{"id":64176,"date":"2020-12-19T02:15:46","date_gmt":"2020-12-19T10:15:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/?p=64176"},"modified":"2020-12-22T05:39:26","modified_gmt":"2020-12-22T13:39:26","slug":"black-coffee-19-dec-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lenpenzo.com\/blog\/id64176-black-coffee-19-dec-2020.html","title":{"rendered":"Black Coffee: The Beginning of the End"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s time to sit back, relax and enjoy a little joe<\/em> …<\/p>\n

Welcome to another rousing edition of Black Coffee, your off-beat weekly round-up of what’s been going on in the world of money and personal finance.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to believe that Christmas — and the New Year — is only a few days away. I swear the older I get, the faster time flies by.<\/p>\n

Okay, let’s get right to it this week …<\/p>\n

Gold is money — everything else is credit.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— J.P. Morgan<\/strong><\/p>\n

All fiat currency eventually returns to its intrinsic value — zero.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— Voltaire<\/strong><\/p>\n

When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter. Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion. When you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing. When you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors. When you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you. When you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice, you may know that your society is doomed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Credits and Debits<\/strong><\/p>\n

Credit:<\/strong><\/span> Did you see this? A recent analysis shows that the S&P 500 has rallied 36% since April, but on an unusual schedule<\/a>: Almost all of the upside happened outside of US trading hours (+38%), and on Mondays and Wednesdays (+31%). See? It’s so easy, even a monkey can do it.<\/p>\n

Credit:<\/strong><\/span> Impatient day traders will be interested in another research report<\/a> that found that all one had to do to capture the majority of those stock market gains was to buy at 11:30 pm ET — and then sell at 3:30 a.m. ET. Now that’s<\/strong><\/em> quite a trick. Although I wonder if it would receive the same reception that this<\/strong><\/em> one did:<\/p>\n