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If You Are A Buyer Right Now, The World Is Your Oyster

A report from the Detroit Free Press in Michigan. “A million dollars doesn’t buy what it used to in metro Detroit. Long gone are those immediate post-Great Recession days when a $1 million might still buy a mini mansion in some highly desirable suburb. John Apap, president of The Apap Realty Group in Birmingham, said the jump in sales prices has been considerable, and noted how he is about to list a two-story, five-bedroom house in downtown Birmingham for $3.7 million that last sold in 2020 for $2.2 million. ‘Just in two or three years, the prices have almost doubled on some of these properties,’ he said. ‘The norm has definitely changed — there’s no question. And I’m a little bit surprised at how fast it’s gone up.'”

The Arizona Republic. “Here’s good news for metro Phoenix homebuyers: the Valley’s median home price is dropping and so are interest rates. The Valley’s median home price is expected to fall to $435,000 in July, based on pending sales. That compares to $450,000 in June, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. ‘We are in a balanced market,’ said Tina Tamboer, senior housing analyst with The Cromford Report. ‘Supply is still down, and fewer listings are coming onto the market.’ She said the good news for buyers, besides lower interest rates, is 52% of metro Phoenix home sellers paid concessions during the past month. That’s the highest percentage in recent history.”

WESH Orlando. “Florida’s Office of Insurance Regulation held a meeting on Thursday to discuss raising citizens’ property insurance rates. Citizen’s policyholder, Mike Mckee, said he’s one of the roughly 220,000 homeowners dropped by citizens across the state, meaning an even deeper rate hike for him. ‘They have continually increased the rates,’ he said. ‘In January of this year, I got notified that in one year, so January of 2025, that they would dump me for a company that I had never heard of and the rates after the dump going to this new company would go up 40%… this is going to be unsustainable.'”

Fox 7 Austin. “If you’re looking for an apartment here in Central Texas, you may be pleasantly surprised to see that rent prices have actually gone down. Austin realtor Olivia Vale with Roots Residential Group joins FOX 7 Austin’s John Krinjak to discuss in this FOX 7 Focus. VALE: Yeah. So, on average, we’re seeing about a 10% decrease from last year. And keep in mind that over the pandemic, both rents and home prices skyrocketed. And that’s because of supply and demand and, of course, a number of economic factors. Right now we’re getting relief. And we’re at the lighter side of that bubble, which is great news. A lot of it is supply and demand. We don’t have the tens of thousands of people moving here, ready to rent kind of anything that they see online before even seeing in person. So, you know, there’s a lot more available. And that goes for when you’re buying a home, too. There’s a lot of availability right now.”

“KRINJAK: And so we talked a lot about renting, but if you’re looking to buy a home or a condo, are you seeing similar patterns with the real estate market as we are with rent prices? Are those prices coming down too? VALE: Marginally. So definitely from the highs in 2022, we’ve come down a little bit. If you are a buyer right now, we’re seeing 30% more homes inventory wise than we were last year. So the world is your oyster. If you’re a buyer in Austin, you should be able to negotiate. You should be able to get, maybe points on your mortgage paid by the seller. You have a lot of leverage.”

The Houston Chronicle. “A 19-story student housing building serving Texas A&M students in Houston could be sold Tuesday at a foreclosure auction after a developer defaulted on $135 million worth of loans tied to the Texas Medical Center property. The auction could result in the sale of the Life Tower student housing and an adjacent parking garage, both owned by Houston-based developer MediStar, according to Harris County filings. MediStar fell delinquent on loans of $76.5 million and $59.3 million it took out in 2021 with an afflaite of CIM Group, according to the foreclosure filings. The properties were scheduled to be auctioned twice in 2023 but were pulled, according to Foreclosure Information and Listing Service.”

The Los Angeles Times in California. “A week into what Mayor London Breed has called a ‘very aggressive’ effort to clear homeless encampments across San Francisco, a key question looms: Where will the people living in those tents go? An estimated 8,300 people are living homeless in San Francisco, about half of them sleeping in parks and on sidewalks in makeshift shelters. Despite a years-long effort to move people into temporary shelter or permanent housing, tent encampments remain a glaring problem, often accompanied by trash, theft and open drug use. The city has had a similar program in effect for years, but it lost traction during the pandemic. Under the new directive, workers are to press the relocation option before offering any other city services, including housing and shelter. According to the city’s 2024 annual point-in-time homeless survey, about 40% of people living on the streets said they were not from San Francisco. Jeff Cretan, the mayor’s spokesperson, said the relocation offers and threat of criminal penalties are just a starting point as the city figures out what strategies will work.”

Northampton Chronicle on California. “Stan Robertson, CEO of Northampton homelessness support charity Project 16:15, is currently on a 10-day volunteering stint in Los Angeles, visiting ‘Tent City’ in Skid Row and also San Diego. Stan’s trip is part of a sponsored initiative aimed at learning from outreach teams and sharing best practices for addressing homelessness. He described his time in Skid Row as ‘an emotional experience’ and ‘a real eye opener.’ He said: ‘Skid Row is an arena of poverty, addiction, and broken humanity, the likes of which I have never seen. The encampments are constantly growing.’ Stan noted the severe lack of affordable housing in the area. He said: ‘There really isn’t any affordable housing here. It’s really expensive.'”

The Chicago Tribune in Illinois. “Jordan Parra said he didn’t walk across seven countries to be kicked out of his tent in a park in Chicago. The 27-year-old from Caracas, Venezuela, had been staying on Chicago Housing Authority land adjacent to the Near West District (12th) police station with his partner for months. They opted to sleep outside after feeling unsafe in three different city-run shelters, he said. Then in late June, he said, police officers came into the park with a bulldozer and cleared everyone out. ‘What we’ve found here is worse than in Venezuela, because we came here with hope for a better life and had to deal with the disappointment of not even getting close,’ he said.”

“When a major homeless encampment by the Dan Ryan Expressway was cleared on July 17, Maura McCauley, managing deputy commissioner of the Chicago Department of Family and Support Services, told the Tribune it was fast-tracked in time for the Democratic National Convention in late August. Johnson later denied his administration’s earlier statements attributing the action to the DNC, scheduled for Aug. 19-22. The city has received close to 46,000 migrants on buses in about two years, sent by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in an attempt to challenge liberal cities’ welcoming messages.”

“Luis Linares, a 24-year-old from the Yaracuy state in Venezuela, also sleeps in the cluster of tents on CHA property. He said that whenever he gets work, he wires money home to his family in Venezuela, who need it more than he does. He said he doesn’t feel safe in the shelter, so prefers to sleep in a tent. He can’t afford rent for an apartment. The men at the encampment said they use the McDonald’s bathroom nearby to shower. At night, they sit on folding chairs in a circle. They say they’re tired. ‘We want to leave here,’ Linares said. “We’re trying to make enough money to save up.'”

The Toronto Sun. “Canada is now suffering through its worst economy in 40 years. The cause is largely the Trudeau government’s obsession with woke causes and virtue signalling over economic policy and fiscal management. Canada did spend more per capita on pandemic handouts than any other Western country and ran up more public debt. The hangover from that is still being felt in the form of higher taxes, higher interest rates and higher inflation. The Trudeau Liberals took a bad situation (the pandemic) and made it much worse and longer lasting. Their carbon tax and war on the energy sector have driven up prices, driven down investment and suppressed both economic growth and new employment.”

“And our per capita income is actually declining (one of the few developed countries with that problem) because the Trudeau government has opened our borders wide and invited in a flood of newcomers. Canada is welcoming 1.2 or 1.3 million immigrants, refugees and foreign students a year, up nearly triple since the Liberals came to power in 2015. However, as a nation, we are only building enough housing for just under 400,000 a year and creating jobs for (maybe) 500,000 a year.”

“Groceries cost nearly 40% more than when the Liberals came to office, as does fuel. And taxes now consume over 40% of ordinary Canadians’ incomes. Wow, for a government that positioned itself as the champion of the middle class in 2015, the Trudeau government certainly has been hard on middle-income Canadians. Meanwhile, Canadian incomes have gone up 100%, but housing prices have jumped by 300%. Much of the housing increase in Canada has happened during the nine years of Liberal rule and much of it is the result of the Trudeau government’s open-door immigration policies, overwhelming the housing market.”

From Politico. “From California to Krakow, young voters who are losing faith in democracy have been spurred in part by a surprising cause: high rents and rising property prices. The scarcity of affordable housing has triggered protests across European cities, from London to Lisbon, and on both coasts of the United States, where home prices have surged 54 percent since 2019. In California recently, hundreds of people, mostly renters, marched on the state capitol to decry the scarcity of reasonably priced rentals. And across North America and Europe, the shortage is pushing voters, particularly younger ones, toward populist leaders who promise to address the problem by targeting an issue already key to their platforms — though not necessarily the main one driving the problem — increased immigration.”

“In Britain, where migration has been generally rising since the 1990s and reached record levels in 2022, only falling back marginally last year, Nigel Farage, the country’s populist agent provocateur and leader of Reform UK, has determinedly linked the two issues. ‘Immigration is the real reason for the housing crisis,’ he argued in late June, claiming the country would have to ‘build a new house every two minutes’ to accommodate the influx of people. And in the Netherlands, populist firebrand Geert Wilders won last year’s election with a campaign that included promises to tackle the country’s acute affordable housing shortage.”

“Wilders’ Freedom Party claimed that the Netherlands’ backlog in house-building ‘simply cannot match the open-border policy and the huge population growth’ and that Dutch people ‘have to spend more and more time on the [social housing] waiting list, and are strongly discriminated against.’ In Canada, incumbent Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is also facing housing headwinds. His bleak reelection prospects, after nine years in power, have been battered by the issue, with young voters abandoning him in droves. High prices were already shutting out new buyers before the pandemic, but since then they’ve soared even more.”

“Trudeau once enjoyed a massive advantage among younger voters. He scooped up 45 percent of them in 2015 on his way to a landslide win. A mid-June survey from Abacus Data pegged his party’s support with the country’s youngest voters, aged 18 to 29, at just 20 percent. Ben Rabidoux, a housing commentator, said the damage among people’s perceptions of the problem was done. ‘I really strongly believe that a lot of the simmering anger that we have is directly or indirectly related to these just incredibly misguided immigration policies,’ he adds.”

“But as populists push a simple link between housing and migration, many of the young are hearing the message loud and clear. Recent polling suggests Gen Z and millennials are becoming more anti-immigration than older generations in some parts of Europe. In recent national elections in the Netherlands, Finland, Sweden and France, young people voted in unprecedented numbers for nationalist and Euro-skeptic parties. In Huizen, a town of modest homes housing a population of 40,000 just half an hour from Amsterdam, local authorities set up 30 temporary housing units for Ukrainian refugees in December on a field in a residential area, despite protests by locals, who complain that it could bring down the value of their homes.”

“‘When you look at the asylum policy, there are refugees who get a home within six months, and then young people who wait for years and save up to buy a home. How bizarre is that?’ Angeline, a 37-year-old mother of two who works in the health sector, told POLITICO. ‘Everything is being arranged too well for outsiders but when you look at some Dutch people,’ her husband Niels added, they are in debt, ‘live on the streets and nothing is being done for them.'”

From News.com.au. “When former Fox News host Tucker Carlson addressed the Australian Freedom Conference in Melbourne in early July, he grabbed one of the live wires of Australian politics and society with both hands – the impact of high levels of migration on housing prices. Carlson pointed to migration as the ‘one reason’ housing prices were high and that it was a simple issue of supply and demand. From 2006 onwards, migration began to play a significantly more vital role in supporting housing price growth. According to an analysis by AMP chief economist Shane Oliver: ‘Up until 2005, the housing market was in rough balance. It then went into a massive shortfall of about 250,000 dwellings by 2014, as underlying demand surged with booming immigration.'”

“No one factor is directly responsible for all the issues we currently face as a nation with affordable housing. From the popularisation of property investing through various TV programs such as The Block to the multiple rounds of intervention by policymakers to support the housing market over the decades, there is a laundry list of political, social, psychological and economic changes that have led us to this point.”

ABC News in Australia. “Jonathan Egudo has spent 10 years trying to get the Tomazos Group, which built the Darwin CBD Kube seven-storey building in 2014, to fix the leak in the roof which floods his top floor apartment every wet season. ‘Four different times over four years they went up on the roof and said they had resolved the issue and hadn’t, and then it kept flooding again every time,’ he said. Mr Egudo pays rent on another property to live in, plus the $700,000 mortgage on the Kube apartment he bought off the plan, which he now can’t sell or let. ‘Basically they said that the air quality in there was such poor quality that it was uninhabitable,’ Mr Egudo said. ‘They have taken over two and a half years to complete their investigation, and then somehow they found that there was nothing that they could actually do.'”

“Mr Egudo has now launched expensive Supreme Court action against the builder to try to get compensation. ‘It’s something that’s always hanging over my head, I don’t have any financial certainty,” he said.

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This Post Has 106 Comments

  1. ‘Skid Row is an arena of poverty, addiction, and broken humanity, the likes of which I have never seen. The encampments are constantly growing.’ Stan noted the severe lack of affordable housing in the area. He said: ‘There really isn’t any affordable housing here. It’s really expensive’

    Other than the bums, how’s the walk-ability Stan?

    1. 10-day volunteering stint in Los Angeles, visiting ‘Tent City’ in Skid Row and also San Diego. Stan’s trip is part of a sponsored initiative
      Sounds to me like Stan got a 10 day paid vacation to CA with a brief Photo-op in Skid row. Sounds like good work if you can get it. Plus think of all the virtue signalling points you get, especially with the ladies.

      1. The great thing about dating homeless chicks is that after the date is over, you can drop ’em off anywhere.

      2. Sounds to me like Stan got a 10 day paid vacation to CA with a brief Photo-op in Skid row

        Very likely he also took in the sights and maybe spent a day at Disneyland.

    2. There really isn’t any affordable housing here

      If you don’t have a job or an office that you need to go to every day, then why do you need to be LA or anywhere in CA for that matter? Why not go be homeless in a cheaper area?

      1. Excellent question, and I believe it’s because in more populated areas, you have more opportunities to find that small percentage of people who are dumb enough to believe your sob stories and give you free stuff.

  2. ‘A 19-story student housing building serving Texas A&M students in Houston could be sold Tuesday at a foreclosure auction after a developer defaulted on $135 million worth of loans tied to the Texas Medical Center property. The auction could result in the sale of the Life Tower student housing and an adjacent parking garage, both owned by Houston-based developer MediStar

    So why does A&M have student airboxes in Houston? In Texas the colleges started these ‘satellite’ campuses in the 1990’s. And the universities see student housing as a cash cow. Often they are ‘partners’ in the deal, called P3. They have had foreclosures all over the place from Norman Oklahoma to Austin and Bryan, where A&M is located.

    1. “….And the universities see student housing as a cash cow….”

      ‘Luxury’ student housing is the biggest scam second only to WeWork.

      What? No more Friday beer busts or doggie amenities ?

  3. ‘Just in two or three years, the prices have almost doubled on some of these properties,’ he said. ‘The norm has definitely changed — there’s no question.

    This isn’t a case of shack values going up. The Fed’s debasement of the currency means it takes more Yellen Bux to buy any tangible goods, including shelter.

  4. Foreclosures are simply the natural, cathartic process of cleansing and emptying the financial bowels of the overindulged.

  5. ‘In January of this year, I got notified that in one year, so January of 2025, that they would dump me for a company that I had never heard of and the rates after the dump going to this new company would go up 40%… this is going to be unsustainable.’”

    Welp, Mike, when Florida condos drop 80% in value, insuring them is going to be a lot cheaper, if that’s any consolation.

  6. Stan’s trip is part of a sponsored initiative aimed at learning from outreach teams and sharing best practices for addressing homelessness.

    Translation: Stan is angling to get his cut of Compassion, Inc. patronage & graft rackets.

    1. Wall Street Journal — The Haves and Have-Nots at the Center of America’s Inflation Fight (7/30/2024):

      “The stock market is soaring, household wealth is at record levels and investment income has never been greater. At the same time, some families’ pandemic-era savings are running dry, and delinquencies on credit card and auto-loan payments have jumped.

      Warning signals are flashing for more low- and middle-income Americans, exposing a division between people whose gains are being whittled down by elevated inflation and borrowing costs and those who are benefiting from high asset prices and bond returns.

      “This is the most money we’ve ever made and this is the brokest we’ve ever felt,” said Nicole Lewis, a mother of three who lives north of Flint, Mich.

      Pay raises since the pandemic helped Lewis and her husband, now a city manager, double their earnings to what had previously seemed unattainable: more than $90,000 a year. But price hikes for everything from groceries to auto insurance still forced the couple to siphon funds from savings.

      The 35-year-old Lewis now buys many basics on credit, juggling cards to protect her credit score without letting outstanding debt snowball. Trips to the beach and bowling alley are out. Shopping at thrift stores is in. She is now leaving her job as a medical assistant to become a teaching aide, a gig that will come with a $1 an hour pay bump while helping her cut back on child care.

      “The top whatever-percent has all this money,” Lewis said. “Those people don’t live like most Americans.”

      https://archive.is/rEEgG

      They don’t, Nicole, because they are the Parasite Class.

  9. Joe Biden’s America.

    New York Post — Public masturbation soars in NYC with sickos pleasuring and exposing themselves in the open up 51 percent (8/3/2024):

    “Reports of pervs fondling themselves out in the open soared 51% through June 30, up to 378 complaints from 251 during the same period in 2023, according to NYPD data.

    Meanwhile cops issued 159 criminal summonses through June 30 citywide to New Yorkers whipping out their genitals — sometimes to urinate — a staggering 396% increase from the 32 tickets written in 2023, according to city data.

    The push against incarceration, together with the city’s inability to hospitalize and effectively treat the severely mentally ill, has driven the surge in disturbing deviancy, according to Carolyn D. Gorman, a mental illness policy analyst at the Manhattan Institute.

    “If we don’t enforce laws so individuals aren’t in jails or prisons, and they’re not receiving psychiatric treatment because the mental health system deprioritizes the mentally ill … these people are out on the street,” she said.

    https://nypost.com/2024/08/03/us-news/public-masturbation-incidents-up-51-nypd-data/

    Sounds like a getting what you voted for kind of problem, New York City.

    1. I have been told that all of this madness in NYC is just NYC being NYC and that this is the vibrance that makes it so special. The reality is that the majority of New Yorkers genuinely like what is happening and they want more of it.

        1. Well, they do keep voting for it. I suppose they believe that the policies just need more time to succeed.

          2. They think the crime is transitory, and that leftist policies just need more time to usher in Heaven on Earth.

      2. For the record, I didn’t say ‘everyone’ I said the majority. The reality is that there is very little pushback and they are allowed to do whatever they want there. While I’m sure there are few New Yorkers who don’t appreciate the situation, there aren’t enough of them to matter.

        1. I assure you, the majority of New Yorkers are not stupid, at least not the ones who make the effort to vote. Whether their votes count is a different matter.

  11. Mr Egudo pays rent on another property to live in, plus the $700,000 mortgage on the Kube apartment he bought off the plan, which he now can’t sell or let. ‘Basically they said that the air quality in there was such poor quality that it was uninhabitable,’ Mr Egudo said.

    Gosh, I’m experiencing cognitive dissonance. The REIC shills in the globalist scum media assure me that getting up on that property ladder is the only way to build generational wealth, yet the dupes who followed their “advice” seem to be experiencing severe rectal trauma.

  12. You are being replaced.

    Politico — Priced out of housing, many younger disillusioned voters embrace populism (8/3/2024):

    “The scarcity of affordable housing has triggered protests across European cities, from London to Lisbon, and on both coasts of the United States, where home prices have surged 54 percent since 2019.

    And across North America and Europe, the shortage is pushing voters, particularly younger ones, toward populist leaders who promise to address the problem by targeting an issue already key to their platforms — though not necessarily the main one driving the problem — increased immigration.

    Millennials and Gen Z are largely among the losers.

    And for many of them, some centrist politicians worry the housing crunch is not only helping to nourish the rise of populism but also risks tarnishing the very idea of democracy. “If people think markets are rigged and a democracy isn’t listening to them, then you get — and this is the worrying thing to me — an increasing number of young people saying, ‘I don’t believe in democracy, I don’t believe in markets,’” Michael Gove, Britain’s housing minister, warned in February.

    https://www.politico.com/news/2024/08/03/unaffordable-housing-populism-00172552

    Translations: democracy = globalist uniparty Deep State. Markets = corrupt crony capitalism that only benefits the soft, soft city boy hands Parasite Class.

    When you wake up to the reality that under the current entrenched system created by, managed by, enforced by, globalist pigmen, why would you believe in anything?

    1. Related article repost from the last thread.

      BRITAIN BURNING: Riots and Protests in 35 Towns and Cities as PM Keir Starmer Announces Police Crackdown (8/3/2024):

      “The UK is sliding into chaos in the wake of the July 29 stabbing of three innocent young girls in Southport as Brits protest in 35 towns and cities across the Kingdom, as new Prime Minister Keir Starmer (Labour) called the protestors “thugs” that were “clearly driven by far-right hatred”

      https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/08/britain-burning-riots-protests-35-towns-cities-as/

    2. “If people think markets are rigged and a democracy isn’t listening to them, then you get — and this is the worrying thing to me — an increasing number of young people saying, ‘I don’t believe in democracy, I don’t believe in markets,’” Michael Gove, Britain’s housing minister, warned in February.

      Markets are rigged and so are elections in “Our Democracy.” And the .1% and their political prostitutes don’t give a damn about young people, whose sole value derives from their ability to generate wealth for the oligarchy.

  13. n 2022, this massive apartment complex in Central Florida was inundated with over 7 feet of flood water. The resulting evacuation of it’s inhabitants was nothing short of chaotic and after everyone was forced out, no residence were ever allowed to return. Years later, this complex has been left completely abandoned with the whole site feeling apocalyptic, totalled cars dotting the barren parking lots and significant signs of water damage throughout. 15 min,

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8AFFD4s93HY

  14. ‘noted how he is about to list a two-story, five-bedroom house in downtown Birmingham for $3.7 million that last sold in 2020 for $2.2 million. ‘Just in two or three years, the prices have almost doubled on some of these properties’

    You really screwed up this time Jerry.

    1. ‘Just in two or three years, the prices have almost doubled on some of these properties’

      Not coincidentally, 40% of all US dollars in circulation were created out of thin air by the Fed during the scamdemic. And they’re still expanding the money supply despite their so-faux claims of “fighting inflation.”

    1. As long as the Keynesian fraudsters at the Fed keep expanding the money supply, they will keep levitating their asset bubbles & Ponzi markets, enriching the parasite class while destroying the purchasing power and standard of living of wage-earners.

    3. Tech·tech stock
      AI bubble: Tech stocks plummet with another potential 25% drop, analysts warn
      BY Paolo Confino
      August 2, 2024 at 1:33 PM PDT
      Worried stock trader on the phone
      Tech stocks plummeted on Friday—and some analysts say the rout will get even worse.
      Michael M. Santiago—Getty Images

      Global semiconductors, after more than a year of carrying the stock market on their shoulders, are in a volatile free fall.

      The rout in these stocks sparked fears of an AI bubble that, should it burst, could send the tech industry, and perhaps the entire market, into turmoil. Over the past month, major semiconductor stocks have taken a beating in the stock market. Nvidia fell 14%; Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) 19%; TSMC, which is facing its own set of geopolitical complications, dropped 15%; and Arm, the British manufacturer of chips, dropped 31%—including 24% since the start of this week. Intel’s stock saw its worst day in 50 years when the stock fell 27% on Friday, on news it was suspending its dividend and laying off 15,000 employees.

      Semiconductor stocks could see a further decline of between 15% and 25%, according to Sandeep Rao, an analyst at investment firm Leverage Shares. Rao added that Nvidia and Arm could be near the top of that range, while TSMC would be somewhere in the middle.

      The problem with the AI hype, Rao argued, is that it has simply taken too long to materialize. Investors were promised a world-beating technology that would revolutionize personal electronics and business. Instead they’ve been forced to confront sky-high valuations and longer investment horizons than they had originally planned for. ​​”This commonsense realization is only now beginning to sink into the investor space as FOMO peters out and economic considerations are being examined critically,” Rao told Fortune.

      The market for AI stocks hasn’t been helped by the fact that investors are now preparing for another major macroeconomic narrative: imminent interest rate cuts. Under the assumption the Federal Reserve is poised to cut interest rates as early as September, investors have started recalibrating their portfolios. That meant a rotation away from overpriced large-cap tech stocks toward small-cap stocks, which usually benefit the most from lower interest rates.
      …
      https://fortune.com/2024/08/02/ai-bubble-tech-stocks-nvidia-amazon-meta-microsoft-amd-intel/

    4. Technology
      6 Words Explain Why Warren Buffett Just Dumped Half of His $160 Billion Stake in AppleThe ‘Oracle of Omaha’ has been trimming his largest stake for a reason.
      Expert Opinion By Jason Aten, Tech columnist @jasonaten
      Aug 4, 2024
      Squawk Box
      Getty Images

      For years, Warren Buffett, the world’s most successful and widely-watched investor, mostly stayed away from tech companies. The notoriously methodical investor would explain that it was because he only invests in businesses he understands, and tech wasn’t really his thing.

      Then, in 2016, Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway, started investing in Apple when it purchased $1 billion worth of the company’s shares. By 2017, that amount would grow to over $28 billion. All told Berkshire has spent $40 billion on its stake in Apple. Since then, the company’s stock price has increased by roughly 800 percent.

      On Saturday, in a filing with the SEC, Buffett revealed that he had dumped almost half of his Apple stock, netting $76 billion. Earlier this year, the company sold a smaller number of shares, bringing the total sold this year to more than 500 million shares, representing 56 percent of Berkshire’s total stake in Apple.

      On the surface, it’s kind of remarkable that–despite waiting so long to buy into the tech company–Buffett’s timing has paid off so well. Apple has made him a lot of money. That, it turns out is a pretty important piece of understanding what’s happening.

      Right now, Apple is again the most valuable company in the world. It’s also the most valuable it has ever been, with a total market cap of $3.3 trillion making it the largest holding for Berkshire Hathaway, even after the sale.

      That timing thing is pretty important because even though Buffett didn’t specifically say why he’s unloading Apple’s stock, he has indicated in the past that he plans to hold onto the company’s shares “unless something really extraordinary happens.” It would seem reasonable to ask why Buffett decided to make such a large sale now. Well, is there a better time to sell a stock than when it’s at its all-time high?

      Even if you think the stock might go higher, sometimes it just makes sense to let go. To understand why, it’s worth considering something Buffett mentioned at Berkshire Hathaway’s most recent annual meeting about the company’s growing cash pile. “We’d love to spend it,” Buffett said. “But we won’t spend it unless we think we’re doing something that has very little risk and can make us a lot of money.”

      Those last six words, make us a lot of money, turn out to be pretty important because, as much as Buffett likes Apple as a company and an investment, his ultimate job is to figure out how to make his shareholders as much money as possible. It seems reasonable to ask, with Apple at all-time highs, where the $76 billion he just pulled out of the stock will be most likely to get a return. Unless he thinks Apple is going to continue on the same trajectory–which just seems less likely considering its massive scale–it makes sense to think of other ways to deploy that capital.
      …
      https://www.inc.com/jason-aten/6-words-explain-why-warren-buffett-just-dumped-half-of-his-160-billion-stake-in-apple.html

    5. One possible financial survival strategy:

      Buy what Buffett buys, sell what Buffett sells…a day before he announces his moves.

      The day after may be a day too late.

      1. Financial Times
        US equities
        Growth scare sets up markets for fresh bout of volatility
        Traders debate whether weak US data could push central bank into rapid interest rate cuts
        Traders fret the Fed has been tardy in responding to signs the US economy is slowing down
        © REUTERS
        Philip Stafford and George Steer in London and Harriet Clarfelt and Kate Duguid in New York
        2 hours ago

        Investors are preparing for renewed volatility when global markets reopen on Monday, as traders fret that the Federal Reserve has been too slow to respond to signs the US economy is cooling and may be forced to play catch-up with rapid cuts to interest rates.

        Weak US jobs data on Friday piled further pressure on a market already buckling under an investor exodus from expensive technology stocks, with the Nasdaq index falling into correction territory last week and haven Treasuries rallying sharply.

        “The narrative has literally changed overnight,” said Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo. Investors were weighing up whether to treat Friday’s jobs number as a statistical quirk or whether the US was “now in a more severe slowdown period”, he added.
        …
        A sell-off which started in richly valued big-tech stocks, many of which reported earnings last week, gained wider traction after the Fed decision and jobs data.

        The Nasdaq Composite, the tech heavy US index, finished the week 3.4 per cent lower and has declined more than 10 per cent since July’s all-time high. Treasuries rallied, with the yield on the US 10-year hitting its lowest level since December at 3.82 per cent.

        On Saturday, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway disclosed that it had halved its position in Apple in the second quarter, while raising its cash position to a record $277bn and buying Treasuries.
        …

    6. Market Plunge Has Investors Bracing for Turbulent End to 2024

      Four experts share their thoughts on navigating upcoming Federal Reserve rate cuts, big tech concentration and the presidential election.

      Former President Donald Trump, center, during a campaign event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday.
      Photographer: Hannah Beier/Bloomberg
      By Claire Ballentine and Suzanne Woolley
      August 3, 2024 at 8:00 AM PDT

      Stocks are plunging. The Nasdaq 100 entered correction territory. Unemployment is on the rise. And now, investor excitement about Federal Reserve rate cuts in September is being tempered by growing concern about the overall health of the US economy.

      The calm and contentment of this latest bull run started to crack July 24th, when the S&P 500 posted drop of 2% or more for the first time in 17 months. Now, after the biggest two-day selloff since March 2023, the anxiety has ratcheted up significantly, as the Fed faces criticism it waited too long to cut and weak earnings batter the technology companies that were driving the rally.
      …
      https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-08-03/how-to-invest-after-stocks-fall-tips-for-rate-cuts-big-tech-and-us-election

  17. “Jordan Parra said he didn’t walk across seven countries to be kicked out of his tent in a park in Chicago.”

    How does GTFO sound, Jordan?

    You don’t belong here. Nobody wants you here (besides the Southern Poverty Law Center, Anti Defamation League, and other related vermin). Maybe you should just f*ing leave.

    Build the wall, deport them ALL.

    1. ‘What we’ve found here is worse than in Venezuela, because we came here with hope for a better life and had to deal with the disappointment of not even getting close,’ he said.

      So, no free house or free car, huh? Worse than Venezuela? Just what did those NGO activists tell you it would be like? And if you want to go home, I’m sure that can be arranged and you won’t have to walk back.

      But don’t forget to vote this November!

      1. The cost of living is a lot more expensive in Venezuela del Norte, as the new arrivals are finding out.

    2. He’s not being kicked out of his tent. He, along with his tent, is being kicked out of the park.

  18. When you’re sitting in church this fine Sunday morning, ask yourself, ask God, why Christians are expected to die in yet another bankers’ war being fought between non-Christian nations?

    The Hill — US Embassy encourages Americans in Lebanon to leave on ‘any ticket available’ as tensions rise (8/4/2024):

    “The State Department raised the security threat level in Lebanon last week to “do not travel,” sparking mass cancelations of flights into and out of Beirut. Most major airlines have stopped travel to the country, making it difficult for some people to leave.

    “U.S. Embassy Beirut notes several airlines have suspended or cancelled flights, and many flights have sold out; however, commercial transportation options to leave Lebanon remain available,” the embassy said in a statement Saturday. “We encourage those who wish to depart Lebanon to book any ticket available to them, even if that flight does not depart immediately or does not follow their first-choice route.”

    The embassy also warned that Americans who do not leave the country should be prepared to “shelter in place for an extended period of time.”

    https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4810113-us-embassy-encourages-americans-in-lebanon-to-leave-on-any-ticket-available-as-tensions-rise/

    All wars are bankers’ wars.

  19. The idiots who paid thousands over dollars over MSRP to buy new cars during the scamdemic-era “supply chain shortages” are now letting the repo man haul away their rapidly-depreciating vehicles as the “cost of living crisis” caused by the Fed’s currency debasement means they can’t afford to make their monthly payments. So if ‘Muricans can’t afford to make their car payments – essential for getting to their places of employment – how will they cover their rent and mortgages?

    https://qz.com/car-repossessions-inflation-interest-rates-1851597051

    1. If the car you owe a $1,000 a month on needs something as simple as tires, it could be the personal crisis that snowballs into bankruptcy.

      Have you priced tires lately?

    1. U.S. Money Supply Has Done Something So Unusual That It Hasn’t Happened Since the Great Depression — and a Big Move in Stocks May Await
      By Sean Williams – Aug 4, 2024 at 4:51AM

      Key Points

      – Though it’s impossible to concretely predict short-term directional moves for the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite, certain metrics do strongly correlate with big moves on Wall Street.

      – U.S. M2 money supply has declined by at least 2%, in aggregate, from its all-time high only five times over the last 154 years.
      …
      https://www.fool.com/investing/2024/08/04/us-money-supply-great-depression-big-move-stocks/

  21. Don’t jump the gun and order your Oysters Rockefeller quite yet. Wait until the Trump administration carries out the “largest deportation operation in American history” and the housing demand demand plunges.

    Housing prices are still waay too high as they have rocketed into outer space over the past 25 years. It’s time to come down to earth, back to year 2000 levels.

    The speculators will complain that their housing fiefdom is collapsing but they had no mercy on the poor unfortunates who could not pay the price. It has been said that landlords had contempt for renters who they looked down their noses at. No mercy for the greedy landlords and speculators because karma’s a b****

  23. A reader sent these in:

    Mortgage rates set to soar for over 100,000 Americans

    “Thousands of homeowners who took adjustable-rate mortgage loans (ARMs) five years ago are set to see their rates suddenly skyrocket”

    https://x.com/JohnWake/status/1819618050964181258

    We’re supposed to be believe that Hurricane Beryl (a cat 1 on impact) was the driver in a 40bps jump in U6 but Hurricane Harvey (much larger & more devastating) had no impact on employment data. Humor us.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819796190395003098

    These ‘economists’ aka political hacks have been wrong every cycle since the late 80s and they are wrong again – and somehow they’re still employed. Most of them are not smarter than your average school child.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819798006918689004

    Why does this get dropped on Friday night? lol

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819582490656624838

    The recognition that AI has been incredibly over-hyped is now becoming ‘common knowledge’. 👇🏼

    @EpsilonTheory

    https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1819848296741196034

    For everyone saying an Unemployment Rate of 4.3% is still historically low. 👇🏼

    The trajectory and rate of change matter.

    https://x.com/MauiBoyMacro/status/1819736486562136403

    Chapter 11 corporate bankruptcy filings hit their highest level in more than a decade last month

    https://x.com/MacroEdgeRes/status/1819812747456213071

    The rate at which restaurants are closing is nothing I’ve ever seen. Hundreds monthly in our data, lots of EIDL trapped owners & the PPP/EIDL debacle kicked the can for a lot of owners. Now the bill is due and many are closing, lots of saturation as well. Big & small.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819891674891579776

    People think the restaurant industry is glamorous, for most it’s a high leverage low margin shitshow & some do it right.

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819893161625555181

    Where in the cycle?

    https://x.com/DonMiami3/status/1819836215535063396

    SALARY NEEDED
    TO BUY A HOME

    in 50 cities 🏙

    https://x.com/WinfieldSmart/status/1819000601247703541

    1. For everyone saying an Unemployment Rate of 4.3% is still historically low.

      It’s also bogus,like the CPI

      1. People think the restaurant industry is glamorous, for most it’s a high leverage low margin shitshow

        which is why suppliers expect to be paid upfront upon delivery.

  24. Lindsay Elia loved the car she chose as her first: a Chevy Bolt EV that’s fun to drive, easy to park and keeps the air clean.

    There’s just one drawback: Charging it isn’t easy in San Francisco.

    Public chargers near Elia aren’t always available, and the ones that are have time limits that prompt her to move the car before it’s fully charged. She sometimes charges it while going on a walk or while running errands at Stonestown Galleria.

    “It’s kind of inconvenient,” said Elia, who bought the car last fall. “It’s all these moving pieces.”

    Elia lives in a condo in Potrero Hill, where she could theoretically install a charger in her parking spot — for several thousand dollars. Putting aside the large personal cost, it’s unclear how many chargers her building is capable of handling before her homeowner’s association would potentially need to install another costly electrical panel.

    In a city where an estimated 70% of residents live in multi-dwelling units that likely lack access to dedicated overnight parking — and where conversion to EVs is a citywide priority — setting up these drivers with easy charging is a big task. San Francisco ranked sixth in metro areas nationally with the largest share of residential buildings with EV charging stations, while San Jose ranked first, according to a 2023 analysis by StorageCafe.

    A new city initiative, emerging technology and government rebates could alter the landscape for renters and multifamily residents like Elia — but it will take time. San Francisco has around 1,000 publicly accessible chargers and aims to have 1,700 installed by 2030, according to the city’s Department of the Environment.

    To incentivize more people to make the switch, it needs to be easy and economical, experts say. At the same time, the state has already struggled to keep up with the charging demand for new EV drivers.

    As of the end of 2023, San Francisco was home to over 28,000 battery electric vehicles, constituting 7% of all light duty vehicles in the city. Though the northeast side of the city has the fewest EV registrations, public charging stations are concentrated there.

    Breakthroughs are also being made for multifamily buildings like Elia’s. Factors including a building’s age and electrical capacity, tight parking spaces, permitting and the high cost of installation have made it difficult for property owners to make the transition.

    Many EV drivers without a personal charger or the possibility of one see it simply as a shift in schedule. Some may drop off the car at a nearby charger and pick it up later — either in around 45 minutes with a fast charger or several hours with a regular charger — while they run errands. They may spend time on their phones while their vehicle is stationed at a fast charger, and they may also have chargers at work.

    “I do miss the quick and easy thing, but it’s not that big of a hassle,” said Jermaine Ramos, a San Francisco State University student who charges at his local Safeway about once a week. “You just schedule your errands around charging, and you’ll be good.”

    But Ramos echoed the simple need for more chargers to avoid waiting for one.

    As EVs become more visible in her neighborhood and competition abounds, Elia feels the city isn’t moving fast enough to install chargers and that she may have to put up the money for her own. Californians bought electric cars in record numbers last year, with EVs becoming more affordable and the demand for used EVs growing.

    “People need to charge at home to make it practical,” Elia said. “It seems like (San Francisco) is so far behind in this.”

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/finding-an-ev-charging-station-in-s-f-is-a-challenge-here-s-when-that-could-change/ar-AA1oaA0l

    1. San Francisco has around 1,000 publicly accessible chargers and aims to have 1,700 installed by 2030

      We won WW2 in half that time, including inventing an entirely new weapon of mass destruction.

  27. After the crypto knife catchers piled in to BTFD, these scam digital gambling tokens have reversed and are headed down again. Since crypto baggies are the most degenerate gamblers of all, levering up on debt to “invest” in imaginary currencies, will we see panic sales of stock as these losers have to raise liquidity to cover their margin calls?

    https://www.cnbc.com/cryptocurrency/

  28. The thought that Kamala Harris is actually the one picking her VP running mate is laughable.

  30. ‘In-denial’ MPs talk over Reform MP exposing migrant crisis: ‘Truth hurts!’

    Parliamentarian

    6 hours ago

    HOUSE OF COMMONS
    During his maiden speech in the House of Commons, Reform UK MP Richard Tice gets talked over by Labour MPs as he discusses mass immigration, causing the Deputy Speaker to intervene.

    0:00 Richard Tice
    2:04 Sir Edward Leigh
    2:15 Richard Tice

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm8Pxvt4BR0

    2:29.

  31. ‘Here’s good news for metro Phoenix homebuyers: the Valley’s median home price is dropping and so are interest rates. The Valley’s median home price is expected to fall to $435,000 in July, based on pending sales. That compares to $450,000 in June, according to the Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service. ‘We are in a balanced market,’ said Tina Tamboer, senior housing analyst with The Cromford Report. ‘Supply is still down, and fewer listings are coming onto the market.’ She said the good news for buyers, besides lower interest rates, is 52% of metro Phoenix home sellers paid concessions during the past month. That’s the highest percentage in recent history’

    Tina:

    via GIPHY

  32. ‘Citizen’s policyholder, Mike Mckee, said he’s one of the roughly 220,000 homeowners dropped by citizens across the state, meaning an even deeper rate hike for him. ‘They have continually increased the rates,’ he said. ‘In January of this year, I got notified that in one year, so January of 2025, that they would dump me for a company that I had never heard of and the rates after the dump going to this new company would go up 40%… this is going to be unsustainable’

    I’ve heard many voices saying we should kick the can once again for these poor bashtards Mike. But that’s what has been unsustainable all along.

  33. ‘The city has had a similar program in effect for years, but it lost traction during the pandemic’

    Oh yeah, the minor respiratory illness when this commie stuff was all the rage in the big sh$tholes. We’ll never forget San Francisco.

    ‘Under the new directive, workers are to press the relocation option before offering any other city services, including housing and shelter. According to the city’s 2024 annual point-in-time homeless survey, about 40% of people living on the streets said they were not from San Francisco. Jeff Cretan, the mayor’s spokesperson, said the relocation offers and threat of criminal penalties are just a starting point as the city figures out what strategies will work’

    San Francisco First! Jeff, put em on a bus back to Florida.

    1. NYC has the best deals, even London Breed knows that. The MSM can’t mention it though, imagine the hypocrisy of SF sending buses of ‘migrants’ to NYC! However, we know that a significant number of people crossing in San Diego are heading to SF and this makes up a significant percentage of these people who let’s just say ‘aren’t from SF’ and lack housing. Sure there’s a few zombies in that number as well but we all know most of them aren’t going anywhere. It’s all a scam.

  34. ‘Jordan Parra said he didn’t walk across seven countries to be kicked out of his tent in a park in Chicago. The 27-year-old from Caracas, Venezuela, had been staying on Chicago Housing Authority land adjacent to the Near West District (12th) police station with his partner for months. They opted to sleep outside after feeling unsafe in three different city-run shelters, he said. Then in late June, he said, police officers came into the park with a bulldozer and cleared everyone out. ‘What we’ve found here is worse than in Venezuela, because we came here with hope for a better life and had to deal with the disappointment of not even getting close’

    Hold yer ground Jordan, you didn’t walk across seven countries to be kicked out of yer tent!

  35. UK protesters are attacking migrants living in motels that are funded by the taxpayer. Migrants are roving about the streets attacking protesters.

    As far as the VP pick for Harris.
    I hope its Pete Buttigige to complete the diversity that meets the requirements for the highest office in the USA these days.

    So, let us not judge a person by the content of their character or merits or ability, but by skin color , gender and sexual identity .

  36. ‘The Trudeau Liberals took a bad situation (the pandemic) and made it much worse and longer lasting. Their carbon tax and war on the energy sector have driven up prices, driven down investment and suppressed both economic growth and new employment’

    ‘“And our per capita income is actually declining (one of the few developed countries with that problem) because the Trudeau government has opened our borders wide and invited in a flood of newcomers. Canada is welcoming 1.2 or 1.3 million immigrants, refugees and foreign students a year, up nearly triple since the Liberals came to power in 2015. However, as a nation, we are only building enough housing for just under 400,000 a year and creating jobs for (maybe) 500,000 a year’

    Popping A Property Bubble Hurts

    August 20, 2023

    http://housingbubble.blog/?p=7762

    The Telegraph. “Canadians have finally fallen out of love with Trudeau. The shine has come off a career that at times seemed to defy political gravity. Instead of Trudeaumania, the nation is suffering from Trudeau fatigue. The Liberal prime minister’s approval ratings have slumped below 30pc among voters aged 18 to 34, according to national polling group the Angus Reid Institute. This is the group whose enthusiasm helped get Trudeau elected in 2015, re-elected in 2019 and again – just about – in 2021. Disillusionment has been fuelled by economic factors, including soaring interest rates and a housing crisis.”

    “Mortgage costs on an average home in Canada now eat up 60pc of typical incomes, according to the National Bank. The figure is 90pc in Toronto and over 100pc in Vancouver. For first-time buyers, prices are simply unaffordable. Their rage is focused on the man they trusted with their votes, not once but thrice. Canadian voters have been slowly souring on their prime minister for a while. The cult of personality that has surrounded Trudeau, which was assiduously cultivated by him on social media, became a bad joke when historic photographs of the future PM in ‘blackface’ surfaced in 2019. Suddenly his wokery resembled hypocrisy and the idolisation of ‘Social Justice Justin’ gave way to mockery.”

    “The population has just passed the symbolic 40 million mark and is due to increase by another 1.5 million by 2025. After Russia, Canada has the world’s second largest landmass and so it seems to have plenty of room for more. Canada’s immigration policy is a cynical gamble, which has been described as ‘human quantitative easing.’ Last year its headcount rose by 700,000, just 200,000 fewer than the US – which has a population eight times as large. For ordinary Canadians, it is per capita GDP that matters – and this has shown practically no growth per capita during his administration.”

    “In major cities such as Toronto, Vancouver, Ottawa and Montreal, house prices are unaffordablly high for anyone who is not already on the property ladder. The average house price in Canada is C$754,800 (£440,000) – more than 11 times the average household income after taxes.”

    ‘Canada’s immigration policy is a cynical gamble, which has been described as ‘human quantitative easing’

    That is one of the most telling phrases I’ve ever seen on the topic. These people are dogs.

  37. ‘Jonathan Egudo has spent 10 years trying to get the Tomazos Group, which built the Darwin CBD Kube seven-storey building in 2014, to fix the leak in the roof which floods his top floor apartment every wet season. ‘Four different times over four years they went up on the roof and said they had resolved the issue and hadn’t, and then it kept flooding again every time,’ he said. Mr Egudo pays rent on another property to live in, plus the $700,000 mortgage on the Kube apartment he bought off the plan, which he now can’t sell or let. ‘Basically they said that the air quality in there was such poor quality that it was uninhabitable…They have taken over two and a half years to complete their investigation, and then somehow they found that there was nothing that they could actually do…It’s something that’s always hanging over my head, I don’t have any financial certainty’

    It’s always darkest before the dawn Jon. Hold on and you will be a winnah!

  38. Bitcoin just lost 11% in the past hour. And the market looks like it’s going to crash on Monday. WTH? Is this just a whale, or it this something larger? Anyone got any insights?

    1. Here are some insights:

      Bitcoin, and more generally crypto, is a dollar collapse hedge. When traders go into panic mode, they dump risk assets and load up on flight-to-quality investments, which include gold, Treasury bonds, and cash (e.g. dollars) but certainly not crypto, which is among the riskiest risk assets that exist. Demand for dollars and crypto are negatively correlated. When dollars are in high demand, crypto gets dumped for dollars.

    2. And the market looks like it’s going to crash on Monday.

      It had to be the day my RSU’s vest this year.

    3. CNBC: Japan stocks plunge as much as 7%, hovering near bear market territory, as Asia shares extend sell-off (no link)

      ZeroHedge on Twitter:

      holy sh!t, everything is breaking

      *CIRCUIT BREAKER TRIGGERED FOR JAPAN GOVT BOND FUTURES

      1. Via ZeroHedge: Japanic Monday: Japanese Bonds, Stocks Halted After Plunging Into Bear Market As Everything Crashes Everywhere

    4. I guess a lot of cryptocurrency is bought on margin, which seems like the investing equivalent of mixing some fentanyl in with your heroin.

      What could possibly go wrong?

      1. A ‘cascade of margin calls’ deleveraging, crypto failures and bitcoin at $13,000 are likely amid FTX fallout
        By Barbara Kollmeyer
        Published: Nov. 10, 2022 at 9:40 a.m. ET
        An advertisement for Bitcoin cryptocurrency is displayed on a street in Hong Kong, Thursday, Feb. 17, 2022. Photo: AP

        Referenced Symbols

        BTCUSD -13.72%

        A “new wave of crypto deleveraging” is likely under way, with bitcoin itself poised to drop another 25% amid a “cascade” of margin calls.

        That was the grim assessment JPMorgan gave clients on Wednesday as the world’s third largest crypto exchange, FTX, teetered on the edge of bankruptcy after a possible rescue from fellow exchange Binance dissipated. The fresh cryptocurrency drama that has unfolded over the last few days has sparked sharp losses across the sector.
        …
        https://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-cascade-of-margin-calls-deleveraging-crypto-failures-and-bitcoin-at-13-000-are-likely-amid-ftx-fallout-11668091237

      2. Crypto Crash Wipes Out DeFi Borrowers As All-Time Aave v3 Liquidations Double
        DeFi lending protocols processed more than $341 million worth of liquidations on Aug. 5.
        By: Samuel Haig • 0 hours ago

        More than half of the liquidations ever recorded on Aave v3, the top DeFi lending market, took place over the past 24 hours amid a violent crypto market crash.

        On July 5, $253.4 million worth of positions were liquidated on Aave v3, bringing the cumulative value of margin calls executed on the protocol to $428.9 million, according to Blockanalitica. As such, 59% of all recorded Aave v3 liquidations occurred within 24 hours.

        Wrapped ETH (WETH) accounted for $146.7 million in liquidations on the platform, followed by Wrapped stETH (wstETH) with $68.4 million, and Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC) with $24.3 million.

        The heavy margin calls briefly drove up the interest rates paid by Aave on ETH deposits to roughly 14%, but rates have since dropped back to 2% after digital assets markets posted a modest bounce.

        Markets tumble

        The liquidations were driven by a violent sell-off across crypto markets that coincided with bloodshed across major stock markets.

        Bitcoin is down 13% in 24 hours, whileEthereum plummeted 20%, and Solana dropped 16%. The combined market crashed 13% over the period, dipping below $2 trillion for the first time since February.

        Meanwhile, Japan’s Nikkei 225 dropped 12.4%, South Korea’s KOSPI sank 8.77%, and Taiwan’s Taiex crashed 8.35%.

        DeFi margin calls
        …
        https://thedefiant.io/news/defi/crypto-crash-wipes-out-defi-borrowers-as-all-time-aave-v3-liquidations-double

        1. Crypto Basics
          What is DeFi?
          A person’s face, surrounded by icons representing decentralized finance apps

          Create your account today

          Required fields have an asterisk: *

          I certify that I am 18 years of age or older, I agree to the User Agreement, and I have read the Privacy Policy and Financial Privacy Notice.

          Sign in to your Coinbase account or
          Sign up as a business.

          Definition

          Short for decentralized finance, DeFi is an umbrella term for peer-to-peer financial services on public blockchains, primarily Ethereum.

          DeFi (or “decentralized finance”) is an umbrella term for financial services on public blockchains, primarily Ethereum. With DeFi, you can do most of the things that banks support — earn interest, borrow, lend, buy insurance, trade derivatives, trade assets, and more — but it’s faster and doesn’t require paperwork or a third party. As with crypto generally, DeFi is global, peer-to-peer (meaning directly between two people, not routed through a centralized system), pseudonymous, and open to all.
          …
          https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-basics/plp-what-is-defi

  39. Does it seem like the bulls are having great difficulty with slowing their stampede over the high, steep cliff they encountered last week?

    Can’t they just use AI to reverse the market carnage? Or create a new cryptocurrency and use it to buy the dip in the stock market and shore up share prices?

    1. U.S. stock futures and crypto prices sink after a painful week on Wall Street
      Last Updated: Aug. 4, 2024 at 11:09 p.m. ET
      First Published: Aug. 4, 2024 at 6:35 p.m. ET
      By Mike Murphy
      Futures for Dow, S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 down sharply Sunday night

      U.S. stock-market futures fell late Sunday, after a volatile week on Wall Street that saw the Nasdaq fall into correction territory.

      Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00 slid more than 250 points, or 0.7%, as of 11 p.m. Eastern on Sunday, as S&P 500 futures ES00 fell 1.4% and Nasdaq-100 futures NQ00 tumbled 2.4%. Each had improved slightly late Sunday from their session lows.
      …
      https://www.marketwatch.com/amp/story/u-s-stock-futures-slide-further-after-a-wild-week-on-wall-street-640e7707

    3. What advice might Housing Bubble Blog regulars have for Wall Street traders trying to figure out what happened to their rally?

      “The sun don’t shine on the same dog’s ass all the time.”

    4. Financial Times
      Markets volatility
      Japanese stock index suffers worst day since 1987 as global rout intensifies
      Weak US economic data could push Fed into making rapid interest rate cuts
      Japan’s Topix index wiped out its gains for the year, the sharpest sell-off since ‘Black Monday’ in October 1987
      Leo Lewis in Tokyo and Arjun Neil Alim in Hong Kong and George Steer in London
      49 minutes ago

      Japan’s stock market plummeted 12 per cent on Monday, its worst day in 37 years, as global markets were rattled by the prospect of a US recession.

      In a rout echoed in other Asian markets, the Topix wiped out its gains for the year, the sharpest sell-off since “Black Monday” in October 1987.

      In Europe, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 shed 2.2 per cent. Futures markets indicated the momentum was likely to extend to the US. Contracts tracking the Nasdaq 100 were trading down 3.8 per cent while the S&P 500 was expected to open 2.3 per cent lower.
      …

      1. Understanding futures margin

        Futures and futures options trading is provided by Charles Schwab Futures and Forex LLC.

        What is futures margin?

        Margin is the amount of funds required to enter a futures position—typically a fraction of the total value of the contract. Any product traded on margin means it’s leveraged, exposing you to a larger asset position.

        Get more details and an example of how futures margin works with “How Futures Margin Works.”

        Or read our guide “Futures margin: Learn how to get in position.”
        Video: Understanding Futures Margin
        A few futures margin basics

        Margin

        In stocks, you can borrow against your assets like a loan. In futures, you put down a good faith deposit called the initial margin requirement. The cash for the initial margin requirement is automatically set aside in your account and subtracted from your buying power once an order is entered.

        Margin requirements

        Whether you go long or short, initial margin requirements vary by futures product, generally ranging anywhere from 3% to 12% of the notional value of the contract. There’s also a maintenance margin requirement (balance your account must carry to stay in a position) that may be increased at any time.

        Leverage

        As leveraged investments, a relatively small amount of initial capital exposes you to a larger futures contract amount. While this leverage can provide an efficient use of capital, it can potentially amplify losses beyond the amount originally invested.
        …
        https://www.schwab.com/futures/futures-margin

      2. The Economic History Review
        Volume 76, Issue 3 p. 807-826
        ORIGINAL ARTICLE
        Open Access
        The great margin call: The role of leverage in the 1929 Wall Street crash
        Karol Jan Borowiecki, Michał Dzieliński, Alexander Tepper
        First published: 19 October 2022

        https://doi.org/10.1111/ehr.13213

      4. Volatility is back with a bang

        The VIX spikes to the highest since the Covid pandemic

        Justin Low
        05/08/2024 | 03:38 GMT-7

        The VIX has more than doubled in value today, rising to hit the 50.00 mark now. That’s the highest level since the pandemic and this is the biggest daily jump since February 2018, when there was the whole fiasco involving the XIV and a broader market selloff amid a rout in the bond market at the time.

        In any case, the heightened reading we’re seeing above speaks to the fear and angst that is gripping markets right now. For a while there, it looked like we might’ve settled into a period of low volatility. The VIX had before this touch its lowest since before the pandemic as investors were feeling rather confident about broader market sentiment.
        …
        https://www.forexlive.com/news/volatility-is-back-with-a-bang-20240805/

    6. Dow futures drop 800 points, S&P futures lose 3% as global market sell-off intensifies

      Markets
      CNBC TV
      Watchlist
      Bonds
      10-year Treasury yield dives to the lowest since December after weak jobs report
      Published Fri, Aug 2 2024 5:05 AM EDT
      Updated Sun, Aug 4 2024 7:24 PM EDT
      Sarah Min
      Pia Singh
      Sophie Kiderlin

      U.S. Treasury yields slid after a weaker-than-expected jobs report for last month added to fears that economic growth is slowing.

      The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury was last at 3.796%, down more than 17 basis points. Earlier, yields hit a low of 3.790%, the lowest level since December 2023.

      The 2-year Treasury yield was last at 3.882% after dropping about 28 basis points.

      Yields and prices have an inverted relationship and one basis point equals 0.01%, or one one-hundredth of a percent.

      Treasurys

      Treasury yields tumbled after the July nonfarm payrolls report showed an increase of 114,000 jobs last month, far less than the expected 185,000 that economists had expected, according to the last survey by Dow Jones. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%, the highest in nearly three years, since October 2021.
      …
      https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/02/us-treasurys-ahead-of-july-jobs-reports.html

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