; we are seeing the out of control pandemic crisis even with more and more vaccines and treatments available; we are feeling the pain of the run-away inflation that has no end in sight. And now the idiot is crying wolf to scare the market by fabricating a war story with a specific date.......Even the Ukraine President couldn't help but rebuke such a idiotic claim! Zelensky and Ukraine's government have criticized the United States at times for over-stating the danger of an imminent Russian invasion of the country.

I just have to laugh at the idiot's plays and am happy to bet against his insanity whenever there is such a chance. Last Friday, I loaded up SPX to bet we wouldn't see such a war by today in Ukraine. Sure enough I was happy to walk away with a nice quick gain today. We saw another knee-jerk moment today in the afternoon when S&P dropped by about 50 points due to another scary war-warning. I again opened another set of option play to bet we won't see such a war in the next few days. I could be wrong of course and if so, my risk is extremely limited but I'm confident that I will be walking away with another set of gains that may be several times my risk! I love this game play these days🤓😜

Everyone feels the pain!

Unless you live on Mars, you must have felt the pain of fast inflated prices for nearly everything you must have for your living. This is the "gift" the dumbed fake President with mental disorders has brought to the country. For anyone supporting him, they must enjoy the pain😉

President Joe Biden listens during a G7 Leaders' virtual meeting in the White House Situation Room. Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz.

Inflation Continues to Break Records, Further Imperiling the Democrat Agenda and Midterm Odds J ust weeks after President Joe Biden claimed that consumer price gains had hit a peak, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Thursday that inflation remains on the upswing — sowing doubts about whether the White House fully has its arms around a crisis that may be broadening. Prices rose 7.5% last month from a year ago, the most in four decades. Biden faces an even bigger battle now to enact his spending proposals and retain his party's control of Congress in the wake of such a large surge in the cost of living for Americans. Voters are taking notice. According to a CNN poll released Thursday, nearly 60% of Americans disapprove of the president's job performance as his approval rating continues to sink. The same poll in December found that 49% of Americans approved, while 51% disapproved. What's more, in the latest snapshot of voter sentiment, only 36% of independents and 9% of Republicans approved of the job Biden is doing. Eighty-three percent of Democrats still approve of Biden, but that's a drop from 94% last summer.

"The severity of this inflation was directly fueled by the reckless, far-left spending spree that every single Democrat in this chamber voted to ram through,"  said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) To end this insanity, the only way is to vote them out of power. Here is the Wisdom of the Crowd per the political betting site, PredictIt  Traders are confident that Republicans will win back full control of Congress — pricing a "yes" outcome at 73¢ in the balance of power market. Don't underestimate this prediction as it is the real money that is talking. It is quite powerful with accuracy!💪 o  t

Sure-fire sign it's time to buy stocks

• Don't panic!
  

This was what I posted on Jan 24 when I saw a lot of blood in the streets. 

Well, my timing seemed quite precise. See what the JPM strategist Matejka also identified as his bullish indicator (100% accuracy) with a date.... Jan 25🤗💪 

This week, the market has got a wild gyration, just like a rollercoaster. It seems the market has moved a lot but if you look into it more carefully, the market is not really moving a lot but just within a wide range between its support and resistance. So buying at support and selling at resistance is a good trading strategy in the current setting. For today with the market tanking towards its support around 4400ish with VIX showing a lot higher put futures than calls for next week and the week after, I think the chance is high that we will see a rally in the next week or two. Armed with the TA trends and VIX indicator,  I'm sharing a lot of ideas in my Family based on an option trading strategy that will allow me to bet with a small risk to bet for a 3-5 times potential return for a wide margin of error. For example, SPY closed at 440. We opened an option spread due next week that can make money as long as SPY is trading within a range of 444 to 456 with the max profit if it closes at 450 next Wed. With just a few hundreds, we bet for a potential gain of several thousands. That's the kind of risk reward ratio I'm interested in at the moment in this very fluid market🤓  We have harvested quite a few nice gains by the strategy in the past few weeks, betting up or down depending on the momentum trend. 😇

******************************************************************************

JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists have identified what they say is a near bulletproof indicator to strengthen their argument that stock markets are poised to rally.

The buy signal is triggered when the Cboe Volatility Index (VIX) rises by more than 50% of its 1-month moving average, which it last did Jan. 25, according to the strategists led by Mislav Matejka. The indicator has proven 100% accurate outside of recessions over the last three decades.

"We believe that equities still offer upside, and that the cycle is far from over," the London-based strategists wrote in a Feb. 7 note. In addition to the VIX signal they look for more gains in earnings, a bottoming in Chinese activity and say investor sentiment has become too negative of late.

 

 

Data show the VIX signal has been triggered 21 times since 1990, with the S&P 500 Index gaining an average 9% in the six months afterwards. Prior to January, the last time the indicator flashed was in November, since when stocks have fallen globally. Markets have remained choppy this week.

姜还是老的辣 （ The older the goose the harder to pluck）

A 25% plunge with $252 worth wealth wiped out in one single day! That's what had happened to Zuckerberg last week😉😣

I saw a report a couple of years ago that Zuckerberg was considering running for the US Presidency by travelling across the nation to seek support and spread his left ideology! I have to laugh about his insanity if this was really what he meant to do. Now he is becoming more and more like a joke politically in trying to control the media and people's mind and this latest blow hopes to teach him a big lesson!!💪🤗

Zuck's Folly (by Andy Synder)

Our mantra to fellow business owners has long been, "Don't build your business on Facebook." Lots of companies and lots of brands have used Facebook as the main - if not only - platform for their sales.

It's dangerous. With one change of thre rules, Facebook can wipe you out.

It's happened... a lot.

It turns out that ol' Zuckerberg failed to take our advice. And when he got into a public fight with the leadership at Apple... they came after him.

It's no secret that Apple changed its privacy rules last year. Through its new "App Tracking Transparency" mandate, the company forces app-makers to get permission from users before tracking their data as they wander all over the online world.

For most companies, it's a sharp thorn in their side. It limits their marketing prowess.

For Facebook, which lives and breathes on the data it collects with its Apple-distributed app... it's a stock buster. As we saw on Thursday... it's a $252 billion stock buster, to be exact.

The Big Fight

Apple's "Ask App Not to Track" feature is a direct slap in the face to Zuckerberg.

In April of last year, The New York Times reported that Cook and the Facebook CEO were "on very bad terms."

Tech historians will tell you the rift started in 2014. That's when Cook warned about Facebook's data-collecting schemes and begged folks to "follow the money" to see whether they should be worried about Facebook.

The fight got nastier in 2017. That's when two things happened.

First, in the less-reported story, a bunch of Facebook cronies wrote a series of anonymous papers criticizing Cook and his leadership... and fabricating a tale that he planned to run for president.

It wasn't well received by the computer company.

The bigger story, breaking that same year, was the infamous Cambridge Analytica political scandal, in which Facebook was busted for its abusive relationship with its users' data.

We declared Facebook a data company with a social media cover.

Apple - whether it truly believes it or not - has taken a very strong stance against exploiting users' data. It says privacy is a "fundamental human right."

When asked about the Cambridge scandal, Cook took a shot at Zuckerberg, saying, "I wouldn't be in this situation."

Ouch.

Then, last year - proving just how big the feud had gotten - the dueling duo took their fight to Capitol Hill... where folks on both sides of the gaping, fire-breathing aisle want to pull apart their companies over antitrust concerns.

Instead of fighting for their industry, Cook and Zuckerberg fought each other. Facebook cried because Apple controls so much of its business. Apple griped about data surveillance.

Meanwhile, congressional aides and campaign managers took notes on how to take advantage of it all.

Cook has used everything he has to strike back at Zuckerberg. And he finally got in a big blow with Apple's latest software release. Its new privacy settings have slammed Facebook's earnings potential.

We saw as much in the company's earnings update last week.

Not only did daily active users fall... but with far less data on them, those users are also worth a whole lot less.

Oh sure, the common shareholder got slammed. Cook would call that collateral damage and openly invite folks to buy Apple shares to make up for the loss.

But it's the Facebook ringleader who Cook is slyly winking at these days. Zuckerberg lost $30 billion... all because his business relies on another.

And now the action starts...

Will Google stock split boost its share price?

At its earnings call this week, Google made an announcement of an upcoming 20-for-1 stock split effective in July. With this split  the stock will trade at around $150 post-split, based on a price of around $3,000.

As you know, there is nothing changed for the stock value with a split mathematically. So why does Google opt to split its stock? Well, there may be some different reasons but one main reason is probably related to a potential boost to its stock price. Why so?

Take a look at the comparison company's stock and a Google Trends search of the term "Google stock"...As the figure below shows, the higher the stock went, the less interested average investors were in the stock, meaning the high share price may have deterred many people from investing it. 

One way to resolve that: make the stock appear to be more in the reach of the average investor. In other words, low share prices may get a lot more general people to become interested in the stock as it is more accessible to average investor, especially those with shallow pockets. I also believe so, especially for option trading. E.g. one will need 300K to do just one covered call at a price of $3000 but just need $15K at a price of $150. So you can bet there will be a lot more option trading for Google post-split. 

As such, we may see a positive boost to the Google stock price when the split becomes effective in July.🤗

What a week!

Here were the notes I posted to my chat groups this week:

Tue, Feb 2
For three straight days the S&P has opened lower, reversed, and then finished the session with a strong rally into the close.  S&P 500 futures are up 45 points. If it hold until the opening then the index will be up over 300 points from Friday's low. That's 300 points… in four sessions. But a rally so much so fast could lead to some short-term exhaustion. That's why I'm looking for a negative reversal today: open high, close low!    

Wed, Feb 3
We didn't see a reversal yesterday as I was expecting. Nevertheless it was a great day to offload some gains yesterday. But right now in the futures we see a big hit down by about 50 points for S&P. That should not be really unexpected given we have seen nearly 350 points gain in four straight sessions. So the big question is how much lower the market can go? Well based on the VIX futures I don't think it would be a huge correction: the initial downside would be 4530 for S&P. Below that it will be 4500. The worst we may see down to 4450. But I really don't see that happening. Overall expect some volatility in the next few days 🧐

S&P peaked around 4600 on Tue and then crashed down to 4450ish in the following two days. Miraculously, it did hold up at the final support at 4450 and then shot up by finishing a hair above 4500 for the week today!💪😜 The wild gyrations of this week did provide some trading opportunities. We took some profits off the table when S&P was marching higher on Tue and placed a few short positions to bet on a quick correction. Today, we harvested the gains from the short positions and in turn reopened some long positions to bet on a resumption of the uptrend in the next week.  Apart from the charting trends, VIX options have also given me a great deal of confidence to assess the short term trend direction of the market. I still see an uptrend to continue for a while before it runs its course. Again it won't be a straight line up but with volatility and fluctuations. However, I don't see a new high anytime soon. After all, we are not out of the woods yet, far from it 😣



Small traders are panicking to a record degree

Small traders are showing record levels of panic (by SentimenTrader)

Last week saw some of the most volatile price action in 2 years, a barrage of nasty headlines, and a cutting in half of a near-majority of stocks on the Nasdaq.

It was enough to trigger panic among the most leveraged traders in the market.

Small options traders bought to open nearly 12 million put options last week, spending $6.5 billion for the privilege of protecting their portfolios. That's a remarkable jump in trades meant to hedge against further losses. It's 40% higher than even the worst week during the March 2020 meltdown.

Of course, this only shows one side. If they also bought a tremendous number of speculative call options or sold a bunch of put options betting that declines would be limited, then it doesn't mean a whole lot.

As a percentage of all opening option trades, small traders spent 29% of their volume on buying put options. When we look at the amount of money small traders spent on put options relative to calls, it's now the highest since April 2020.