introduction, looking back at the year, glancing at the year to come

(sound clips will go up tomorrow)

...can't recall when or from where I copied the above image. Some note to a friend maybe or something posted to a social site or a blog, maybe a response, maybe a refute. But it’s appropriate for the moment. What we do, our affect, is always a negotiation with context. A larger set becoming smaller and more familiar. Per force. Narratively and grammatically. To one. Now.

In that regard, you can describe any consciousness as a singular expression of modality across changing contexts.

Which should and likely does appear as a banal notion. Not that it’s direct, of course: any idea has discreetly infinite potential meanings and subsequent importance. Even watching a film of someone getting out of bed in the morning and shuffling into the kitchen to put a pot of espresso on the stovetop has a bizillion interpretations and layers, both the film itself and whoever is viewing it. Interpretation is a form of affect preceding further action. Inference results from an affect and precedes interpretation. What we do, what something else does, any change in the universe for that matter is a negotiation with context. And always involves a form of dialog. Banal. Still…. almost always forgotten, unconsidered.

Today is the 27th of October, 2024. It will, if human civilization is to carry on - far from guaranteed - be marked as a sort of tail of an important historical week. Kazan, the meeting of the expanding BRICS, will likely be marked as the beginning of a spiral of hope in the new - for all humanity. Instead, other events over the past months will likely be later described as, well…. comparable to the quartet playing on deck as the Titanic lifted, broke and plunged into its frozen end. Not forgotten by any means, indeed but….becoming more story and legend than any majestic ship still crossing the Atlantic to both steal and create new worlds. The final performance of the West before fading into… story.

That fade will be considerably more pronounced for most of Western Europe than it will be for the United States. Probably. No one knows the future, after all. The US is a wealthier country regarding resources, its demographic though horrid is less so than Europe’s and its social dynamic, though rotten - probably with intention top-down - is never the less much more energetic. And its Trump administration re-negotiated North American trade block, including an incomprehensibly suicidal Canada and destined to expand Mexico…is incomparably superior.





Such things were largely unthinkable on such a short scale of time when I first began fiddling in financial markets in the early 80’s. MTV hadn’t yet appeared. Digital was a word, yes but relatively rarely used. (Note: AI was already… in the air. Though impressive in short doses… after 4 decades it remains mostly promise, not substance, in the real world. There is a sort of real world, by the way, even if…. there seems to be a push to negate much of it. Another more important question regards the difference between those who try to model the real world using AI, and others who force the real world to conform to their models, their AI.) Anyway.

Here on at least a bi-monthly basis I will put up a video note to mostly friends regarding where and how to place or build their portfolios. Most likely I’ll begin posting …on my birthday, a couple months from now. There’ll be other things of course, richer, more flavorful to me anyway but…. most people, after all - and more so as they age, alas - are drawn more to comfort and story reinforcement or legitimization, generally by eliminating in various ways any competing or discordant elements, than toward… fearless wonder and that irreplaceable felt beauty it usually brings. So it goes.

(….continued today, the day before my birthday or…the day of LVB, Dec. 16.) If you don't want to see most people you know fall off into those their delineated safe and fundamentally less-caring spaces…. you’ll have to die early-ish or very late-ish. There are likely at least already partially describable reasons for that tendency: anatomic, hormonal, cultural, systemic. I’ll likely get to that-those soon enough though…who cares anyway. To the summary-point of this introduction:




(Note to anyone perusing: for now, I've none of these things - those who know me know the primary cause. He did actually steal literally every thing. Just suggestions these and no conflicts of interest. For now.)

Recommendations Over the Last Year:

January- caution. We were entering into a Dada nightmare more than a mere twilight zone. At some point no longer decades away… several knots are going to get stuck in the comb, as it were, and how those knots are dealt with will make all the difference.

March- gold. Hard, physical if possible. Tier one, Brics, our Dada Western gov. Debt and BOP problems, the utterly failed, cruel and disastrous Ukraine affair, the least unlikely scenario of expanding Treasury balance in the US regardless of how the elections turn out, ecc. More than a mere hedge, gold as an investment - something unthinkable a dozen years ago. Quite weird how the world has changed.

May- VIX (which is market volatility index meaning higher on dramatic higher or more usually lower overall stock market values) in good-to-cancel, limit order chunks. The fan is on, shit will arrive - though a stock market collapse is yet unlikely (see March, expanding money with not that many places to go.) Market rotation inevitable though in the immediate term.

July- copper, on pull backs, more as a hedge than investment as in if things somehow work out much better than is probable - we have a future supply deficit. And not enough time to fix it given how long it takes to bring in a mine. Either learn and follow for small-mid cap miners or do the mutual fund thing or the usual etf like COPJ (sprott junior copper mines) when markets break. As usual, attention to NAV if you use ETF’s, maybe glance over the holdings at least. (Just in case:ETF's are different than 'normal' mutual funds in that their prices are determined by markets, not by what they hold. The NAV - Net Asset Value is a rough measure of what they're actually worth. Don't buy something at 50 if the NAv is at 10, so to say.)

September- Nuclear. It’s inevitable, a no-brainer in time. Slow, ETF again like NUKZ or research in this field - and you do want a wider net extending quite beyond mere uranium. A slew of possible ways to analyse and concentrate in.

November- Begin to sell into rallies if you’re overexposed in equities.


As of today… all of the above remain valid even though there have been price changes. Caution more than before. Gold… is about 30 percent up dollar terms from the recommend and is still not a bad idea in smaller percentages, say from the up-to 15 percent (not more) then to up-to 10 percent now. Obviously you can risk and jump into bitcoin, an all or nothing sort of deal but covering very similar aspects of scenario asset risk ie inflation, fiat currency default, etc. But that could also end up being worthless. Utterly. By more than one way. Try not to forget that external drive your wallet address key is on is in your back pocket. (just in case - one of the several problems of bitcoin: lose your digital wallet 'key' and you lose access, permanently, to your bitcoins. About a fifth have already been already lost.)

The VIX…. still a good idea. Depending on how you would have bought and sold it, the return there would have been between 50 and 350 percent over a short time frame (it would have all been sold on the pull back.) One should have been re-accumulating since then anytime it fell and falls below 15 but even, depending on your portfolio, up to 18.5 (in even chunks, so, say, 300 shares at each 18.5, then 17.0, 16, 15, 14.5. 14, 13.5, 13 and 12.5 then sell from 18.9 on up, at say, 18.9, 20.9, 22.4, 23.9, 24.9, 25.9, 27.4, 29.9, 32.9.) (I just noticed it’s rising quick again.)

The copper covers the opposite scenario, mostly, of gold (though a bit ironically it would benefit from the consumptive aspects of bitcoin.) COPJ would be the least effort-filled to buy. I would have nibbled at 20 earlier, and maybe nibble again at 18.5 or where it roughly is now, only nibble - because I suspect it will head down a good bit anyway along with… many, at some point. The yield here is about 2 percent. How much would depend on your portfolio… this is a long insurance deal.

NUKZ is up from 38 to 42 from September to now and is jumping much higher today, at 44.5. A quick gain…. But this is an investment. It’s still worth buying here, at least a nibble…. More, much, aggressively on any market fall-backs. In such an avenue… holdings in this kind of small cap etf will be bought out in the coming years by larger companies and values will increase as well as more direct investment in the sector will… soar. It is another risk asset, partially - one could likely find apparently safer though less rewarding ways.

Selling lightly into rallies… yes, the S&P 500 has rallied as expected after the Trump-Republican win. All the massive problems, particular government debt in the west, in the US commercial real estate, government at all levels and personal debt as well…not only remain but have increased. So if you have more than 50 percent of your portfolio in risk assets like corporate stocks… begin to move money away and elsewhere. I would have begun at the election rally, unhurriedly but certainly.

Next month….hola, Привет, Xin chào….