Short Term Trading Weekend Lounge: 10-12 May, page-15

The US session was tradable if you kept your eye on volatility measures - which were very suppressed.  The SKEW index continues to show little fear and the VIX moved very little even as the ES made a slow, deliberate single character print to 2826 on initially weak NYSE breadth. It was excruciating to watch.   As mentioned last week, the mutual understanding between the street and the administration does not necessarily factor egregious mistakes in judgement.   In that world, loyalty is only as good as the money it relies upon. The overnight profile was balanced to the point of being pretty -- yeah, I need to get out more -- and though mostly short as we came into the cash session open of 2860.25 -@5speed, can I buy your tea leaves please - the short covering was delayed.   Unlike the overnight ES profile, the RTH session profile is extremely unbalanced - that makes sense because the entire US session hung completely on the words of people who are playing a game and the factors pointed to in @Dazedandconfused' post.   Will elaborate when brain is functioning again.

Yeah @48&34, it's an ancient formula to deal with the inequalities of nature, made more effective when erstwhile champions of capital give in to the temptation of power through corruption.
They don't call economics the dismal science for nothing.  As long as inequality exists, there will be two ways for a budding politician to deal with it.  One is slow, miserable and disappointing - hardly the stuff of election promises.  The other offers immediate but small gratification and the most votes if your calculations are cutting edge.  A dear friend of mine in Australia who is blessed with eternal energy and optimism and a serious work ethic told me long time ago that he would vote Labor until he was in a financial position to vote Liberal.  Now that...is funny.   I'm sure he'd laugh at it too, now. He's done very well in every political change since.

Here is one for your topic, @peejayhercules

The Secret of the Machines
By Rudyard Kipling
(MODERN MACHINERY)
We were taken from the ore-bed and the mine,  
   We were melted in the furnace and the pit—  
We were cast and wrought and hammered to design,  
   We were cut and filed and tooled and gauged to fit.  
Some water, coal, and oil is all we ask,
   And a thousandth of an inch to give us play:  
And now, if you will set us to our task,
   We will serve you four and twenty hours a day!

...Continued here