Weekend Market Report

Welcome to this weekend's market report. I'm sharing with you some fun links that I read up on and make commentary about the markets, gold and silver, and the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco. Plus, I give an update on my SNOW position.

The Whoosh effect on weight loss

A Reddit discussion on "The Whoosh Effect".

Good article overall, but when it refers to a "cheat" meal to break a stall, it's best to take that to mean a higher calorie meal rather than a higher carb one.

Moreover, even if your long-term goal is weight loss, eating at maintenance calories every once in a while can be good for the soul anyway. At least, I've found that past a certain point slower weight loss is happier weight loss.

Original link in Reddit discussion is dead but found via Internet Archive.

Regular Expressions for data scientists

An oldie but goodie. Regular Expressions are a must for anybody using Python, doing Data Science, or just ETL’ing data.

Regular expressions (regex) are essentially text patterns that you can use to automate searching through and replacing elements within strings of text. This can make cleaning and working with text-based data sets much easier, saving you the trouble of having to search through mountains of text by hand.

Via Dataquest

Intel to receive $8.5 billion in grants to build chip plants

Since Nvidia (NVDA) is all the rage these days and China is flexing its muscle, it makes complete sense to move more semiconductor manufacturing back on our shore. This doesn't affect just Intel, but all semiconductor manufacturers.

The Biden administration, equipped with $39 billion in subsidies to distribute, is spearheading an ambitious effort to ramp up production of the tiny chips that power everything from smartphones to computers and cars. The effort is at the center of Mr. Biden’s goal to reduce America’s reliance on foreign countries: Although semiconductors were invented in the United States, only about 10 percent of the world’s chips are made domestically.

Via NY Times

General market commentary

All the major indices (Dow Jones, Nasdaq, and S&P500) closed higher this week, but the market can't shake the feeling that inflation remains stubborn and rate cuts are nowhere to be seen. The market wants rate cuts to keep going higher but without clearer guidance from the Federal Reserve, I suspect this will be a volatile summer.

I believe there is more inflation in the pipeline and I watch the price of eggs, gold, and silver as my leading indicators. Right now the average price of a dozen eggs is $2.86, which is lower from the year before but in the chart below you can see that it was as low as $2.03 in August of 2023.

Inflation remains persistent and so does the possibility of rate increases. My suggestion is to keep a sharp eye on all your positions and keep your stops handy.

Gold and Silver price forecasts 1 week ahead

Gold and Silver had a down week as traders and investors move money back into the stock market and the metals market consolidate. There's all kinds of rumors floating around on the newsgroups and many silver hoarders praying that the price of silver goes back to $50.

Will silver ever get there? You'll have to sign up to become a free member to read what my forecast model has in store for next week's gold and silver price forecast.