My chinese sheet metal supplier e-mailed me that aluminum and stainless steel prices have increased 25 to 30% in the last month. I can see one or the other, but both is indicative of a wider trend.

You should stock up.

How much of that is shipping?

I know with port closures in china due to covid, shipping containers are being routed to ports other than their original destination causing bidding wars in some ports for fewer and fewer containers.

Raw materials. It could be dollar fluctuation due to the Evergrande mortgage meltdown. The writing on the wall is nationalization of mortgages in China, which could happen here later on as a solution to high housing prices.

Illegal immigration trends kicking off in the 90s adding 100 million people in 2021 contributed a lot to thr scarcity issues for many goods and services and increased prices.
Federal Reserve and U.S. debt increasing from the deficit spending poor choices, and free stuff, also knocked the U.S. down. This country will not recover.

Getting bitch-slapped out of Afghanistan can't be a good sign. Historians will sort out the reasons, but I agree that we are facing a post-empire United States. We are a country of survivors with a history of individual magnanimity. Should get interesting.

Phazer Wrote:
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> Illegal immigration trends kicking off in the 90s
> adding 100 million people in 2021 contributed a
> lot to thr scarcity issues for many goods and
> services and increased prices.

Nonsense. You can't blame a phenomenon that dates to the 1990s for a price phenomenon that only started in 2020. When you get your evidence so strikingly wrong, it would be good to put some thought into whether there is a better explanation.


---------------
> Federal Reserve and U.S. debt increasing from the
> deficit spending poor choices, and free stuff,
> also knocked the U.S. down.

Given that the Federal Reserve doesn't have any power over fiscal policy, your assignment of blame for the debt to that entity is specious. When you get your evidence so strikingly wrong, it would be good to put some thought into whether there is a better explanation.


-----------------
> This country will not recover.

This country doesn't have a chance if it can't improve the quality of public education.

Bring back paddling!!

What are a few bruises compared to a nation of phazers?

Why stop at paddling?

Canes and dunce caps and endless treatises on Manifest Destiny on a sound loop. That's the ticket!

Now you’re just being a provocateur… Probably for some unaligned foreign power…

Provocateur?

If I really wanted to be provocative, I'd hire a mariachi band to sing hymns on Temple Square between conference sessions.

You also seem to think one out of every three people in the US is an illegal immigrant. Either that, or you have no idea what the US population is. I'm assuming the latter.

100 million immigrants, of any status, is absurd.

That wasn't the number of people entering each year; that was the whole megillah.

More importantly, that was in fact a *drop* from 2007, when 12.7 million illegal immigrants were in the country.

These numbers are about 3% of the population.


There is no shot in hell that there are 100 million illegal immigrants in the United States.

Tyson

as crazy as the 1 in 3 is an illegal immigrant sounds, here in California, where the major population centers are in the West, I am not so sure that it is not true.

I don’t really care, at this point in my life. Nevertheless demographics and culture do make a difference. The US is unique, the white progressive dream of it becoming more like Norway or Sweden will never happen in this country, and not due to white conservatives, nor will it be the country that Trump supporters wanted it to be. Both white liberals and Trump supporters are in fantasyland about the direction of this country.

Better invest in horse paste futures.

A friend owns an electrical contracting company here in TN. He often can only get quotes from his suppliers for conduit, wire, cable trays etc. that are good for only 24 hours. It is making running the business very difficult. He told me he bid on a project last year that finally decided to go ahead. He had to double his prices to make any kind of profit. It appears official inflation is understated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/19/2021 10:24AM by Eric K.

Based on the charts I use commodity prices are on the rise but significantly down from 2008. Looks like the trend turned up in 2020.

Aluminum is spiking because of a coup in Guinea, which is a major bauxite exporter. I hope you remote viewed that.

I couldn't find a good chart or trading vehicle for trading alum. so the information would not be useful unless I could trade it.

I am mainly trading stocks, indexes, and exchange traded funds that are listed on major sites and tracked. Therefore, I concentrate on those things to RV and trade. Actually I do a unitary RV or use a condensed version of ideogram drawing to predict market movements. Over 10 in a row so far with minor funds involved so will now work with larger funding.

My philosophy is to first live well under your income (if at all possible--individual circumstances vary, of course). Then invest only money you don't need to live on in funds that usually track above their benchmark. When downturns occur, as they inevitably do, hold on and wait it out.

So far, so good.

I agree with what you are saying. However, some of us, with a portion of our money, are 'swing traders' and day trades are not uncommon. Some of us like the drama and excitement. Today I was in for an hour and earned 1.5% ---- which is more than my CDs are making in 1 year. I took a vacation for a week last week and didn't make 1 trade at all. So trade for the fun and leave it alone or trade in a 'trend trade' when you don't want the drama/excitement.

I really appreciate the long term traders and even do that to some extent also in some retirement accounts ---- provides a floor for the market. Heck I even still invest some money in CDs and bonds!

I may have mentioned I am psychic and psychics are having trouble demonstrating psychic abilities can be useful to make money. I am keeping records on using my 'abilities' to earn money in the stock market. I do assist a PHD who has been studying this for over 20 years and predict for him also. However, I don't like his procedures and have stated my accuracy is not that great with his 'inferior' procedures but agree he is proving his objective. I am trying to prove to myself and possibly the PHD at least in my case for me, my procedures are vastly superior to his and result in higher accuracy and more profits. Sort of a game and a challenge for me ---- keeps me getting out of bed with a goal!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/22/2021 11:24AM by spiritist.

You, like every other investor, are riding a speculative wave. The key is to diversify before the big wipeout.

Today has been likened to the stagflation of the 1970s. I disagree. Interest rates are much lower than the rate of inflation, unlike the 70s. That is inflating the Everything Bubble because there is pressure to borrow money purely to invest in the bubble. This feedback loop is explicitly set up to inflate it until it pops because the only way the US can service its debt now is to default on it.

Asset prices are propped up by debt. Once that debt goes away, the valuation will tank. At the same time, actual money is losing its value due to inflation.

The astrological configuration is the same as 1776. So revolution. But we are in a new Earth energy, the same energy that makes RV easier than it used to be. Maybe the future is better than we imagine.

I have to wonder about the future of individual freedom now that manufacturing is owned by China. That is true wealth. We still have agriculture, but last time I checked we were not a nation of farmers.

You, like every other investor, are riding a speculative wave. The key is to diversify before the big wipeout.
-----------------------------------------------------
No, I am 'not' like most investors. I am mainly a trader with psychic abilities, and the money invested can either quickly be removed or has 'limited loss' built in the contract. I fully understand this market is 'rigged' to some degree, I just plan on being more agile than the 'big' money. Big money moves are no secret.

Our future does seem dire! In fact I try to push that line on social media to the brainwashed for a reason. However, things are not like they appear for some major reasons. You would be amazed at the inventions that have occurred but not disclosed to the brainwashed public. Our future actually is bright, just because you don't see it now doesn't mean it doesn't exist!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2021 12:34PM by spiritist.

"You would be amazed at the inventions that have occurred but not disclosed to the brainwashed public."

Not that disclosure would matter. The secret would hide in plain sight, as impenetrable to the public mind as the notion of imaginary golden plates is to Mormons.

Work ethic is bearish.

Consumption is bullish.

In my 50 years of farming I've never seen agriculture commodity prices this high in Canada. And after a severe drought year many farmers don't have the yields to take advantage of those prices and may not make it through the winter.

Our leaders have lost the idea of American exceptionalism, they no longer see this as the land of opportunity, with vast resources and wealth for capitalists to develop, we were energy inipendant for the first time in 70 years but the first thing you know who did was make us dependant, russia first, china first, anyone but us, gas is the number one reason for inflation since practically everything gets shipped in a truck, our leaders are managing America's decline, pathetic suicide of the west, and who knows what's happening at the border,

Maca not logged in Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> . . . we were energy
> inipendant for the first time in 70 years . . .

That was for several months in 2019, right?


--------------------
> . . . but the
> first thing you know who did was make us
> dependant, russia first, china first, anyone but
> us. . .

This is a curious assertion. US energy independence lasted several months and declined over a year before a lachrymose President Former Guy left office, so you must be accusing Trump of making the US dependent on other countries. Do I have that right? Or are you telling us that Biden is responsible for what happened during his predecessor's presidency?

But I'm curious about your list of countries on whom President Sore Loser made the US depend for energy. The US gets zero energy from China, and Russia is a rounding error in the overall import ledger. So enlighten us: how did increased imports from Canada, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Mexico make the US more dependent on Russia and China?


--------------------
> gas is the number one reason for inflation
> since practically everything gets shipped in a
> truck,

A question for you. The reason the US became energy independent for that brief moment was that the economy was shrinking and demand for energy plummeted faster than American production. So how was that moment of independence meaningful? Wasn't it a sign of economic slowdown caused by COVID-19 and the failure of President Snowflake to advocate social distancing and masks?

And finally, what explains the return of the US to energy dependence? The conventional view is that when economic activity flagged, demand for fuel fell and prices declined (you know, like in a capitalist economy). But since fracking is really costly, it can't work when oil prices are low. As is evident in the wastelands of fracking country--South Dakota, etc--most of the frackers went out of business and US oil and gas production fell.

But that is just the conventional view. You obviously disagree, so I'm hoping you can explain why the consensus is wrong.

Thanks!

"Our leaders have lost the idea of American exceptionalism, they no longer see this as the land of opportunity, with vast resources and wealth for capitalists to develop"

This reminds me of the "white man's fires" we used to build at scout camp. Okay, big fires are fun but what's with the "burn it because it's there" mentality? That's white culture. We consume like locusts.

What did America really bring to the table? Religion. The orthodoxy of conquest and the myth of the individual. Probably no more evident than in Mormonism, with white supremacy as an added bonus.

Maybe the best thing that can happen to us is to learn how to live small.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/23/2021 05:59AM by bradley.

There's no answer to commodity prices, and no government leader, Republican or Democrat, can do anything about them. So when some relative or random person says, "Thanks, *****! Gas got a lot more expensive on his watch." Prices don't change under a Soviet style system of government-centralized prices and markets, but the downside is that centralized markets cause huge shortages.

The irony is that the communist countries learned that they had no way to get prices right and started adjusting things by reference to capitalist economies. A good example was the Soviet Union's oil exports: they based their prices on the world level.

What this means is that if the communists had succeeded in gaining control of the whole world, they must keep at least one small economy capitalist so they would know how to set prices everywhere else.