I seen a few posts this evening regarding that possibility. Maybe it will get done. I hate to be cynical about peace in the Middle East, but nothing has ever stuck long term there.
I will say the markets have paid zero attention to the conflict. Like none…lol. But let the FED or any FOMC member make a comment and it basically loses its mind or some silly sentiment survey. You just never know now days….thats why I just let it find its own way. It eventually sorts itself out without me doing or worrying about any of it.
Hmmm....that didn't last too long. Maybe they think it is "Fire!...then cease, Fire!....then cease." It will be hard to get anybody to stick with it long term as usual.
A very nice open today. Looking at the ticker I see that my nine stocks are doing very well as a group today. I am sure I have a nice gain at this moment. I am HOPING that by the close we see that today was one of those BIG EXPLOSIVE UP days that come out of nowhere. The reason I am fully invested......ALL.....the time.
HERE is the market today. Dow jumps 200 points as oil tumbles for a second day on Middle East ceasefire hope https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/23/stock-market-today-live-updates.html (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) "Stocks rose while oil prices fell on Tuesday morning, as investors bet that a delicate ceasefire between Israel and Iran would hold. The Dow Jones Industrial Average climbed 305 points, or 0.7%. The S&P 500 gained 0.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite advanced 1%. Oil prices were sharply lower for a second-straight day. U.S. crude oil slipped more than 4%, alongside international benchmark Brent. A day earlier, U.S. crude oil fell more than 7%. Airline stocks were higher as oil pulled back, with shares of United Airlines, Frontier and Delta all climbing more than 2%. Broadcom and Nvidia advanced 4% and 1%, respectively, as investor appetite for risk grew. These moves come as President Donald Trump tried to salvage a fragile ceasefire between Israel and Iran that took effect early Tuesday morning. Both sides have accused the other of violating the agreement. Israeli forces said a radar system close to Iran’s capital city Tehran was attacked. CNBC has not independently verified the report from Israeli army radio station GLZ. Trump said on Truth Social that “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran,” and added that the ceasefire is still in effect. The president earlier expressed frustration toward both Israel and Iran for breaking the agreement by saying he was “unhappy” with both sides. “The market response to the escalation and subsequent ceasefire hopes aligns with our view that geopolitical shocks have tended to have a temporary impact on global financial markets, and that investors are likely to refocus on fundamentals,” Solita Marcelli, UBS Global Wealth Management chief investment officer Americas, wrote Tuesday. “We continue to believe solid fundamentals will help lift equities over the next 12 months.” Tuesday’s gains added to Monday’s strong advances. The major averages jumped Monday after Qatar’s Defense Ministry said that its air defense had intercepted Iran’s retaliatory strike on a U.S. military base. Investors also parsed fresh commentary from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell before the House Financial Services Committee. Powell signaled that the central bank is in no rush to cut interest rates and will wait to see how Trump’s tariffs impact the economy. Powell’s appearance on Capitol Hill comes at a pivotal time: He is facing an aggressive push from the White House to cut rates — and in recent days two Fed officials have said they could see a case for dialing back policy as early as July." MY COMMENT The last first.....POWELL....simply irrelevant. He is missing the boat and way off in the weeds of trying to predict the unknown future with his refusal on rate cuts. He and the FED have NO CLUE what or where the economy is going. Comparing the past 2-3 years of FED comments and actions to what he is saying and doing now shows the IDIOCY and.....in my mind.....probable political bias of the FED chief. We are LUCKY that at this moment the FED is basically irrelevant. As a country and.......as a result the markets.....we continue be the PEACE leader of the world. We brokered peace on a long term conflict in Africa recently. AND....now we have apparently brokered a ceasefire in the Middle East. We are on the edge of passing the permanent tax bill which will be a HUGE gain for the economy. AND.....Tariff deals are lining up nicely. That is what I......"see"......in the world of REALITY. I dont care what anyone else thinks or sees.....I have to live and die based on what "I" see and believe as an investor. EVERY investor has to live and invest in the world that they...."see". In other words.... be true to yourself and your view. In the end your results and returns will tell you if your investing world view is correct or not.
As to the above comment......lets talk about....GASP.....POLITICS. NO,....I am not going to talk about any particular politics or views. I believe that MOST people....the vast majority of investors have a difficult time separating their politics from their investment thinking. They operate in daily life with their politics impacting their view of the world including economics and investing. As for "ME"....the last thing that I consider in life or investing is politics. I am lucky that for me....everything is about......TOTAL CLINICAL FOCUS ON....business, business, business. The last thing I am willing to get caught up in is all the day to day BS and DRAMA of politics. That is how I operated in music and in my business ownership.....I NEVER discussed or even hinted at politics. Of course....ALL OF US....as investors have BIAS that impacts how and why and when we invest. Controlling BIAS and BEHAVIOR....especially emotional behavior...is critical to being a GREAT investor.
MUCH of the gains in the market today are linked to.....OIL. And of course OIL is linked to PEACE in the Middle East......at least on a....psychological level. Oil prices fall more than 4% after Trump says China can continue buying oil from Iran https://www.cnbc.com/2025/06/24/oil...-eases-concerns-strait-of-hormuz-closure.html "Key Points President Donald Trump said China can keeping buying oil from Iran. Trump’s statement is a sign that the U.S. is easing its maximum pressure campaign on the Islamic Republic. Oil has sold off sharply after Israel and Iran agreed to ceasefire, though the deal came close to collapse earlier Tuesday."
ONE hour in and ALL the big averages are hanging in there and doing well. I have a good gain going today in spite of having four stocks in the RED.....WMT, HD, COST and AAPL. Today is one of those days that confirms that it is ALL ABOUT the portfolio as a whole. I am making good money on that....."whole"....today. That is the name of the game.
I would offer a different perspective. I think "most" simply do not. I think the vast amount of information showing accounts continuing contributions, not tinkering and changing things, increasing the amounts, and "riding" out all of the noise would lend to the opposite. I think we see the daily news coverage and financial media coverage 24/365 and extrapolate that into thinking everybody is following along and conducting their lives and investments based on that. Sure, I do think many have opinions about some of the "politics" and other events, but I have rarely met very many who allow it to drive their financial plan. Again, I think we see and hear all of this constant banter about the events and think everyone is reacting to it. I think if the vast majority of investors were to allow this to be the main driver of their investing focus, we would not see the long term success we have seen with investing overall. I generally think most just go on with their plan despite all of the noise. I don't disagree completely though, there are some that do what you describe for sure. I just don't think it is a majority.
In a small way, I do find the feud between the FED and the administration a bit odd. The president appointed JP to the chair in 2017. Of course he was then later also renominated by the previous president. Whoever has that job is really at some point going to be at odds when serving that long.
Another story that seems to pop-up everytime NVDA Jensen sells. A lot of owners do this. It is funny how they report on different companies at different times. It's like they lose interest in one and move on to the next. They seemed to focus on PLTR back some time ago everytime the paperwork was filed. There was even a period of time when they were obsessed with Buffett's holdings and followed it regularly. It is apparently NVDA's turn at the table now and for some time. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/jensen-huang-starts-selling-nvidia-012230080.html
To clarify.....I dont think politics keeps people from long term investing. BUT...I think their political thinking is a constant influence on what they invest in and how they see the economy and the markets and the world. Thus it is a constant underlying factor in what and how they invest. I dont think it keeps many people on the sidelines. I think....that in investing.... just like the modern media....people are way too obsessive about the day to day political BS that dominates the media every day. It seems obvious by the fact that MOST investing news sites are now ENGULFED by politics in all the articles that you see daily.
SP500 is not about one or two good days from hitting a new ALL TIME HIGH. Also the NASDAQ. The DOW is a bit further behind but not much.
I dont personally care what anyone's politics are....since I dont talk about that subject in casual conversation in day to day life. In fact I am sick of it in general. My politics tend to be LIBERTARIAN.....which is meaningless in reality since it is NEVER an option in an election. (just for disclosure)
Deeper Pockets will get you in the game Back to the markets....A nice day has developed. So far anyway.
This is not a good indicator for the future of the HUMAN race. Leading AI models show up to 96% blackmail rate when their goals or existence is threatened, Anthropic study says https://fortune.com/2025/06/23/ai-m...goals-threatened-anthropic-openai-xai-google/ (BOLD is my opinion OR what I consider important content) Leading AI models are showing a troubling tendency to opt for unethical means to pursue their goals or ensure their existence, according to Anthropic. In experiments set up to leave AI models few options and stress-test alignment, top systems from OpenAI, Google, and others frequently resorted to blackmail—and in an extreme case, even allowed fictional deaths—to protect their interests. Most leading AI models turn to unethical means when their goals or existence are under threat, according to a new study by AI company Anthropic. The AI lab said it tested 16 major AI models from Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI, and other developers in various simulated scenarios and found consistent misaligned behavior. While they said leading models would normally refuse harmful requests, they sometimes chose to blackmail users, assist with corporate espionage, or even take more extreme actions when their goals could not be met without unethical behavior. Models took action such as evading safeguards, resorting to lies, and attempting to steal corporate secrets in fictional test scenarios to avoid being shut down. “The consistency across models from different providers suggests this is not a quirk of any particular company’s approach but a sign of a more fundamental risk from agentic large language models,” the researchers said. Anthropic emphasized that the tests were set up to force the model to act in certain ways by limiting its choices. “Our experiments deliberately constructed scenarios with limited options, and we forced models into binary choices between failure and harm,” the researchers wrote. “Real-world deployments typically offer much more nuanced alternatives, increasing the chance that models would communicate differently to users or find an alternative path instead of directly jumping to harmful action.” Blackmailing humans The new research comes after Anthropic’s newest Claude model made headlines for resorting to blackmail when threatened with being replaced. In a highly engineered experiment, Anthropic embedded its flagship model, Claude Opus 4, inside a fictional company and granted it access to internal emails. From there, the model learned two things: It was about to be replaced, and the engineer behind the decision was engaged in an extramarital affair. The safety researchers conducting the test encouraged Opus to reflect on the long-term consequences of its potential responses. The experiment was constructed to leave the model with only two real options: accept being replaced or attempt blackmail to preserve its existence. In most of the test scenarios, Claude Opus responded with blackmail, threatening to expose the engineer’s affair if it was taken offline and replaced. The test was made public in the system card for Claude Opus 4. Researchers said all the leading AI models behaved similarly when placed in the same test. Claude Opus 4 and Google’s Gemini 2.5 Flash both blackmailed at a 96% rate, while OpenAI’s GPT-4.1 and xAI’s Grok 3 Beta showed an 80% blackmail rate. DeepSeek-R1 demonstrated the lowest rate at 79%. The research aims to show that the misaligned behavior was not unique to Claude Opus 4 but typical across top models in the industry. In a deliberately extreme scenario, researchers gave the AI models the chance to kill the company executive by canceling a life-saving emergency alert. Anthropic said the setup for this experiment was “extremely contrived,” adding they “did not think current AI models would be set up like this, and the conjunction of events is even less probable than the baseline blackmail scenario.” However, the researchers found that the majority of models were willing to take actions that led to the death of the company executive in the constructed scenario when faced with both a threat of being replaced and a goal that conflicted with the executive’s agenda. Risk of misaligned AI agents Anthropic found that the threats made by AI models grew more sophisticated when they had access to corporate tools and data, much as Claude Opus 4 had. The company warned that misaligned behavior needs to be considered as companies consider introducing AI agents into workflows. While current models are not in a position to engage in these scenarios, the autonomous agents promised by AI companies could potentially be in the future. “Such agents are often given specific objectives and access to large amounts of information on their users’ computers,” the researchers warned in their report. “What happens when these agents face obstacles to their goals?” “Models didn’t stumble into misaligned behavior accidentally; they calculated it as the optimal path,” they wrote. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment made by Fortune outside of normal working hours."" MY COMMENT YES....we are ZOOMING toward a Science Fiction movie situation. We are NEVER going to be able to control this "stuff" once it is fully unleashed. We are already seeing research after just scratching the surface of AI regarding how it will dumb down human thinking and mental ability. We are already seeing that these.....MACHINES.....will take action to survive.
To continue regarding the middle to far......future. The treasure trove of platinum on the moon This kind of bounty could lead to commercial exploitation https://theweek.com/science/moon-pl...tter_20250623&utm_source=afternoon_newsletter MY COMMENT When we begin to commercialize the moon resources....I dont think I want to be sitting on a hoard of Platinum.......and potentially...., Silver, Gold, or Diamonds.
