Ok so maybe its too much caffeine or maybe being the trading addict that I have become, I just couldn't sit on my hands any longer, but I just placed a small bet
I bought 425 shares of SCHD, a normally quiet Dividend fund. @ $30.42
I put a trailing stop on it to limit downside risk or -2.5%
The theory is they will announce an Ex Dividend date any day now. It pays $.28 per share, so a little more than $100
But typically you'll see a run up of $.50-$1.00 days before the Ex Div (date you have to be holding by to get the dividend) as f9lks pile in to get the dividend.
So if we get a $.50 pop, another $200 for a total net trade of +$300 (if the pop is closer to $1 then I make $500+
Downside if it crashes and hits the trailing stop is about $.70 p/share or about $300
Not a big deal, but makes things more interesting and gives me something to do
Bonds arent selling well.
We sell bonds to pay off the debt of the fake money we print - ie to pay for the interest of the last set of bonds we issued.
"Nobody wants to lend the government money for 5 years during a war with no exit strategy. the bond market is the only honest participant left"
Meaning we will have to increase the yield (what it pays to the buyer) to sell them.
Which means our costs to pay them back goes up
Which means we go deeper into debt
Which means you Auto/Home/Credit Card interest will go higher
Wondering how this war will impact the AI Bubble ..
iirc Trump stated the Gulf Oil Rich Nations were going to invest in the USA .. suspect that promised money may not show up in time now.
which could impact the AI bubble in the stock market, .. as I am seeing reports along the lines of this :
AI has a subsidization problem
This video argues that AI subscriptions from top labs like Google, Anthropic, and OpenAI are currently heavily subsidized and not sustainable at their current prices, leading to a tightening of restrictions for users (0:00). Here is a summary of the main points:
The End of Cheap Compute: While the cost per token is decreasing, total costs are skyrocketing because users are generating exponentially more tokens through complex prompting and tool usage (4:32). A single prompt can sometimes cost a dollar or more in API fees, which $20/month subscriptions cannot cover (7:10).
Google's Mismanagement: Google is singled out for over-subsidizing Gemini, leading to capacity issues, locking out free users entirely, and restricting Gemini Pro for paying subscribers to manage costs (0:55, 10:14).
The Role of Advertising: The speaker argues that advertising revenue is insufficient to cover the high costs of AI inference, debunking the idea that free AI tools can be sustained through ad data alone (14:28).
Data and Customer Acquisition: Companies offer these subsidies primarily to grab market share and collect valuable interaction data to train future models (19:35, 23:20). However, once a company reaches a dominant market position, these subsidies are likely to disappear (35:03).
Future Outlook: The era of heavily subsidized AI is ending. Users should take advantage of these deals while they last, but expect price increases or stricter usage limits soon (36:00).
Looks like my 4.75% money market rate I've had with Fifth Third since September is coming to an end on March 31st. Time to jump ship. Fidelity looks to be about 3.5%. Sure missed the 5%+ days.