UAL

so if the black helicopters come and pick me up tonight and I disappear, here is what happened:

My loyal readers already know that I am the quintessential pessimist.  Always the good boy scout, I just do my best to "be prepared" for any consequence.  The lifestyle has amazing benefits; I am so rarely caught be surprise by bad news, instead almost everything unexpected is delightful.

Maxims I have learned in years and years of investing include the ever popular, "buy low, sell high"  Um, the market is hitting all-time records these days, no?  Another favourite learned from childhood is "What goes up must come down."  So far Vanguard I seems to be the only exception known to man.

So I'm a fundamentalist, but I certainly have learned more recently that once the market establishes a direction, or trend, it has a tendency to continue on in that same direction for much longer than it makes sense to do so.

But nevertheless, when just about everything seems overpriced to me, like when these incredible valuations are given to IPO companies that don't make any product at all and don't make any profit at all either, I tend to be looking pretty hard for shorting candidates.

And with the US Government aggressively looking to start a war with Russia (or anybody else, for that matter), and with their heavy reputation, deserved or otherwise, for concocting false flag operations which often have involved passenger ships or airlines,

And with a company which has already declared bankruptcy once or twice, raped all of its employees for their pensions and benefits, and never made any serious money, now enjoying its best revenues ever but trading at 50 times earnings on a 1.8% profit margin,

and me still having three balls, even if I don't use them as much as I used to,

I shorted it.

Two days later a story comes across the wire of a plain clothes US air marshall being hit with a possible terrorist-inspired hypodermic needle in an airport in Nigeria and he promptly flies to Houston.

There will be copy cat performances.  There's a whole lot of folk who have a whole lot of reasons to hate the USA, and here's a new, fascinating way to strike back, extremely difficult to prevent.

There will be fear.

And they will need a scape goat.

peace love,