Sweet pic, from strategypage.com:  Air Force Capt. David Neville, a 13th Fighter Squadron F-16 Fighting Falcon pilot, conducts a flight sortie above northern Japan, June 12, 2017. Neville and other 13th and 14th Fighter Squadron pilots joined Kadena Air Base, Japan F-15C Eagle pilots to conduct air-to-air and suppression of enemy air defense missions during an aviation relocation training. (U.S. Air Force photo/Staff Sgt. Deana Heitzman)

Hat tip Austin Bay

And its good news for moving companies.  Key bit:   Illinois’ surging debts, rising property taxes, weak job creation and political dysfunction continue to be a boon to large moving companies United Van Lines and Atlas Van Lines. United and Atlas offer large shipment moves across the country for households and businesses. According to 2016 shipment data released by the two moving companies, Illinois has the worst “outbound” rate for total shipments in the entire country.

The democrats in Chicago run this financial hell hole of a state. 

And the financials for the state will certainly get much worse before they get better.  The geese that lay the golden eggs(taxes)are fleeing, en masse:

While this is transpiring, Illinois has the highest paid state workers in the nation.  As a wise man once said “Math is hard”:

More:  According to Census migration data, from July 2015 – July 2016 Illinois lost a record 114,000 people in net migration to other states, causing the total state population to contract by 37,500 people. The rate of people fleeing Illinois has been at all-time highs for the past three years of data, resulting in a total state population contracting for three consecutive years. The sheer magnitude of outflow should trouble policymakers in Illinois, as Illinois’ loss rate is multiples of surrounding states even after adjusting for population size, and Illinois is the only shrinking state in the Midwest.

What a total disaster…

Read the whole thing:  www.illinoispolicy.org

The extremely broad weakness in the retail sector, thanks largely to Amazon, could spark an economic downturn, the lede:   “There is a possibility that a retail collapse could spill over into the commercial real estate market—a somber second-act to the residential housing crisis that is now almost a decade in the rear-view mirror.”

More here from The American Interest:  https://www.the-american-interest.com/2017/07/17/the-bezos-recession/

With both AAII(American Association of Individual Investors)bullish and bearish sentiment below 30 its quite clear why we are experiencing the quietest market(lack of volatility)ever.   Bull and bear sentiment below 30, which has been the case for the last three weeks, has only been this low two other times in the last 30 years.  Yes, there is a ton of investor confusion out there. 

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Note: Numbers may not add up to 100% because of rounding.Hat tip Ryan Detrick, AAII.com

This time in autos, not houses.  The lede: 

It’s classic subprime: hasty loans, rapid defaults, and, at times, outright fraud.

Only this isn’t the U.S. housing market circa 2007. It’s the U.S. auto industry circa 2017.

A decade after the mortgage debacle, the financial industry has embraced another type of subprime debt: auto loans. And, like last time, the risks are spreading as they’re bundled into securities for investors worldwide.

Subprime car loans have been around for ages, and no one is suggesting they’ll unleash the next crisis. But since the Great Recession, business has exploded. In 2009, $2.5 billion of new subprime auto bonds were sold. In 2016, $26 billion were, topping average pre-crisis levels, according to Wells Fargo & Co.

Read the whole thing:  www.bloomberg.com

And Money.  Let this sink in:  Searching for Parking Cost Americans $73 Billion a Year

– INRIX Research combined the world’s largest parking database with survey results from nearly 6,000 drivers in 10 U.S. cities to reveal the cost of parking for drivers, cities and the economy

– Americans spend an average of 17 hours per year searching for parking, resulting in a cost of $345 per driver in wasted time, fuel and emissions

– Overpaying for parking costs Americans more than $20 billion a year or $97 per driver

– The U.S. economy bears the brunt of parking pain as 40% of motorists say they have avoided driving to shops due to parking challenges

Hardly time and money well spent.  Read the whole thing: www.prnewswire.com

Hat tip instapundit.com

Investors remain quite cautious.  For the second week in a row, AAII survey shows more bears (29.6) than bulls (28.2) while those with a neutral view remain above 40% for third consecutive week.

As contrarian indicator, this should be viewed as a positive for the market.

Hat tip See It Market

This has to come to a complete shock to anyone tuned into the network news/financial shows.  Great stuff here from Kevin Libin of the Financial Post.  Key bit:   “Going by the ballyhoo, you’d think EVs were an unstoppable juggernaut. But it’s one that has yet to even get started. In his 2011 State of the Union address, then president Barack Obama predicted one million electric cars on the road by 2015. Four years later, there wasn’t even a third that many. California offered so many different subsidies for electric vehicles that low-income families could get rebates of up to US$13,500, but it still isn’t even close to reaching its target of having zero-emission vehicles make up 15 per cent of California auto sales by 2025, being stuck at three per cent since 2014. Ontario’s Liberal government last year announced to much laughter its plan to ensure that every family would have at least one zero-emission vehicle (ZEV) by 2024, and Quebec made a plan to make ZEVs worth 15.5 per cent of sales by 2020. Let’s see how that’s going: Currently, ZEVs make up 0.16 per cent of new vehicle sales in Ontario and 0.38 per cent in Quebec.”

A truly great read, enjoy:  www.financialpost.com

From the Independent.co.uk:   Is your desk overflowing with scraps of paper, coffee cups, envelopes and wilted plants? Well, far from being idle, it turns out you might just be a creative genius.

In world where ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’ is a well-valued idiom, being a messy person can often be mistaken as a hallmark of laziness. But thanks to a recent study, researchers have found there is a method to this madness.

Proving that sometimes working in mess is much more productive than precision and order, researchers at the University of Minnesota found that creative geniuses favour a chaotic workspace.

Read the whole thing:   www.independent.co.uk

Great stuff here from John Boorman’s latest article:  Some Things I’ve Learned Over The Last 30 Years

A taste:

Limit orders limit performance.

I once worked for a PM who always put on limit orders. It was like chasing a bar of soap around the bathtub. Sometimes weeks or months later the order would still be on our desk, but the stock would now be way way higher. You either want to own it or you don’t. Is a penny here or there really the difference between whether you want to own it or not? Because your limit order is potentially making it exactly that.

I’ve held stocks for over a year and looked back at when I bought it. I could have bought it the next day, the next week, open, close, whatever. It wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference. Unless you’re trading Cliff Asness/AQR size, for goodness sake, quit playing games with the HFT pikers. Just buy it and move on.

Read the whole thing: www.broadswordcapital.com

Hat tip Charlie Bilello