Any change is resisted because bureaucrats have a vested interest in the chaos in which they exist. - Richard M. Nixon

Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! - Bill Murray as Dr. Peter Venkman in “Ghostbusters” (1984)

I had a busy day yesterday that was part of a busy week. when I saw this image of a burning Moscow refinery, the result of another effective Ukrainian drone attack. My first concern was of hypersonic nuclear missiles flying over the EU and even in the USA, as we have armed NATO countries to perform this insanity. Then I saw this post on X, regarding the complete lack of usable crude oil from J.P. Morgan. This of course is fear porn from May, but when combined with strikes on Russian refineries and Saudi processing facilities, it gives the brokerage firms the change to rattle retail and institutional traders who might be sitting on the sidelines. The crisis in diesel fuel is much more critical, as you can see from this research, and that is detailed in this recent OilPrice article.

Add this to the combined effects of the Iran/US conflict, and the possibility of mobilization of China for perhaps a run at Taiwan as the year ends based on what I have read about China’s version of NDAA just passed in late August, and you would think the markets would really go nuts. Then when you see the political bilge from the UK hitting your screen, you think the world is about to end. Throw on top of that the noise about “killer AI” and hyper-scaling debt explosion, which I will discuss that later, but not today), you would think the markets would burn down.

But what did we see in NASDAQ volatility?

The CBOE NASDAQ-100 Volatility Index (VXN)—the Nasdaq-100 equivalent of the VIX—closed at 19.29 on Friday, September 18, 2026. It was practically lifeless. One does not get excited about it until it exceeds 30. For that index and its futures, it is just another sunny day at the park. Read this link for a bit of background on VXN.

To save time, watch this video. I will pull key points from it below the video. Things seem bullish on the surface, but beneath it, it could be getting a little shaken.

The time stamps are:

0:00 to 4:11 Monthly Chart of MNQZ26

4:11 to 6:16 Weekly Chart of MNQZ26

6:16 to 6:51 Daily Chart

Monthly Chart 1 (Time symmetry not perfect, but price symmetry held up)

The secondary bullish MNQZ26 secondary target, assuming total price and time symmetry (which doesn’t happen perfectly, but tends to follow the price action over time) looks like this (33323.50):

I will avoid discussing bearish targets today (though you have seen the discussion of it for the most recent contract after this one (MNQU26) in a previous post. I will discuss them when I see a change in the price action.

What bothers me the most is that volume dearth has extended beyond Labor Day, and that even with all the global tumult, things are rather quiet. As long as the free or nearly free money (now a bit less free now that rates at the short end of the Treasury market are rising, as long as the printers at the Treasury are running, markets will accept them and will continue higher, regardless of what earnings look like. Stocks for the individual and institutional investor are still the only game in town.

What About M2 Growth, GDP Growth, and Inflation?

According to the Federal Reserve, the latest official U.S. M2 (seasonally adjusted, M2SL) through July 2026 is $23,218.0 billion. The 12-month growth rate ending July 2026 is 5.41%. Year-to-date 2026 growth (December 2025 to July 2026) is 3.86%, which annualizes to roughly 6.7%. The combined period from mid-2025 through July 2026 shows similar mid-single-digit annualized growth. If you have ever followed me on X, my own personal inflation number is around 7% based on the bills. That seems to be consistent with what we see in M2. (if you want to see the calculations, using the Fed’s own data, look here.)

The operative question is, can the US economy, given its propensity to spend money at insane levels, outgrow this growth in M2 and inflation?

Underneath that question, is the US government spending at Covid-pandemic-era levels? I will quote you Grok’s answer below, but Grok’s answer does not fully explain what is happening in the macro-world of interest rates and Federal government policy:

No. Congress is not spending at COVID-19 pandemic-era levels when measured as a share of the economy or in terms of emergency supplemental appropriations. Nominal dollar totals are now higher than the 2020–2021 peaks, which is expected after several years of inflation, economic growth, population aging, and sharply higher interest costs on the national debt.Key comparisons (fiscal years)Fiscal year runs October 1–September 30.

• FY2020 (peak COVID year): Outlays $6.55 trillion, or 31.3% of GDP. Deficit $3.13 trillion (15% of GDP). Massive one-time emergency spending (CARES Act and related packages) drove the spike.

  home.treasury.gov

• FY2021: Outlays $6.82 trillion, or 30.5% of GDP. Deficit $2.77 trillion. Continued large COVID-related outlays (American Rescue Plan, extended unemployment, stimulus payments, etc.).

  home.treasury.gov

• Pre-COVID baseline (FY2019): Outlays about $4.45 trillion, roughly 21% of GDP.

• FY2025 (most recent completed year): Outlays $7.01 trillion, or 23.1% of GDP. Deficit about $1.78 trillion (5.8% of GDP).

  cbo.gov

• FY2026 (current year, ends September 30, 2026): CBO projected $7.45 trillion in outlays, or 23.3% of GDP, with a deficit around $1.9 trillion. Through August (11 months), outlays already reached $6.81 trillion.

  fiscaldata.treasury.gov

Quarterly NIPA-style measures of federal spending as a percent of GDP peaked even higher during the height of the pandemic (over 40% in mid-2020) before falling. Recent quarterly readings have been in the 23–24% range.

ycharts.com

The 50-year historical average for federal outlays is about 21.2% of GDP. Current levels remain elevated relative to that long-run average and to the pre-2019 period, but they are well below the 30%+ pandemic emergency years. Why nominal spending is higher now:

• Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid) grow automatically with demographics, healthcare costs, and inflation.

• Net interest on the debt has risen sharply and now exceeds $1 trillion per year.

• The economy and price level are larger than in 2020–2021, so the same programs cost more in current dollars.

Emergency-designated discretionary funding related to COVID has largely ended. CBO notes that non-defense emergency funding in recent baselines is far smaller than the hundreds of billions provided in 2020–2021.Bottom line spending has not returned to the extraordinary, temporary COVID-relief scale. It has settled at a structurally higher plateau driven by mandatory programs and interest costs rather than new pandemic-style stimulus. Deficits remain large by historical standards (around 6% of GDP) but are smaller than the 12–15% range of FY2020–2021.

Notice I highlighted that last sentence. That is the problem. We are paying interest ON interest now, and our interest payments are larger than our defense budget! As we continue to spend more, that interest expense will only continue to expand, and in real dollar terms, that figure will explode over time.

In terms of government outlays for 2026, Interest is the number 2 item, larger than the defense budget, and it will swiftly continue to grow as deficit spending continues to run at a 7% to 8% pace. Take a look:

Actual Outlays (Expenses) Through August 2026 by Budget Function:

These are Treasury figures for money actually spent (in millions of dollars). Timing shifts (e.g., some August payments moved to July because August 1 fell on a non-business day) affect monthly comparisons but not the year-to-date totals.

fiscaldata.treasury.gov

• Social Security: $1,525,869

• Net Interest: $1,016,966

• Medicare: $979,300

• Health (includes Medicaid and other): $925,698

• National Defense: $876,163

• Income Security: $645,230

• Veterans Benefits and Services: $395,647

• Transportation: $126,437

• Administration of Justice: $99,369

• Education, Training, Employment, and Social Services: $91,952

• Community and Regional Development: $57,375

• Natural Resources and Environment: $51,891

• Agriculture: $51,013

• International Affairs: $44,857

• General Science, Space, and Technology: $36,244

• General Government: $24,841

• Energy: $18,398

• Commerce and Housing Credit: –$10,490 (net)

• Undistributed Offsetting Receipts: –$145,716

• Total: $6,811,043 million ($6.811 trillion)

Revenues through August were $4.845 trillion, producing a year-to-date deficit of about $1.97 trillion. Major agency-level outlays align with these functions (e.g., HHS, SSA, Defense, Treasury interest, and VA account for the largest shares). Final September data and full-year actuals will be available after the fiscal year ends. For the most current official figures, see the Monthly Treasury Statement and CBO reports.

President Trump IS trying to deliver on growth items, and the poverty level is the lowest since it was first recorded in 1966. Jon Najarian discusses it here.

There is only one problem with this, and I don’t care Scott Bessent says, if you cannot outgrow that level of M2 expansion, your economy will eventually implode, and will result in hyperinflation in the end. I guess he’s a nice guy, but he was one of the gentlemen, along with George Soros and Stanley Druckenmiller who helped to collapse the Bank of England in 1992’s Black Wednesday (16 September 1992) event. The UK had to withdraw from the the pound from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM). It is a very large portion of his net worth.

How strong is forecast US GDP growth as we move into 2027? If you believe the Fed, it is in the mid-to-high 2% ranges. If you believe Elon Musk, it might be closer to 4%. Even that cannot overcome a 6+ to 8% M2 expansion!

Dream all you want, but the fantasy will die in your wallet thanks to the criminal rabble of both divisions of the Uniparty in Congress and the Senate!

The only way to stop this insanity is to both dramatically reduce spending and back the dollar again with a specie of some kind (gold or some other basket of scare and valuable commodities). The free-floating fiat toilet paper must come to and end, and NOW. Cutting rates to zero, as President Trump has suggested, is one of the most moronic things I have ever heard an American politician say (though you and I could both write a novel the size of Marcel Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” (a novel of 1.2 million words) about asinine things politicians say. Mine would be much longer than yours because I would color the language with expletives.

I can get into the other extrinsic factors like the reversal of the Japanese Yen carry trade, but then this post would become as long as “In Search of Lost Time”. Our bond market is crippled by bad and perhaps criminal fiscal, spending and monetary policy, and we are going to reap the whirlwind unless it is corrected soon. It may involve revaluing gold prices to erase the losses, but the purchasing power of the dollar would collapse dramatically.

Valuation of QQQ (Nasdaq 100)

You can read the data from barchart.com. Valuations are not excessive but elevated. The scary part is that it is a market weighted index with the top 10 stocks account for roughly 48% of the index:

• NVIDIA (NVDA): 8.5%

• Apple (AAPL): 7.9%

• Microsoft (MSFT): 5.9%

• Micron (MU): 4.9%

• Amazon (AMZN): 4.3%

• AMD: 3.9%

• Alphabet Class A (GOOGL): 3.2%

• Meta (META): 3.2%

• Alphabet Class C (GOOG): 3.0%

• Tesla (TSLA): 2.9%

NVIDIA is deeply involved in the AI hyperscaler chip business, and seems to have some rather questionable accounting methods relative to sales. All of the top 7 have something to do with AI expansion, and if the financing looks impossible to overcome by earnings. That is another risk factor. We will simply have to watch how it all goes.

The bulls currently hold the earnings potential. The bears hold the intrinsic and extrinsic economic, fiscal, monetary, and global chaos potential. Since I trade at the margin, I really don’t have a dog in the fight except that I need volatility to make money. If you are long technology stocks, now might be a good time to review which stocks will serve your short-term and long-term return objectives. Be prepared to cut bait if things get nasty, but also be prepare to fish for the values you find for the longer run when there is blood in the streets.

Other than that, I would simply sit out on the porch and carefully consider your next moves!

Thanks again for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! This will be the last free one for awhile, but I expanded the length of this edition to give you an idea of what I can cover on an (at least) semi-monthly basis. If this Substack grows, I will expand coverage of other items including stocks, futures, and forex. It likely will never be as data-packed as The Buffalo Trader blog once was, but if I can design ways to generate that kind of data again to some extent, I will include it!

Have a fantastic week!

I was talking to a doctor about three months ago, and he asked me how risky trading was. “Isn’t that gambling, I mean, how much risk are you willing to take?”

I told him that my model adjusted for the current market volatility and that each trade had a measured about or risk backed by a catastrophic stop (which really isn’t catastrophic), and a breakeven stop once a certain profit level is reached. He just shook his head.

What I am going to discuss today is a comparison of a trader’s risk to the risk that other professionals, tradesman, and entrepreneurs take in what they do. It may surprise you, but it shouldn’t.

Let’s start with the trader of options, stocks, futures and forex.

The Trader

It’s official. Trading is an absolutely disastrous business to be in, according to FINRA. 72% of day traders ended the year with financial losses, and among proprietary traders treating it as a professional business, only 16% were profitable. 80% of day traders quit within the first two years, and only 1% maintain consistent profitability over a five-year horizon.

Capital requirements: The latest from FINRA states (for the USA):'

In the United States there is no single “minimum capital to trade.” Requirements depend on the product, account type (cash vs. margin), whether you day-trade or hold overnight, broker house rules, and—for derivatives—exchange or CFTC/NFA margin. Below is the current picture as of September 2026.Important 2026 change for stocks and equity options: The FINRA Pattern Day Trader (PDT) rule and its $25,000 equity floor were eliminated effective June 4, 2026 (FINRA Rule 4210 amendments, Regulatory Notice 26-10). Brokers have until October 20, 2027 to finish implementing the new intraday-margin standard, so some firms may still apply the old PDT rules during the transition. Always check your specific broker. You can begin with a few thousand dollars in micro-mini index futures or options, but you MUST understand risk and have a trade plan in place to make these businesses profitable over time. There WILL be losses, but as you will see in the other examples, there will always be losses everywhere.

Educational Requirements: None. But you MUST seek education, and it can be gleaned from books, other professionals, and your own experience if you study consistently and learn new techniques.

Overhead: A computer, internet connection, a desk, and a chair. You will probably need a trading platform with monthly data service also. Commissions are negligent now, if you find a good broker.

Why am I starting with the trader here? I want to make a comparison to other entrepreneurial businesses that exist in the world. As this series progresses, I will expand on why trading really isn’t as disastrously dangerous if you apply your craft property,

Now let’s consider other professions.

The Restaurant Owner

“The opening of a standalone restaurant is a dream that many young and mature people have as a sign of independence and customer service. That is why so many independent restaurants open in the USA each year. According to restaurantdata.com:

There is no single official government tally of “new independent restaurants opened,” so published figures vary by source, definition (what counts as a restaurant vs. other foodservice), and methodology (legal filings/permits vs. consumer listings). The most detailed, consistent tracking of new openings comes from Restaurantdata.com, which compiles state filings, legal notices, building permits, and similar records.”

According to their multi-year analysis of projected/verified opening records:

• 2020: ~12,300 independent openings

• 2021: ~14,800

• 2022: ~15,900

• 2023: ~16,400

• 2024: ~21,100

• 2025: ~14,500–14,900

On average, about 15,000 to 21,000 new standalone independent (no-franchise) restaurants have started each year since the pandemic era. You can read more about that here.

Capital Requirements - According to restaurantowner.com:

Startup costs vary enormously by concept, location, whether the space is a second-generation restaurant (already fitted with kitchen infrastructure), new construction versus remodel, and city versus smaller market. The most cited primary dataset is a RestaurantOwner.com survey of 350+ independent operators:

• Median total cost to open: $375,500.

• Middle 50% of restaurants: roughly $175,500 to $750,500.

• Full-service median: $475,500.

• New ground-up construction (excluding real estate): median around $650,000.

• Remodel of an existing restaurant space: median around $275,500.

• Typical size in the survey: ~3,070 square feet and 120 seats, or about $113 per square foot / $3,586 per seat.

Typical ranges by format (including equipment, build-out, licenses, initial inventory, and working capital):

• Food truck or ghost kitchen: $50,000–$200,000.

• Café/coffee shop: $80,000–$300,000.

• Fast-casual / limited-service: $150,000–$500,000.

• Casual full-service: $250,000–$750,000+.

• Fine dining: $500,000–$1.5 million+.

I have friends in West Texas who own a casual dining and entertainment venue for families. They grow and source all of the ingredients for their restaurant to save money and improve quality. That next to last number looks to be correct in terms of capital investing.

How is this different or better than trading?

If you have to finance the storefront and other items, you have a but of negative leverage on a very large capital sum. You have to have restaurant licenses, beverage licenses, property and casualty insurance, disability insurance for employees, liability insurance, property taxes, and food equipment, And that is just the beginning.

SBA 7(a) loans and similar financing typically require 10–30% owner equity. Personal guarantees and collateral (often including home equity) are common, so the owner’s personal financial exposure can be significant even if the restaurant is a limited-liability entity. In short, an “average” independent restaurant owner in the U.S. is looking at a mid-six-figure investment with a first-year closure risk in the mid-teens to mid-20s percent range (lower in recent tracking data), roughly even odds of still being open at five years, and persistently thin margins that leave little room for error. Adequate capitalization, a second-generation space, strong location analysis, and tight operations materially improve the odds. Capital reserve for emergency costs can vary from 6 months revenue to 24 months revenue in certain cases.

If you can survive the ramp=up and cashflow requirements, your restaurant can still face a five year failure rate of 30%. Failure rates in a normal independent restaurant are certainly slower than trading, particularly if you don’t have a business plan, but the amount of potential capital destruction is enormous if you do fail. Trading can be accomplished with limited capital, and you can still do it while working a full-time job or business.

The Commission-Only Salesperson

I pulled data out of Grok this particular time, to get a range of “failure rates” and costs of operating that kind of a business. This varies substantially depending on the industry you sell for. I can vouch for my own story.

I was an institutional broker in the early 1990s and I have an incredible client list (and some who would have gone directly into a relationship with my firm). The cost of capital to start up a business like that was over 7-figures when I decided to leave the entrepreneurial firm I worked with, and I could never get it started without literally selling my soul to the investors, which I was not willing to do. The key factor here is that if you start such a business, you should expect to have 6 to 18 months of expenses saved up before you can “cover your nut”. I did (and more, as I had been an investor for sometime prior to working with him) and that angered him, because he couldn’t manipulate me. I passed the exams in two weeks after I entered the firm (as I had studied for them prior to that time).

The point of this (and you can look at the link for discussions of basic overhead) is that you would literally have to have cash piled up for some time before you could earn your keep. Trading small in the beginning can allow you to build slowly, and you can still keep a full-time job and “make groceries” as they say in New Orleans and manage your risk while doing that.

The Residential Building Contractor

Building contractors also have a rather aggressive failure rate over a 5 to 10 year period, depending upon how well capitalized they are for true working capital (materials, etc.). A typical start-up would require $75,000 to $100,000 when all equipment is organized to do business. Licensing, errors and omissions insurance, liability insurance, and all the rest pile on rather aggressively. The work can be long and grueling in some cases depending on the territory you cover. The failure rate is, once again, slow, but the capital eaten up in the process can stack up fairly quickly.

What Is the Point of All This Comparison?

It is certainly NOT to denigrate these and other professions. People in all professions deserve credit for taking suitable risk inherent with what they do, because the vast majority of them want to provide excellent service and earn a living for themselves and their families. What is does show, however, is that, on a starting basis, many have far more qualifications and capital hurdles to overcome just to get started.

What I want people to understand is that, if trading is pursued as a second income and then perhaps as a primary income stream, it too can create risk, but over time, with discipline and education, those risks, just like the risks of being a commissioned salesperson, a contractor, or a restaurant owner, those risks are manageable. You have to have both the desire to do them and an extreme desire to learn about how to do them. It is a lifelong process and not one to be taken lightly.

In this series, I will discuss how factors associated with trading can be managed to create an edge for the trader to profit from. It can be done even in the midst of high-frequency trading and all sorts of market action. Since you have the ability to trade more agilely that a multi-billion dollar hedge fund, you can seek out high probability opportunities for profit. It takes work, planning, and discipline to execute, but it can be done. It is a numbers game, after all, and your mastery of simple math combined with a strategy can help you achieve your goals if you stick to them.

We will get into the numbers in the next part of this series! Stay tuned.

Thank you, as always for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

That is exactly what my grandfather told my father when working the farm as a young man. The story of that relationship is pretty interesting, to say the least, and I will not discuss it here, but I will throw some labor into the issue of what MNQ is going as August ends. Lets go through the monthly, weekly, and daily charts to see what we can glean from them. I realize that the contract rolls over to MNQZ2026 shortly, but I still think this is a good place to study things, as Septembers often fall into chaotic periods, and who knows what will happen this year, with a debt crisis, a war, elections, an AI boom or bloat, depending on how you look at it, and other real and perceived calamities. Lets get started.

Monthly Charts for MNQU2026

Let’s take a look at a chart that shows all of the VWAP control point lines in white measured from swing highs from 2021 onward. If you click on the screen, you can see it in high detail. This chart is designed to help you see how wide these gaps between control points have become since former Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell raised Fed funds rates:

• March 21, 2018 — raised to 1.50%–1.75%

• June 13, 2018 — raised to 1.75%–2.00%.

• September 26, 2018 — raised to 2.00%–2.25%.

• December 19, 2018 — raised to 2.25%–2.50%

• The subsequent market panic and the protests of President Trump led to 2019 rate cuts:

• July 31 — −25 bp to 2.00–2.25%

• September 18 — −25 bp to 1.75–2.00%

• October 30 — −25 bp to 1.50–1.75%

Started the year at 2.25–2.50%. No other cuts in 2019.

The point of this chart shows that the subsequent infusion of Covid-era stimulus drove the markets straight up after 2020 as that is where most institutional money, now flush with investor cash and their own funds, made these sharp bullish thrusts at each of those swing points.

What else is important to note?

When crazy stuff like the Liberation Day tariff announcement hit in April 2025, the Magnificent 7 all seemed trapped in a supply chain crisis for chip materials, and the MNQ and QQQs all bounced hard. Notice how it stopped along one of the loosely confluent monthly VWAP control points at 17667 (close to 17691 control point).

Could this happen again? Yes, it could, and those gaps in VWAP control points are natural stopping points for deeper corrections. Will it happen? Who knows, but the damage to bullish trends could be severe in the interim. The evidence is seen in the actions of large commercial traders. For now, I will leave a discussion about the “inside month” candle for a later time and the potential for a bear flag. At this point you’d probably be reaching for straws as for now, the printing press at the U.S. Treasury seems well-oiled and ready to pump out the bull market cash. Let us now take a look at the weekly charts.

Weekly Charts for MNQU2026

The key things to note here, using the same techniques to look for weekly VWAP control points for MNQU2026 at swing highs as with the monthly VWAP control points, shows a similar impact. That is, the weekly VWAP control points very closely align with the monthly charts and the money pumping action is drastic even in the shorter timeframes. There are 50 week VWAP control points and not the 50 month VWAP control points of the monthly MNQU charts. The data packets are smaller than monthly packets, but the width of price action (the X axis) is basically the same. The target projection as far as highs and lows on a weekly basis still pretty much hold from the last time I published. Let’s take a look at the daily charts.

Daily Charts for MNQU2026

As you can see from this chart, price action in this contract has been weak pre-Labor Day (as it almost always is at the end of summer). If volume returns and the buyers are ready to push higher based on the continued printing of the USD, then we could end up, based on an AB=CD price projection of 32,194.25 is not an impossibility of the next month.

The very opposite of that, discussed in that previous chart post, could also be a result, depending upon what happens with the actions of the Federal Reserve to buy its own bonds back when no one else will in an attempt to keep interest rates rising, which would make borrowing more difficult here as rates in Japan also skyrocket. The yen carry trade meltdown that might result would sink a lot of margin traders on this side of the Pacific Ocean along with stock and real estate prices potentially. When the USD is worthless fiat currency, you get those kinds of messes. Our Federal and state governments will be forced to spend less also (something that HAS to happen), or the entire entitlement state we live in will itself collapse. We will discuss this in other posts in the future.

A Brief Discussion About Volatility

The boo-birds, scaremongers, bears and others have been shaken by some activity in NQ and in other U.S. Indices lately, but as I mentioned by the look of the daily charts, things got sloppy last week. VIX sort of dried up. What could that mean? Look at this chart:

We are not really in a place of great fear, despite all the many reasons, real or perceived, that are happening as war rages, inflation flares, and AI hype and AI borrowing explodes. VIX, however, closed on Friday and a timid and tepid 14.53, which is a sign of “rabid complacency”, meaning there was an overwhelming need NOT to be concerned about anything.

We know that the QQQs are quite expensive by all measures including things like M2 money supply below.

When things get complacent as they are now, one might consider looking at the portfolio to reduce exposure to stocks that may have run their course from earnings growth perspective or that do not fit your goals specifically. You may want to free up capital for times when the market gives you an opportunity to buy in a moment of panic and capitulation that happens when VIX goes nuts to the upside. Something to consider as we head into September and the fourth quarter of 2026.

How’s My Trading?

Volatility and volume were both absent last week, so only four trades showed up. The data below (adjusted for single units so as not to panic those who think I am a riverboat gambler, which I am not) went like this.

To summarize, it SUCKED EGGS! Volume would simply not allow trades to hold and run to targets as they had literally throughout the month of August 2026.

The real question is, did I follow my trade plan exactly as I had written it? The answer is yes. Did I take unnecessary trades or revenge trade? The answer is no. Monday was a good example of that, as no trade arrived (on August 31, 2026) that merited an entry. I am trying as best I can to follow Paul Tudor Jones’ advice as stated below.

I will begin again tomorrow doing the same thing that made August 2026 a great month. I will follow my trade plan, sit on my hands until the trade setups arrive, and let the trades run to the specified target, get out with green on the screen, and then go about the rest of my business day. The stops don’t move either.

That is all for this installment of the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk. The next one will be behind a paywall, but there will be free ones available often and I will do all I can to keep the quality of the content high! Thank you again for supporting this Substack! Have a great September everyone!

This will be the new logo for this Substack, and my avatar will become consistent as well:

Notice the new avatar is a grinning beggar. No one likes supplicancy. People hated it so much that the word was seldom used after the 1780s in Britain or America. No one likes a begging (male dog) when that (male dog) is in your face constantly. It is, or was, traditionally un-American until more than half the country became supplicants under the current American welfare state.

Not exactly my style, but here is what I propose. I will offer you something of my knowledge for something in return (an eight dollar subscription a month).

To fund another project that has a wide potential for revenue generation to rebuild two of four businesses I run, I would like to monetize this Substack. I can offer you two pieces of content each month that looks at monthly, weekly, daily, and even intra-day analysis, if needed, of NQ, and specifically of MNQ, which I currently trade.

I have in the past not wanted to have a subscription, because I think it is better to offer education in ways that don’t require subscription. In the past, I have written for websites and blogs for pay. Even when I did that, I did nationally-broadcast stock and index analysis for free for over 5 years for a now defunct radio network. The podcast from that program hit #2 on iTunes at one point, right at the time the network imploded over a business dispute. Sometimes that happens.

I think some of this analysis, particularly for futures traders could be valuable to you. I will also reveal more of the trading strategy I am using to rebuild an account I used to fund other start-ups.

The next post will be free. The others will go up against a paywall. If you decide to sign on, I would appreciate it. If not, I have no problem with it. You can, of course, unsubscribe at anytime. There will be free posts that will come along, and I think you will benefit from those also. These posts will not come precisely biweekly. They will come when I think there is something important to glean from them. In that way, you will know that if I am writing about it, you may want to take notice.

Let’s see what happens! Thank you to the loyal 20 and to the rest of you who support the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! Have a fantastic Labor Day!

The 11 minute 45 second video covers the main points about the large gaps that line up with volume weighted average prices at each control point. That has not changed in months, and that should cause people who are unhedged in very uncertain conditions to be aware of the risks in the QQQs and NQ.

The bullish target is 35447.25, as I measure it:

The potential bearish target is 26439.25:

Both of these estimates assume time and price symmetry, and that can often be skewed by the action in the QQQs.

If you have any questions, ask away and I will answer them as best I can.

Thank you as always for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

I hammered this video out on one take, so grammatical errors and generally redneck attitudes must be accepted. It has been some time since I have done this, but since the market has been doing the “Falcon 9” thing for the last several months until now. All you needed was a Fibonacci scale and a ruler to figure out the next stop. Writing about that is boring. Now there is a pause in that, so I figured I would give some guidance as to what MIGHT happen. As I say always, NO ONE KNOWS WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT, but markets leave clues. This looks like a good trail of bread crumbs to analyze for the potential damages and potential longer-term gains on this index futures contract.

If you have questions, leave them in the comments and I will answer them as soon as I can.

Thank you, as always, for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget Rule No. 1.” -Warren Buffett

"Throughout my trading career, I have continually witnessed examples of other people that I have known being ruined by a failure to respect risk. If you don’t take a hard look at risk, it will take you". - Larry Hite from “The Rule”. He further explains that even a poor trading system can be profitable with proper money management, highlighting the importance of controlling risk over chasing returns.

"I believe in defining my risk. I don’t believe in defining my reward." Tom Hougaard from “Best Loser Wins.”

Even Warren Buffett knows that everyone WILL lose money at some point in investing and trading. Regardless of what the investing moralists claim, trading and investing are both the same. The only difference in them is the amount of time you intend to hold the trade. To this day, based on a conversation I had with one of Buffett’s options traders in the 1990s, I still believe that Charlie Munger was the true brains of Berkshire-Hathaway. Why? Because he helped Mr. Buffett extend his level of risk through hedging, which is what the gentleman, who was an options trader for Berkshire-Hathaway I met in Atlanta. told me. Munger knew more than anyone (and if you have understood his life story, you would see this) that every move investment or anything in life has a downside, and you must ALWAYS protect yourself from the downside, no matter what.

As time progresses I will show you how all the factors of my trade plan work together. What I first want traders (particularly new ones) to understand is this. Everyone can dream of their fantasy life where everything works and the money flows like an endless river of stress-free wealth. That is absolutely NOT going to happen. You have to manage risk and loss at the beginning before you can ever make money in trading or investing.

Let’s look at how this model performed showing only winners with the newly evolved model, using only 1 contract. Remember, this is primarily a “breakout model” but it has an extension as long as one can scale the model over time. Assume I took off those days shown in black, being the perfected trader that I am (NOT). The month of October 2025 looked like this:

On a micro-NQ contract (MNQZ25), I would have netted $175.80 after commissions. On a normal mini-contract, that would have been $1758.00. Not bad actually for about an average of 90 minutes of work in the morning.

Now let’s show you what the model really did, before any adjustments were made to the model, but including every error and every loss (there were actually both in this model).

The total gains were $64.50. Several things went wrong:

1. Stops were hit, which if they’re hit twice, ends my trading day, even if not in sequence.

2. I did not allow the trades to run fully, as I set a target that the market took out (something I will discuss later in volume profile analysis and in other ways).

3. I entered several trades (three to be exact) too early, something I have worked out to a large degree with the re-engineered ratio indicator (for volume imbalance).

What this demonstrates is:

1. The ABSOLUTE necessity to keep a trade journal.

2. The ABSOLUTE need to keep charts with your trade journal so you can fully understand when where how and why you want wrong, and to help you to study where proper stop losses need to be place. I will discuss this in greater detail later.

3. A way to fully review what you are doing wrong so that you can quantify the errors and minimize them as you trade more. You do not learn anything from successful trades all that much. You learn EVERYTHING from the losers, as it helps you not to make the same mistakes again.

I am still working up spreadsheets, and as I finish another project this afternoon, I will go back to this project, including updating the re-engineered ratio indicator to the most current data I have.

If you are not doing this process for yourself as a trader, you could just be wasting your time trading. You should contently assess your process and make adjustments.

More will be coming soon. Thank for your supporting The Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk. Happy New Year!

The main aspects of this model require:

1. A price chart with a volume profile analysis for use in targeting. This one has a 50 period (in this case, 50 15-minute bars) analysis: Anything in purple is essentially 1 to 2 standard deviations from the yellow volume weighted average price control point (VWAP control point). Once price crosses over into the orange/red area, there are many commercial traders buying and selling in those areas, and they represent support or resistance (in this case, resistance).

2. The price oscillator which is a mixture of price change and price acceleration: I will very soon also reverse engineer once I get the volume imbalance indicators to more cleanly represent price reversals at turning points).

3. The volume imbalance indicator (which I reverse engineered and modified again to represent where the true volume imbalance points are): This replaced that previously used ratio analysis. I used neural nets inside of an AI agent to break down what the components were, and it allowed me to see where imbalance was occurring. I was really surprised at how well that software worked to factor how much influence up volume and down volume had in providing direction of major price shifts. As I mentioned in the video, it is NOT perfect (and nothing ever is). It is highly effective however in doing that in its current form.

4. The volume binary indicator looks at a mathematical analysis of total up volume and down volume to provide and indication of how much strength buyers and sellers have over the course of trading in the timeframe used to trade: In this case, this is a 15 minute chart.

As time moves forward, I will discuss now this model can be applied to things like the “Inner Circle Trading” model. That model has its own serious flaws because the terms have been bastardized by people claiming they created the model. Most of us who have been trading for a while know that all trading indicators in public domain are derivative at best. Most of them are nearly worthless, and they are totally worthless if one does not backtest the indicators in context to the total trading plan.

I will stop here for now. I will be working on the last three months of trades as I make tweaks to the trade plan. As I build it out, I will show you how I go about the analysis.

Thanks as always for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! More will come soon.

Until 2007, I was primarily an investor who would swing trade stocks ONLY from the bullish side. The reason I did that is that I hated margin rates and I truly detested borrowing stock, which sometimes could be difficult to do.

In 2007, I began to find that liquidity in stocks began to get weirdly inconsistent, so much so that I had to widen stops on the swing models I created with NeuroShell Trader Professional. In that same year, I decided to devote some of my time to trading index futures and cash forex.

When my gig doing radio commentary (and via podcast) ended in 2010, I continued for two more years to run the now defunct “The Buffalo Trader” blog with my daily screening of 8000 stocks by sector and pattern, but I used most of my trading energy on futures. I also got deeply involved in tech start-ups that I understood well, mostly service or couponing operations. It seemed to offer the better payoffs, though in the end, disagreement between partners killed three of the four off. The other, a direct investment in a very successful technology, is being litigated currently as the company I invested in has had its licensing agreements violated severely. I will not address here why I did not expand the screening service I did into a paid-full-service screening research company. That may come at another time, but not here.

Though the items in Steve Burns’ post are primarily about items 3 and 4, I will also discuss why 1 and 2 can be optimized even more when items 3 and 4 are dealt with. Most traders and even investors do not deal with item 4, when it may be the most important aspect of everything they do to make money.

The next post, which I will hopefully have completely outlined by Wednesday, will show you how successful Friday’s trades were, but even MORE importantly, why not holding onto it (something evident in the volume profile) was a big mistake because of all that I left on the table. Stay tuned.

Summary of Monthly Chart: 0:00 to 3:37 (afterward 8 seconds of dead time to adjust the chart).

Summary of Weekly Chart: 3:45 to 6:12

Summary of Daily Chart with VWAP control points: 6:12 to 9:14

Summary of Daily Chart with VWAP control points and Fibonacci Price Levels: 9:14 to 17:30

Because targets at this point are a little fuzzy, what I wanted you to understand was the possibility of failure at VWAP price support levels around 22018.75 could lead to a correction all the way back to perhaps 21970, roughly. If we see a bounce around that 22018.75 level, and the easy money runs back into the market, given no real change in the Federal Reserve prime rate, the cash-drunken bulls will carry this market higher, regardless of how overpriced it is! I can talk about this more next week, but I need to get back to work on the two series!

Thank you again for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! If you liked what you read, give us a like! Have a great week and a great week of trading too!

0:00 Explanation of swing lows and Fibonacci price levels.

3:19: Intermediate AB=CD targets.

4:239: Long Range AB=CD targets.

If precedent is prologue, as it has been since QE ran wild after 2010 and 2011 and all the other “twists and turns” of innovative, and reckless, Fed super-low or zero-percent-interest-rate policy moves, this rally could extend itself for quite awhile.

Here is the intermediate target (explained in the video):

Here is the long-range target (explained in the video):

But what about relative valuations?

The issue now is, how long can valuations be sustained if the bond market gets in trouble via profligate Federal spending? If China and the rest of the world dumps U.S. Treasuries, can rates remain low, or will that spell an economic downturn and a mean reversion in stock prices?

The Warren Buffett Indicator seems to be pegged to the 2 standard deviation upside of its range, as shown here, That is about as expensive as it ever gets on a stock-market-value to-GDP ratio.

And as you can see from this link, the overwhelming majority of return in the $SPX have come from Magnificent 7 stocks and not by general market strength. If the “generals” of the S&P 500 get whacked, so does the index generally. Those Magnificent 7 stocks are by no means bargains currently. The same will happen to the NASDAQ 100, as these stocks eat up a significant piece of market cap in that index.

I will get deeper into the bond market in the two series I am running (and the next installment of “Of Bullshit And Bitcoin” is next). There will be a mean-reversion of some magnitude coming. If you need to protect your retirement assets, then you need to sit down with a professional, or if you have strategies you run, you need to consider how to be defensive in the coming weeks and months. I think the fun could begin later this year, but again, nothing is certain. There is way too much going on domestically and in world geopolitics to be considered “calm” times.

That is all I will discuss at the moment. I will get deeper into the weeds in another Substack post!

Thank you as always for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

If you liked what you read, give it a like. As I mistyped earlier this week, I am still looking for those 1000 subscribers wanting to pay $8 a month for 20 to 26 posts a year, and not a MONTH, so that I can raise the level of research here into stocks and other investments. It will probably be October before I turn the paywall up permanently, but I am getting closer to pulling the trigger. Stay tuned.

Craptasticism expert - Bart Simpson

Linda:

I have noticed many things on Substack that have sort of taken from away the original-free-and-open-marketplace approach that this platform started with. All the video and podcast content, all the cute and sometimes obnoxious emojis hung on comments and even some abusive comments that I have received on Substack notes. A lot of that stuff has the tired and retreaded feel of Facebook and X. That is I used to refer to generically as FaceTwit. Now that Twitter it is X, in my own way of mocking SpaceX to some extent, I call Substack by the name Face-X.

If your goal is to expose writers (inexperienced and experienced) to this platform and allow them to be paid as writers, why can you not follow the tried-and-true method of the old drugstores and grocery counters, before media became bastardized by cable and commoditized by the internet? Of course, since that time, corporatism and fascism has prevented many sides of media from being discussed through forced government and corporate censorship in the mane of “political correctness”.

Why can’t anyone who wants to sell their content have an option of selling their content one-Substack-post-at-a-time, like a single magazine you could usually find on any magazine rack in America 60 years ago? That would allow anyone using the Substack app to try the content, and then, if they really like it, as time goes on, they could fully subscribe for several months.

I could literally bankrupt myself easily if I had to subscribe fully to every Substack account there is out here. I do pay the full annual price for Doomberg, but I find his Substack at the basic level essential to my understanding of current energy issues, which I used to work in actively, and will continue investing in as time goes on. That ain’t cheap by the way, but I find it is worth it.

If I did that with everyone, I would probably have a $10,000 a month Substack bill to deal with every month. That is both unrealistic and pretty idiotic at the same time. When I had a BizRadioNetwork audience 15 years ago (which I ran, insanely, for free), I had a blog with 250,000 followers and readers. I could have ginned that engine up for nice revenue, but I did not. Now, I can barely scape up an audience, though I do not write with the persistence I once did.

It’s easy to drowned in the wake of folks like Doomberg, Seymour Hersh, and others out here. A little guy is going to get squeezed out of the “exposure” market, and all of a sudden Substack in nothing but a “hit and click” experience like every other staid and lame social media platform worldwide.

Do you want to really innovate? Create a “one Substack-as-you-go” pay system for writers on this platform. You could have a minimum post requirement of some kind to keep the complexity down, but I think it would give aspiring writers a real chance.

As Homer Simpson might say, “We have enough craptastic social media platforms now. Why not be different?” Crap-tasti-cism is the mainstay of Facebook, X, Instagram, Twitch, Pinterest, Reddit and other platforms.

Stand out for once. Be different. Find a way to help the little guy get big. It could happen if you let it.

That is the end of my rant. All the best!

Sincerely,

David Buffalo

The Buffalo Trader

A couple of weeks ago, I decided to take a break from one of my new projects, and to see a movie at a Regal Theater, basically the only worthwhile theater where I live, complete with an IMAX screen. The big problem of late is that the quality of new movies is so horrific that I didn’t know if there was anything worth watching. I noted that Neal McDonough was starring in an Angel Studios picture, “The Last Rodeo”. I wasn’t all that excited about it, but I figured most of the movies he starred in were at least passable. He has played in many TV shows and various movies in the MCU universe. I happened to have enjoyed “Greater” about the life of Brandon Burlsworth, offensive lineman for the Arkansas Razorbacks, who might have been the most improbable and most successful walk-on in college football history. I figured, why not see this one too?

The Last Rodeo is a somewhat saccharine tale of family struggle, when a grizzled former rodeo champion runs into financial problems right as his grandson develops a brain tumor and needs emergency surgery to correct it. It is an interesting film in that respect, but it also shocked me that a major assumption was made. Joe Wainwright (McDonough’s character) and is wife NEVER QUESTIONED the original diagnosis. It appears they too were of the belief that doctors, particularly those who work on cancer patients, were instant demigods and were not to be questioned about any diagnosis. They allowed their their emotions to override their logic and their own intuition about the situation they faced.

From that point on, I just watched the movie as an interested third party and become somewhat disengaged from the plot. What this family was doing was falling for the same “we’re all gonna die” perspective when anyone projects that there is a diagnosis that might even be remotely fatal, instead of taking a dispassionate look at their son’s and their own circumstances before rushing into action.

Many of you are probably reacting to me now with the thought “how heatless can you be?” and “do you not have a soul?” That was the same lame reaction I got from the literal universe of leftist sycophants during the entire COVID-19 “crisis”, which I will label until the day I die, “the Covidiocy”. I was told I was an “anti-vaxxer”.

Before all the COVID hysteria happened, I made the decision, based on research I had conducted and on discussions with those who had experienced problems with shingles, to get the shingles vaccine. I research my actions before I take them, period. Puerile ad-hominem attacks are routine among the cowardly, and I just ignore them.

Instead of merely arguing an emotional point, which it seems most people do instead of dealing with pertinent fact. I am going to go through the passage of my life to demonstrate why your willingness to throw your medical freedom away, no matter how dire it is, is a REALLY bad idea. That is what a large number of people did during “the Covidiocy” and it cost them their jobs, their lives, damned near the entire American economy, and our Bill of Rights, in the process.

I am not just going to give a primary example. I am going to give you the complete 59-year history of problems my family and I faced, and how reaction to information made a difference, for good and for ill.

Let’s go back to June 22, 1966. At that time, I was big into swimming at our local community pool, and even competed for the first time. As a kid, I was a bit scared of heights. I decided I would brave the high diving board. I think this diving board was less then 10 meters, and more like 8 meters. What I learned was that I was a good diver, and could even do a summersault on occasion. I was diving with my friends, but I had the need to control the spring motion on the board. Even at 11, I had decently strong legs and with a loose board, I might not withstand the recoil. Before third time I got on the board that afternoon, a couple of my friends, seeing that I would not notice the adjustment to the spring control, decided they’d set it back to maximum spring. As a result, the board, when I jumped on the end, actually did recoil and sent me to the side of the pool, where my head hit the concrete upon landing. I was unconscious for about 2.5 minutes, but came to. I was rushed to Greenville General Hospital where I was kept awake pretty much all night while x-rays and other tests were being conducted. My doctor was also a physiologist and knew other orthopedic doctors with a ton of experience. The crack in my skull got almost all the way to my brain stem, and there was concern that if I did not have some kind of surgery, that I would likely die. Instead, my doctor and his friends monitored swelling and continuously observed the wound, and found that if my neck were braced and allowed to naturally swell and then heal, that no surgery was needed. It was extremely close, but those doctors, based on their experience in head injuries, made a good call. I had to wear a partial brace with bandages to contain swelling. In about 7 weeks I was very nearly back to normal, and by fall I was as good as new. There was no panicked need to “do emergency surgery” or to use a “Hail Mary pass” to blunt swelling, as there was no infection found. There were no MRI machines or other technology involved. There was only extensive experience in head injuries that came to my rescue. My parents were as relieved as I was. That is about as close to “biting the bullet” as I have ever come. I didn’t blame my friends, either. They were just like me. They were a couple of dumb-assed 11-year-olds. I don’t think they understood the seriousness of what they did before it happened. Back during that day, doctors really did believe in doing no harm first. The least invasive approach to achieve the best result was all they cared about.

Ah, but the 1970s arrived, and all of a sudden, every diagnosis seemed to become life-threatening. I was in college during the so-called “swine flu epidemic” and I had apparently contracted it. At the Georgia Tech infirmary however, there were two doctors who understood what herd immunity was, and how best to use it to my advantage. That was done by rest, proper supplementation (with Vitamin C and zinc). No crazy vaccines were recommended. That was the best thing that ever happened to me, as I might have been exposed to Guillain-Barre Syndrome if I were given the swine flu vaccine. I was back in good shape in 4 days.

That was the good news.

The bad news happened when my father was having problems with excessive coughing, something that was a direct result of his smoking (and I think at one time he was up to two packs a day). On May 9,1975. he went to a cardiologist to discuss his problems after getting X-rays the week before. The doctors informed him that he had essentially terminal cancer and that he had at most 6 weeks to live. He was told to “get his house in order”.

I want you to back up just a moment though. How in the hell could anyone back in the mid-1970s really come to that conclusion without any deep diagnosis? They only thing these doctors really had there were x-rays and blood tests. There were no real MRIs at the time and CAT scan devices were at best primitive, only being introduced 4 years earlier in 1971. The only thing we knew, based on the x-ray, is that he had a very large tomato-sized lung tumor located right near his aorta. That looked quite serious, and it was.

My parents were distraught of course. They looked at it as if it was the end of the world. My father, whom if I had the time I would explain his extensive medical experience that happened quite by accident in the U.S. Navy at another time, believed that doctors were miracle workers. The doctors at Greenville Memorial Hospital were actually proposing emergency surgery, something I thought was VERY bad idea, given the fact that tumor surgery was pretty limited. There were no robotic surgery techniques or other enhanced procedures, just the old scalpel and rib spreader.

My father, ever looking perhaps for that silver bullet, listened to the spiel the heart surgeon was giving him, and it was a stim winder. He just knew that it would be a straightforward procedure and even though it was 9 hours of work, that he could get the tumor out successfully. As the nerd I was at the time, I had read all about heart transplant surgeries and knew the odds at that time were iffy a best. My father, however, bought the spiel hook line and sinker. Even my father’s sisters seemed convinced it would work, but it pissed me off personally. I was not going to win any argument ( as why would you ever question a parent to begin with?) so I just said a prayer and stood by.

My biggest concern is that if he had surgery it would weaken his energy reserves, and he could not withstand chemotherapy, which was the only other solution available. As it turned out, I was right and it did weaken him quite a bit, but he remained resolute throughout. After about 2 weeks, he began chemotherapy locally, and because he was smart enough 5 years earlier and got health insurance, he could choose almost any place he wanted to go for treatment, and was able to be taken on by M.D. Anderson Cancer Treatment Center. They were able to reduce the tumor size by 90%, but the protocols ran out nearly 2 years after, and he died 2 years to the minute that he first found out he had lung cancer. Had my father not had insurance, our family would have been bankrupted, even by 1977 standards. M.D. Anderson did a marvelous job with his therapy, they simply ran out of effective treatments for it.

My father’s cancer WAS NOT, however, the 6-week “get your house in order” situation that was being pitched. The only regret I have is that he could have avoided surgery altogether and had a chance to live as long as his one of his sisters, my aunt, when she passed in 2008. I think the surgery was clearly surgery for profit, as when the surgeon opened him up with the spreader, he knew instantly that he could not operate on it. A real Nostra-dumb-ass move on his part. He hooked my father on the “silver bullet approach” when even I could see that solution was a non-starter. My father was a salesperson and a manufacturer’s representative. Who better would there be than for a salesmen to buy a sales pitch?

I have a very long and pristine memory. I remember things people cannot believe I remember. I have even caught Grok 3 separate times make factual recall errors. I had to beat it into submission to find the links and then I found them for it.

Why do I bring that incident with my father up? I did that because the very same thing happened to me in 2018 when diagnosed with the vestibular schwannoma (an acoustic neuroma on my left auditory nerve). My local ENT did an inspection of that ear and noticed an anomaly and had me submit to an MRI on both ears. It turns out that I did have a significant but not huge acoustic neuroma in the left ear. He instantly scheduled an appointment with a well-known research hospital in the state (which I will not name) and I met with the chief of neurosurgery there. This dude was somewhat well-renowned an in his 70s when I spoke with him. He also had a very young (in fact, completely inexperienced) neurosurgeon who worked with him. When he first stepped in to talk with me, he was a bit nonchalant about my condition, but as he talked he began to spin the idea that it could perhaps be incredibly serious and he wanted another specialist (this kid) to look at it. He stepped out for about 20 minutes, and came back with a “troubled” look on his face. Having learned cards from one of the best players I ever saw (my grandmother of all people), I knew this guy was trying to pull a fast one over on me, stating that he had serious concerns about my brain stem should the benign tumor begin to grow rapidly. He immediately suggested that I get the surgery in 6 weeks.

What he did not know was that when I got the MRIs that confirmed my condition, I purchased two separate 500-page reports on the subject of vestibular schwannomas, and based on through review, I came up with the only two solutions possible. If the condition really was a threat to my brain stem, and I was having severe headaches, that surgery would be a good idea, because I could indeed die from that condition. If not, however, the best thing would have been to DO NOTHING because surgery would result in being deaf and with a permanent loss of balance. I knew early on in 2010 that I was having balance issues when doing squat thrusts in the gym, and in 2013 on a golf trip to Arizona, I could no longer balance on a bicycle, something that shocked me. The only reason I went to the ENT doctor was that I was having trouble with hearing in my left ear all of a sudden.

What concerned me most was that my PPO was only giving me one choice of treatment, and that was surgery. Anyone who knows me well (and there are at least three that do on this platform), I have a very low tolerance for “bullshit” and have demonstrated it a few times even to “authority figures”. I was not going to take this lying down, and I went to my insurer to plead my case for more choices. I even called a friend of mine in Oregon who got me an appointment with probably the most renowned private neurosurgeon in the USA. I was able to see him, to visit John Hopkins University Hospital, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and even I was able to get my insurer to allow me to visit M.D. Anderson in Houston.

That summer I engaged in medical tourism, and to the person, all of them said that surgery was unnecessary and that all I would need to do is to monitor it as those tumors are incredibly slow-growing. The lead surgeon at Vanderbilt, when he got my MRIs, built a 3-D modeled image of the tumor. This guy has done literally thousands of similar surgeries in his lifetime. He told me, “I absolutely LIVE for doing those surgeries, but in your case, there is NO WAY in the world I would operate on it!”

As it turned out, I was being pitched a truckload of horse manure just like my father was 43 years earlier. My memory and my experience paid off for me. That is one reason I take notes and do not forget experiences like that.

And now onto the case of why medical freedom is so important, even if my leftist and fascist friends want to force lockdowns over me and others. I will not belabor you will the complete story about my brother, but it was a truly sad tale in the end.

My brother was a musical genius and perhaps even an intellectual genius at the same time, but he couldn’t focus on things for a day before drifting off to something else. He, like Paul McCartney, learned how to play piano by ear and the same with a guitar. He became expert with rhythm guitar, was good at bass playing and even mastered a 12-string guitar. He built his own four-channel mixer by himself. He could innovate when he really needed to do it.

Had he remained focused on his music, you would probably remember his name. He was a comedic genius too and could debate things seriously. There is an entire long story about that comedic talent too. Many in the Charlotte, North Carolina area would know what I am talking about if I explained it.

When we traveled together, that is what we did a lot of the time. We debated. His friends, and he had many, all loved him. Growing up with him, I loved him and hated him, but in the end I miss him as badly as my mother and father, who all passed before their time.

Early in his life, he read voraciously, and was a big student of history. As he grew older, he became rebellious of everything, my parents, me, and damn near anything else. He eventually became a heavy drinker, and at some point engaged in a bit of drug abuse. I know he used hash often, and though I cannot fully prove it, he may have at one point used cocaine. He had to get his GED as he failed out of high school, but still managed a degree at Georgia Southern University. I could tell you about his run-ins with the law, but even those were stuff of legend (that I will not discuss here). I really don’t like remembering the late 1980s, as I had to help him out a lot. He knew tool and die equipment as well, something he learned in industry. If he wanted to do it, he could do almost anything.

The reason I mention substance abuse if that those who engage in such activity end up with some aggressive form of heart disease. When I got a call from the NC county coroner’s office in 2007, he was found unresponsive in his apartment. Because when you die alone in your apartment, the county is obligated to perform an autopsy, and he had one. He had complained of congestion two weeks before he passed away, but I did not know his circumstances were that dire. In eight weeks, the autopsy came back. He died of myocarditis. I had done some DNA testing on myself, and determined that I might be susceptible to that same thing. Now I had proof.

I could give you a couple of other examples of being given a bum rush by “professionals” like dentists and urologists (not my current one, but a previous one). They caused some real damage to me that could have been avoided had I had more choice in the process (I was much younger when the dentist did a number on me).

When the “Covidiocy” hit in late 2019, I had traveled to Texas on business and went through Atlanta airport. It was there that I likely caught Covid-19 before all the media-based horse manure began to flood the airways. Because I supplement with Vitamin D, Vitamin B-12, Zinc, and Vitamin C, it was not really much more than a chest cold, and I was over it just before Christmas. Prior to that, I had not had a cold since 1996. Because I have gone to a very strict supplement regimen, I really don’t get ill. When a local talk show host here in Greenville began to cover the whole COVID mess in detail, I could tell that it was being hyped into mass hysteria. I also knew, based on high school biology and other medical research I had read, that most coronaviruses will mutate over time into very innocuous viruses through herd immunity. These “vaccines” are also known to produce “viral shedding” which can make others sick.

I was not going to obsess over “fear porn” from the Kewpie doll crews at Fox News, CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, or MSLSD (as neo-con Mark Levin calls MSNBC). What many of my friends don’t know about me is that I have extensive experience in water-side process control and operation management. Before I decided to go back to graduate school, I was offered a chance at being an engineering manager in Australia for the company I worked for, but it required a two-year stint in Philadelphia, and I really didn’t want that.

I was right in the middle of the Legionnaire’s Disease mess of the early 1980s and had helped several industry sites deal with and eliminate the pathogen. I have seen almost every form of oil-side or water-side contaminant, and have had as a process engineer crawled into some of the most God-awful bio-hazard scenarios and helped to eliminate them. And when it comes to masks, even I know that the only potentially hazard-free breathing mechanism is a vacuum-sealed mask connected to an oxygen tank, where only exhaled oxygen escapes the mask. Everything else is quite frankly kabuki theater.

Anyone who has read any of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s earliest reports on COVID-19 knew that he knew that it was not as big a problem as he later purported it was. If you have read “The Real Anthony Fauci” by RFK, Jr. and “The Pfizer Papers” by Dr. Naomi Wolf, you know how dangerous the mRNA vaccines are, and the negative data continues to compound about them. Still, for some insane reason, President Trump’s crew cannot seem to get the drug companies to pull the COVID vaccine ads that continue to air on radio and TV.

What upsets me the most is KNOWING that I am susceptible to myocarditis and knowing that the use of mRNA vaccines can cause it as a side effect. I should have no issue with refusing the vaccine, which I steadfastly did and still do today. I also know that two of my relatives suffered adverse side effects from these vaccines. No one should be forced to take a vaccine or any treatment that he or she knows could harm or potentially kill them.

It seems Americans forget the great frauds of the past. People should remember the 1957 Thalidimide fraud when it took doctors 4 years to understand the dangers of this ‘morning sickness’ drug. Was drug testing good then? No it was not, and what we have found since that time is that is has not improved 64 years later with the mRNA vaccines. If you have read “The Pfizer Papers”, you would realize how utterly corrupt the complete lack of testing was for this travesty of medicine. Remember the Tuskeegee experiments? If you think your government is trying to save you, think again. Even my aunt who died of cancer did not live long enough to receive compensation from the U.S. government for the years she worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratories without radiation protection during the Manhattan Project. Provisions were made after she died to be compensated under the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act.

I think before anyone makes a medical decision that could potentially be life-threatening, as was depicted in “The Last Rodeo”, one should step back and assess one’s current situation, and look at every side of disease mitigation before jumping on the first diagnosis. You need a complete understanding of the factors involved in making any final decision. Governments and other medical or pharma bureaucracies should have ZERO rights to force people to make decisions that could adversely affect their health forever! You need to be discerning as well because government really only cares about itself and its continuing expansion. You are just a secondary consideration to taxation and wealth confiscation. The USAID fraud exposed by D.O.G.E. should be enough to convince thinking individuals of government’s primary interests. Those are the interests of “forever wars” and wealth redistribution to those who have the power to grift without accountability.

Thank you for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! I may cover some other topics than market action from time to time, and it has been some time since I have written here on a non-market related topic.

Leave me a comment if there is something market-related or non-market-related that you would like to read. I am up to the task. I am still looking for that first 1000 subscribers willing to pay $8 a month for 20 to 26 posts a month on economics, stocks, futures, and even a few political or general commentary!

Let me know and I will give it every shot I have!

The main assembly was packed as the doors closed behind the Right Reverend Sage. He continued to huff down the side corridor of the main sanctuary with the determination of Pheidippides. He was not there to declare victory like that runner from the Battle of Marathon who broadcast Sparta’s victory over the Persians. He was there to speak a warning, something he had considered for several weeks, but now had the determination and will to confront those church members, many of whom would not agree with or like the message. They were ready and opened up their Gospel of Austrian Economics (the titles of each book contained inside the PDF) in anticipation of what Reverend Sage was about to pontificate on.

Books Of The Gospel Of Austrian Economics

154KB ∙ PDF file

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“Brethren, it is time that we talked about the deepest meanings of Saint Carl Menger’s words about the principles of subjective value and how that has been fully perverted, especially now, as we approach 2026! Open your Gospels to First Menger!”

There was a rumbling as the books opened, even the kid up front disappointed that the pretty blonde did not show up for the service, shifted his concentration on what the Right Reverend Sage was about to throw down. The screens behind the pulpit were now fully illuminated, and the charts were coming into focus.

“Taken from the forward of Saint Menger’s masterwork ‘Principles of Economics‘, Ludwig Von Mises said: ”

“Menger favored an approach that was deductive, teleological, and, in a primary sense, humanistic. While Menger shared his contemporaries’ preference for abstract reasoning, he was primarily interested in explaining the real world actions of real people, not in creating artificial, stylized representations of reality. Economics, for Menger, is the study of purposeful human choice, the relationship between means and ends. “All things are subject to the law of cause and effect,” he begins his treatise. “This great principle knows no exception.” Jevons and Walras rejected cause and effect in favor of simultaneous determination, the technique of modeling complex relations as systems of simultaneous equations in which no variable “causes” another. Theirs has become the standard approach in contemporary economics, accepted by nearly all economists but the followers of Carl Menger. Menger sought to explain prices as the outcome of the purposeful, voluntary interactions of buyers and sellers, each guided by their own subjective evaluations of the usefulness of various goods and services (what we now call marginal utility, a term later coined by Friedrich von Wieser)”

“Brethren, because America has become addicted to convenience and removed the work it takes to feed and clothe ourselves daily to a few segments of the domestic and world economy, our government has slowly destroyed the mechanism of slow and rational wealth creation and market-based marginal utility by creating an entire welfare and entitlement state. That state makes people dependent upon its largess and not on individual choice or individual effort. In the process, all notions of value analysis and time value have been turned into a grab bag of forever-rising prices and the addition of FOMO (fear of missing out). FOMO captured an entire nation in its evil vortex! Deflation and disinflation, necessary actions for price to move through in a market economy that responds to natural cycles, are eliminated at the expense of the real value investors who understand their local and regional markets and make rational longer-term (6 months or more) decisions about where to invest for a positive outcome. That perversion of market process leads to zombie companies using cheap money to provide worthless product and distorts true economic value and business enterprise value!”

The right reverend Sage then pointed to a large screen on the right behind the pulpit.

“Do the accelerated levels of money supply in this nation making sense to you? Whose notion of marginal utility does it represent? The public’s or a financier’s?”

“And what is worse, does the manic accumulation of national debt make sense to you? Would any business or private individual increase debt levels in such an accelerated rate, nearly all of which has happened in the last 15 years, while the republic reaches its 249th birthday? Could individuals or small businesses survive such an accumulation without an eventual total collapse of positive cash flow or earnings? I think NOT!”

“Remember brethren, a nation’s currency is to remain stable in terms of its intrinsic value, backed by a specie of some kind that is limited in supply and is considered valuable in any market place. At the beginning of the United States of America as a republic, the value of the United States Dollar was pegged at 371.25 grains of pure silver or 24.75 grains of pure gold (a 15:1 silver-to-gold ratio) by the Coinage Act of 1792. In 2025 U.S. Dollars, the original value of the dollar was 1.03125 troy ounces, and on Friday’s price of 3,289.70/troy ounce of gold, would be worth $3392.50 today. But what happened?

“Of course, over time, government began to devalue the dollar particularly during and after the Civil War and into the 1930s and ending with complete abandonment of the gold standard under Richard Nixon, as he used his agreements to get crude oil priced in dollars by the Saudi Arabian government in exchange for defense agreements in August of 1971, establishing the “petro-dollar” as the currency of choice among oil trading nations. To see this progression, read your handout. That virtually guaranteed that the United States Dollar would be the lone currency used in world trade, as oil was foundational to the lifeblood of any economy. As the Doomberg Postulate states, ‘Energy is life!’

“Having seen the first move toward a permanent entitlement state created by Lyndon Baines Johnson with Medicare/Medicaid and “The Great Society” programs, that too was added to the debt, some 22 trillion U.S. dollars over all, and it was paid for by tax dollars and not directly by productive activity. Our wild and ungoverned “defense spending” is also a problem, one that I will also cover soon.”

“Since the U.S. Dollar is now basically a valueless or in fact worthless currency, let’s do a thought exercise for a moment. If we could compare median family income in any one year to the price of gold over time, how could be calculate the equivalent buying power of median family income over time? THIS is how!:”

The formula would look like this: (and this formula jumped on the center screen, causing many to begin mumbling in the background as they read it.)

“Through this formula, you can now look across vast stretches of time to see the real buying power that an American family had at any one point in time! The results will SHOCK you brethren!”

There was even more chatter in the crowd as it seemed the center screen had for some reason locked up. Those mumbles turned to loud shrieks as these numbers appeared:

“You see brethren, in the year of our Lord 2025, you are 4.37 times POORER NOW than you were in the depression year of 1920. Your relative purchasing power even in the years just after World War I were nearly $352,313 as opposed to the equivalent buying power of $80,610 dollars today! We were in the midst of a post war DEPRESSION in 1920, one of the deepest and the shortest in American history!”

“Now, given this information comparing a scarce and valuable specie to today’s median income, can you now understand why these facts about Gen Z are true?”

How in the world should anyone need assistance with food in a nation so blessed with agricultural and natural bounties that it can produce like no other nation in the history of mankind? Is it because of those evil Democrats or those selfish Republicans? How can that be, when you see THIS chart?

“This chart is missing a couple of essential lines of course, but the answer is quite clear, the criminal accumulation of debt is caused by the cabal of BOTH MAJOR PARTIES as red represents Republican federal debt addition and blue represents Democratic federal debt addition since 1977!

Now brethren, peer into the U.S. Debt Clock!: (and this showed up on the center screen):

“As you can see. currently, each one of you, if you are a citizen of the United States, individually owe over 108,000 United States Dollars! If you are a family of four, you are bankrupt if your income does not exceed $432,000 dollars or your net worth does not exceed that level! The other thing to realize is that next years Congressional budget office projection is that passage of the “Big Beautiful Bill” will lead to an added debt load of nearly $3 trillion more dollars, driving national debt to over $40 trillion dollars! That is another 8% increase, and much of that will be printed to pay these debts! That is implicit inflation built in before anything is spent. This is not a Biden or a Trump problem, it is an undisciplined and imbalanced spending problem!”

The crowd, somewhat partisan on both sides, began grumbling and arguing and the Right Reverend Sage would up again to quell the disquiet among the congregation.

“And yet many talk show hosts boast that inflation is falling below 2%? That is BALDERDASH, brethren! The fuse of inflation is fully lit and expanding!”

“And what is most frightening, brethren, is that according to Kiplinger’s magazine, the median IRA accounts are woefully short if people wish to live a 30-year or longer retirement on what savings they have, and those savings are not growing fast enough to capture the built in inflation of debt expansion. At the current time, a comfortable retirement is out or reach for most every American!”

“The current debt crisis foundations are not found in human action, but in the meddling of governmental and corporate elites that have stripped America of its wealth. First, it must be exposed! And I think I have done so, in a little more depth than you may have understood before.”

But HOW did we get here? The answer will upset many of you and will have you upset with me, but the Right Reverend has his big boy pants on, and I will elaborate fully as to how it is happening and how it WILL STILL HAPPEN until it cannot any further!”

The congregation, a rather civil but also partisan bunch, were grumbling as the Right Reverend Sage carried on, and they were partly angered by the heat in the main sanctuary, but they were also considering the fire about what was to come, and some might not be willing to put up with it.

I have to leave it here for now, but the series will continue, and I will discuss the financialization of your wealth into the hands of criminal elites and HOW it has been and is STILL being done.

Thank you for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! I will continue to cover some diverse topics and some of my own personal opinions about economics, investments, and life in general. I know I will piss a few of you off, but I think that is a good thing. If it helps you to consider a new perspective, getting pissed off just might be just what the doctor ordered! At any rate, thank you for reading! I want to find my 1000 readers willing to pay $8 a month to read what I write. I am still on that quest!

(I may at some point write a series of books, aimed at newbies to the subject of economics called “The Gospel of Austrian Economics” that can cover essential parts of the practical aspects of that subject matter. It is not taught in public schools, but it should be. It might be the only way to save the republic from authoritarian claptrap.)

A meeting of Centerville’s Church of Austrian Economics has convened on a Wednesday night in contemporary times. The Right Reverend Buffalonius Ignatius Sage is presiding and will be preaching tonight.

What is a Church of Austrian Economics like? Allow me to explain.

What is about to happen is a rather whimsical creation, which encapsulates the style and intellect of the late Fredrich Hayek. emulated via style analysis, with an AI agent, of his writing from “The Road To Serfdom”. This discussion is in the first pages of their hymnal, you know, the one that no one reads unless the service is late or kids and adults get bored enough to read as they nearly doze off. YOU of course, are not one of THOSE people are you? That is why I left it here for you to read. It will come in handy later.

The rest of the posts will pretty much be me, but I decided to save time and assume the Church of Austrian Economics got text directly from the hand of Dr. Hayek. I had the AI agent create the magic. I wrote the original preamble to this post. It is not quite as complex as this is. This composition is made better as the content represents the late Mr. Hayek’s own perspectives very closely.

Stick with me folks, you will like the final results over the next few days. (And YES, I will finish the “Of Bullshit and Bitcoin” series!).

Here goes with the church doctrine.

A young church member, hesitant to remain still and impatient that the cute new girl, who just moved in, is late to the service, starts to read the hymnal. These are the words it contains:

The Church of Austrian Economics: A Philosophical Sanctuary in the Modern Age

Preface

It must be admitted that the manner in which contemporary society has come to organize its economic institutions bears little resemblance to the spontaneous order that once characterized the great commercial civilizations of the past. What we observe today is not the natural evolution of market processes, but rather the deliberate construction of artificial mechanisms designed to serve ends that, however noble in intention, inevitably lead us down a road toward economic serfdom. It is in this context that we must consider the emergence of what might be called the Church of Austrian Economics—not as a religious institution in the conventional sense, but as a philosophical sanctuary where the fundamental principles of human action and market coordination are preserved against the encroaching tide of central planning. The particular significance of this imagined institution lies not in its mythical character, but in its representation of those enduring truths about economic organization that have been systematically obscured by the prevailing orthodoxies of our time. There can be little doubt that the manner in which modern economic thought has abandoned the insights of Carl Menger, Ludwig von Mises, and their intellectual descendants has contributed substantially to the creation of the very problems that now plague our monetary and fiscal systems. The road we have traveled—from sound money to fiat currency, from spontaneous market coordination to bureaucratic intervention—has been paved with the good intentions of those who believed that conscious direction could improve upon the unconscious wisdom of the market process.

The Philosophical Foundation of the Sanctuary

The Church of Austrian Economics, as we might conceive it, stands as a testament to the proposition that economic truth cannot be discovered through the aggregation of statistical data or the manipulation of mathematical models, but only through the careful observation of human action in its most fundamental form. It is not sufficient to point out the defects of particular proposals based on Keynesian or monetarist reasoning; the argument for central planning will not lose its force until it has been conclusively demonstrated why what appears so eminently rational in the abstract becomes positively harmful when applied to the complex reality of human society. The essential method of this philosophical sanctuary would be the preservation and transmission of those insights that reveal the spontaneous order inherent in free market processes. What connects the various chapels and chambers of this imagined institution is not a shared commitment to any particular policy prescription, but rather a common understanding that the coordination of human activities cannot be achieved through conscious design, but emerges naturally from the voluntary interactions of individuals pursuing their own ends within a framework of general rules. The danger that confronts us in the present age is not merely the adoption of particular interventionist policies, but the acceptance of the fundamental premise that underlies all such interventions: the belief that human reason, however well-intentioned, can substitute for the information-processing capacity of the market mechanism. This belief, which has proved so seductive to intellectuals and policymakers alike, represents what we might call the "fatal conceit"—the assumption that what we can observe and measure constitutes the totality of relevant knowledge for economic coordination.

The Architecture of Economic Understanding

The physical design of our imagined sanctuary would necessarily reflect the decentralized nature of market processes themselves. Rather than a single, imposing structure dominated by a central authority, we would find multiple chapels, each dedicated to a particular aspect of economic understanding, connected by open pathways that allow for the free flow of ideas and insights. This architectural arrangement serves as a metaphor for the spontaneous order that characterizes genuine market economies—a system in which coordination emerges not from central direction, but from the voluntary interactions of countless individuals, each possessing only fragmentary knowledge of the whole. The central atrium of this structure would be illuminated by natural light streaming through a glass roof, symbolizing the transparency that characterizes genuine market processes. Here, beneath the watchful gaze of a statue commemorating Carl Menger— the founder of the Austrian school—visitors would encounter the fundamental insight that economics is indeed "the science of human action." This inscription serves not merely as a historical reminder, but as a constant admonition that economic phenomena cannot be understood apart from the purposeful behavior of individual human beings. (My words here, this will be central to the sermon that comes soon enough!)

It is particularly significant that such a sanctuary would eschew the grandiose monuments to state power that characterize so many public buildings in our time. The modest scale and human proportions of the structure would reflect the Austrian understanding that economic progress emerges not from the grand designs of planners and bureaucrats, but from the countless small innovations and adaptations of ordinary individuals responding to the opportunities and constraints they encounter in their daily lives.

The Liturgy of Market Wisdom

The worship practices of this philosophical sanctuary would center not on the veneration of particular individuals or institutions, but on the celebration of those principles that make peaceful cooperation possible among strangers. The hymns and canticles that might echo through its halls would serve to remind participants of the miraculous nature of market coordination—the fact that millions of individuals, pursuing their own diverse ends, can be led by an "invisible hand" to promote the general welfare more effectively than any conscious attempt at social engineering. Consider, for instance, what we might call "The Canticle of the Entrepreneur"—a celebration of that crucial figure who serves as the driving force of economic progress. The entrepreneur, in the Austrian understanding, is not merely a profit-seeker, but a discoverer of previously unrecognized opportunities for mutual benefit. Through the exercise of judgment under conditions of uncertainty, the entrepreneur serves as the agent through which the market process continuously adapts to changing circumstances and discovers new possibilities for human cooperation. Similarly, the hymn dedicated to the "invisible hand" would serve to remind participants that the coordination achieved through market processes does not require conscious intention on the part of market participants. The baker who provides bread for his community does so not out of benevolence, but in pursuit of his own livelihood; yet the result of his self-interested action is the satisfaction of genuine human needs. This insight, first articulated by Adam Smith and refined by subsequent Austrian theorists, represents one of the most profound discoveries in the history of social thought. The liturgical calendar of such an institution would mark not the feast days of saints, but the anniversaries of those intellectual breakthroughs that have advanced our understanding of market processes. The publication of Menger's "Principles of Economics" in 1871, the appearance of Mises's "Human Action" in 1949, the awarding of the Nobel Prize to Hayek in 1974—these would be occasions for reflection on the gradual accumulation of insights that have illuminated the workings of the market economy.

The Congregation of Economic Understanding

The membership of this philosophical sanctuary would necessarily be diverse, reflecting the universal applicability of Austrian insights to human action in all its forms. We would find among the congregation not only professional economists and business leaders, but teachers and students, craftsmen and artists, farmers and technicians—all united by a common appreciation for the spontaneous order that emerges from voluntary exchange. The men of this community might be depicted as entrepreneurs and scholars, bearing the symbols of their trades—ledgers and scales, coins and contracts—representing their role as agents of economic coordination. But it would be a mistake to view them merely as profit-maximizers; they are, more fundamentally, discoverers of opportunities for mutual benefit, constantly alert to the possibility of creating value through new combinations of resources and new forms of cooperation. The women of this congregation would be portrayed as educators and business leaders, holding books of economic theory and keys to prosperity, symbolizing their crucial role in the transmission of knowledge and the cultivation of economic understanding. In the Austrian view, the market economy depends not merely on the pursuit of individual advantage, but on the gradual accumulation and dissemination of practical knowledge about how to coordinate human activities effectively. The children present in this community would be shown as eager learners, equipped with small models of markets and exchanges, representing the next generation's introduction to the principles of voluntary trade. Their presence serves as a reminder that economic understanding is not merely an academic exercise, but a practical necessity for anyone who hopes to navigate successfully the complex web of relationships that characterizes modern society. This diverse congregation reflects the Austrian insight that market processes serve not the interests of any particular class or group, but the general interest in peaceful cooperation and mutual benefit. The market economy is not a zero-sum game in which some must lose in order for others to win, but a positive-sum process in which voluntary exchange creates value for all participants.

The Contemporary Relevance of Ancient Wisdom

The particular urgency of preserving and transmitting these insights becomes apparent when we consider the economic challenges that confront contemporary society. The inflation that erodes the purchasing power of ordinary citizens, the unsustainable accumulation of government debt, the regulatory barriers that stifle entrepreneurial innovation—all of these problems can be traced to the abandonment of sound economic principles in favor of the seductive promises of central planning. The Austrian understanding of monetary theory provides a clear diagnosis of the inflationary pressures that have become endemic in modern economies. When governments and central banks expand the money supply beyond the rate of economic growth, they inevitably create distortions in the price system that lead to malinvestment and economic instability. The boom-and-bust cycles that have characterized recent decades are not natural features of market economies, but artificial creations of monetary manipulation. Similarly, the Austrian analysis of government intervention reveals why well-intentioned policies so often produce results that are the opposite of what their advocates intended. Price controls designed to make goods more affordable inevitably create shortages; minimum wage laws intended to help low-skilled workers often price them out of the job market; regulations designed to protect consumers frequently serve to protect established businesses from competition. The road back to economic sanity requires not merely the adoption of particular policy reforms, but a fundamental reorientation of our thinking about the proper role of government in economic life. It requires recognition that the market process, however imperfect it may appear to those who judge it by impossible standards of perfection, represents the most effective mechanism yet discovered for coordinating the activities of millions of individuals in pursuit of their diverse ends.

The Warning of History

The history of the twentieth century provides ample evidence of what happens when societies abandon the principles of market coordination in favor of central planning. The totalitarian regimes that emerged in Russia, Germany, and elsewhere were not aberrations, but logical consequences of the attempt to organize entire societies according to conscious design. When economic power is concentrated in the hands of political authorities, it becomes impossible to maintain the separation of powers that is essential to political freedom. This is the central insight of "The Road to Serfdom"—that economic freedom and political freedom are inextricably linked. A society that abandons market coordination in favor of central planning will inevitably find that its political institutions become instruments of economic control. The planners who promise to use their power only for benevolent purposes will discover that the logic of planning requires them to suppress dissent and eliminate opposition. The Church of Austrian Economics, as we have imagined it, serves as a repository of this hard-won wisdom. Its very existence represents a recognition that the insights of the Austrian school are not merely academic curiosities, but practical necessities for anyone who hopes to preserve the institutions of a free society. The principles enshrined in its teachings—the importance of sound money, the benefits of free trade, the necessity of property rights, the dangers of government intervention—are not abstract theories, but concrete guidelines for the organization of human society.

Conclusion: The Eternal Vigilance of Economic Understanding

The particular significance of this imagined sanctuary lies not in its mythical character, but in its representation of the eternal struggle between those who understand the spontaneous order of market processes and those who believe that conscious design can improve upon the unconscious wisdom of voluntary exchange. This struggle is not merely academic, but intensely practical, for upon its outcome depends the future of human freedom and prosperity. It must be acknowledged that the forces arrayed against economic understanding are formidable. The intellectual classes, seduced by the apparent rationality of central planning, continue to advocate policies that undermine the very foundations of market coordination. The political classes, attracted by the promise of power that comes with economic control, resist any limitation on their authority to intervene in market processes. The general public, lacking adequate understanding of economic principles, often supports policies that promise immediate benefits while ignoring their long-term costs. Yet the Church of Austrian Economics, as we have conceived it, represents the possibility that economic truth can survive even in an age of widespread error. Its congregants, however few in number, serve as guardians of insights that have the power to illuminate the path back to economic sanity. Their commitment to the principles of human action, spontaneous order, and voluntary exchange represents not merely an intellectual position, but a moral stance in favor of human freedom and dignity. The road to economic serfdom is paved with good intentions, but the road back to freedom requires more than good intentions—it requires understanding. The Church of Austrian Economics, in all its imagined glory, stands as a symbol of that understanding, a beacon of hope in an age of economic confusion, a reminder that the principles of market coordination, however unfashionable they may become, remain as relevant today as they were when first discovered by the great economists of the Austrian school. In the end, the survival of free institutions depends not on the wisdom of political leaders or the benevolence of bureaucrats, but on the understanding of ordinary citizens who recognize that their prosperity and freedom depend upon the preservation of those spontaneous processes that make peaceful cooperation possible among strangers. The Church of Austrian Economics, as we have imagined it, serves as both a celebration of this understanding and a call to its preservation for future generations.

Back to our story!

The kid dozes off into nap-land, and his and several other hymnals hit the floor nearly simultaneously, causing outrage among the deacons and a call from a deacon to refrain from noise as the Right Reverend Sage has been delayed. What was also delayed were pre-service refreshments and the fact that the sermon was called in the main sanctuary on a June night after the heat outside hit 95 degrees Fahrenheit mid-day, causing a failure in the air conditioning system. The church treasurer ran short of money that week, so refreshments were not in the budget, and budgets are strict at the Church of Austrian Economics, let me tell you!

Could anything be worse in a sanctuary filled with charts, data tables, and overheated church members discussing and debating the key economic issues of the day?

All of a sudden when the din was uncontrollable, the sanctuary doors opened, and the tall-and-horned figure stood opposed to the bright sunset behind him outside the sanctuary. You could hear the snorts, and the congregation began to anticipate a face-ripper of a sermon from Brother Sage!

Gonna end it here. You will enjoy and I think learn from what is coming!

Bullish Projection

Though my model projection sees a bit of longer-range bearish divergence in price momentum, volume is still supportive, and if the free (and worthless) money continues to flow from Congress, a long range bullish projection is still out at 26555.50.

Bearish Projection

While weekly price momentum attempts to be fully positive again, if we do stall out with buyers, the potential bearish projection would in fact be 14061.75 (forgive the error on the chart!)

The real question, which I will attempt to answer in my next post, will be the one best represented by this chart (and another that an author seems to have sheepishly pulled down that has much more to say than this one). What I show above in the bearish projection was similar to the chart that author presented. I can address that in the post.

It will be spoken in the tone of a mythical character the Right Reverend Buffalonius Ignatius Sage of the Church of Austrian Economics. It will probably piss everyone off at some point, but back in the day of my peak writing, it is what I did, and something I still do. Remember, I don’t want you to agree with me, I WANT YOU TO THINK!

Thank you for supporting The Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! A new post is arriving soon, and I have not forgotten the “Of Bullshit And Bitcoin” Series either! It will be completed shortly!

Monthly Chart View: 1:10

Weekly Chart View: 4:08

Daily Chart View: 5:15

What I want everyone to see is that the most complex set-up is on the daily chart and that is because of the so-called “DEATH CROSS” (no exclamation point used) and Fibonacci pattern as simple as an AB=CD pattern all the way to the bearish butterfly pattern I describe in the video. The point of this is depending upon which time frame you are operating in, your strategies much be dependent upon the trends and patterns in that time frame (even if you look at longer or shorter time frames to get a better bearing on where markets are headed. You will be required to do that over the next few weeks until we see how the bond markets and the rest of the world acts up in the future.

That is all for me this evening. More Bitcoin writing WILL return as soon as things get less crazy for me. Thank you, as always, for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

You can click on it to increase the size of the image. I decided this time to use monthly and hourly VWAP control lines to show you where most of the commercial interests are, and then to scale an AB=CD pattern on top. If there is complete price symmetry in the correction, one might expect a first target to be 17356.75. That would be very near “top-bottom support” of 17309 back on September 1, 2024. If that fails, then the next real control point on the daily chart is 16706.25 roughly. That means we could easily see another half a handle peeled off the MNQM25 chart by weeks end (or even days end of panic ensues).

People should not be surprised that this is happening unless you are a FOMO junkie who thinks markets can only go up. The Fed and the U.S. Treasury have been printing money like insane people for damn near 15 years, and holding interest rates at zero or below (after inflation) until just recently, when inflation, A MONETARY PROBLEM, not an economic policy problem, was created during the “Covidiocy” era when the Trump stimulus of 2020 (probably a really bad idea) was turned cancerous by the Biden Administration to fund every crony on both sides of the Congressional and Senatorial aisles. It also funded a failed war between the USA and Russia using Ukraine and NATO nations as proxies. Even more money was stolen by politicians and other NGOs through US AID (The U.S. Agency for International Development) for various nefarious funding arrangements, too numerous to mention here.

That printing and that stimulus was conducted while our industries were stripped of manufacturing and sent overseas. With their exit, hundreds of thousands of jobs were lost domestically. This didn’t start with Biden. It started with George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. The pièce de résistance was ushered in by the Joe Biden administration, as millions of illegal migrants poured in, powered by free Social Security cards and all sort of benefits, including free food and free housing. When his administration blew up a million jobs in manufacturing, he allowed many illegal migrants to apply for work and to vote, thus causing a crisis for American citizens looking for work, often needing two or three jobs to replace the income they lost through the loss of manufacturing jobs.

Back in 2023, the Fed jacked rates to over 5%, and suddenly the banking system began to crack, as most bank asset portfolios, filled with 10-year U.S. Treasuries at lower interest rates, began to collapse as the prices sank dramatically with rate increases.

I have my problems with President Trump, but he was handed a load of crap to repair in the current U.S. economy. He cannot cut spending, as some of that is the money needed to support those who cannot work in this environment of diminished quality of employment. If he doesn’t cut spending, it will be impossible to fund even the interest payments we are paying now, let alone pay off the debt, as receipts are not sufficient to do that. If taxes increase, then consumer spending (already in a state of caution) will dry up more, and the economy will fall further into recession (and we have probably been in one for almost a year, if any of the data was honest in the previous administration, which it probably was NOT).

The only way to permanently reverse this mess is to slowly reduce spending, while negotiating with businesses foreign and domestic to bring critical industries back to America. Using tariffs is the method that President Trump is trying to use both to bring jobs back and gradually reduce the trade deficit by expanding our exports where they have been blocked by even more aggressive foreign tariffs. That strategy could create new employment for exported manufactured goods and for other manufacturers to compete for overseas trade.

I got a bit pissed off this morning when I watched this rant from Peter Tushman, a retired trader. This guy is younger than I am and he looks like a refugee from a six-foot-deep hole. He was once referred to at the “Einstein of Wall Street” because of his hair. Now he seems to be reduced to a weakened imitation of Bruce Dern in the movie “Nebraska”. He is upset that Trump has no idea what tariffs will do to the economy. What this “Einstein” doesn’t get yet is that they are not fully implemented, and that in one case, the implementation of tariffs have brought immediate response to possibly remove all tariffs by the nation of Vietnam. Will it happen? I don’t know, but there is now an ability to negotiate a better deal for the United States. That is the entire point of the tariffs.

Anyone who thinks printing money into eternity was a good idea, has to be straitjacket material. FULL STOP. That is about all we have seen since 1989, but most certainly since the QE debacle that began in 2008.

The USA is going to have to reserve the insane policy of globalization (or really, global fascism) that has led to our critical material manufacturing base to be decimated. We cannot have national security if all the materials needed to keep our military in top shape is made overseas. We cannot secure pharma products or semiconductors if they are held hostage by foreign manufacturers as they are now. That is only the beginning of things we need to onshore for our defense and future growth of our economy.

The other thing you have to realize is that as valuations are reformulated based on what should be realistic hurdle rates that are some multiple of a rational (and hopefully positive) prime rate of return on short-term assets. Anyone holding a stock at a 119 P/E ratio (which Tesla was sporting prior to the correction and the leftist attacks on their dealership) should be placed in a rubber room if they think that stock goes up forever. Rates will have to be normalized again at some point when balanced budgets are prescribed and met and the end of money printing by the criminals in Congress, The Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Treasury stops. We need to get back to the point at which businesses can be rationally valued based on real profitability and real rates or return and not on amped cash flows from below-inflation and below-rational market rates of interest. The whole idea of FOMO is the idea that the stock market is just a cash grab (as is cryptocurrency, as I hope to get to as soon as I get other projects done) and that wealth is simply having a “bigger number than the other guy”. Wealth was once based on aggregate asset value with income and positive cash flow that was actually MEASURABLE AND TANGIBLE. Not the zombie company forward earnings projection horse manure of a vast majority of Russell 2000 companies over the last decade.

The reason I largely vacated stocks in 2008-2013 is that I saw this day coming, and NOW IT IS HERE! What I did was shift into undervalued (at the time) real estate assets and made money refinancing impaired properties to give people a chance to own housing at lower than bank rates. That worked until 2020 and 2021, and I ended that for the time being. I was not happy with what I saw with QE’s giant money pump to banks and institutions that pumped the worthless money into stocks. To me, everything past 2010, basically, is a mirage. That MIRAGE is going to fade, and many will be hurt by it. Those who are patient, if President Trump and other non-fascist/non-globalist American leaders can restore monetary and fiscal balance and stability. It will be a hard task to balance spending, cut waste fraud and theft, and to restore the American employment base destroyed the the RNC and DNC Divisions of the Uniparty fascists in Washington, D.C. and many state houses.

I will get more into tariffs and other fiscal items at some other time, and I will also deal with Bitcoin again soon as well. My hands are full at the moment. If you want a better understanding of the pro-tariff perspective, listen to this podcast with Scott Bessent. I am not always a big fan of Glenn Beck, but his take is also helpful. His guest is Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation.

As I close this post, I see NQ has opened and has just held to that lower target, 16786.25. If that fails, you can possibly see a 15 handle in MNQH25 in the short to intermediate term, but that is still relatively normal given the insane history of the NASDAQ. When all elements of fiscal policy are in flux, everything is in the air, panic will happen. When panic based on insane valuations and even more demented governmental policy, you can throw all your “behavioral economics” out the window. Because I believe that in the long run, value REALLY does matter, you can throw all your “behavioral economics” bullshit in the trash. We are in the debt “death quadrant”, and that could mean hyperinflation and the total disruption of the American civil society, what there is left of it. There will be a reckoning, and it has to hurt because we kicked the can down the road in 1913, in the 1930s, in 1971, and again in 2008. If you don’t get that, you are non compos mentis. We must restore currency stability and stable value and we must balance the Federal budget and avoid deficit spending at all costs!

Thank you for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk! I will return when things settle down, and I will finish the Bitcoin series shortly! Have a great week trading and with life in general. If you like what you read, give this post a like and subscribe!

The artwork above was supposed to be my rendition of an anvil being released in Wile E. Coyote’s parachute pack, but since I got in a bit of trouble the last time I used that in a blog, I tried my hand at creating my own. This will be the extent of the amusement portion of this post. How a metal object could be strapped to an American bison’s butt, even in cartoon effigy, is beyond me. In the great tradition of American Uniparty politicians, I will blame Stable Diffusion for the error. I know that Donald J. Trump doesn’t do prompts, so I cannot blame him for everything.

Market action was both a bit violent and violently to the downside last week, as, more than anything else in my opinion, general fear and loathing hit market participants who had lost faith in “forever FOMO” and institutions and retail traders finally understood that the economy is not as solid as one were being told about by mass media.

I can go writ large in giving you what I think are the reasons, but I really do, at the moment, think a lot of this is driven by fear, and the fact that the landscape over time could be rapidly changing in the bond market. I will get more into that as the “Of Bullshit and Bitcoin” series continues shortly, as that is where this discussion may actually have the most baring over time. I deeply apologize for the delays, but my hands are literally full of personal things and business things that take a slightly higher priority than writing at the moment. I think you will get a great deal of good information about what I write and despite the delay, I still believe that the information I provide will be somewhat evergreen in nature, so stay tuned.

I am going to stick with technical analysis on the MNQH25 chart today (which has already rolled over to MNQM23) so you can see all the defined gaps in volume average weighted control points (VWAP control points), so you understand where I am headed with this analysis. We can hash out the rest of it over time as the new contract trades.

Let’s get down to bidness (business)!

Have we hit bottom on MNQH25 (or MNQM25)?

Below is the monthly chart of MNQH25 as of Friday, March 14, 2025:

It is quite hard to say if it has or not currently.

You can click on it to get a better view. If you remember last week, I said there was a risk of a correction because of a very wide gap between hourly VWAP control point lines. We did in fact get the correction. What is most important about that is even though it dropped BELOW that 19448.75 VWAP control line, it did not CLOSE below that line, meaning that there is a chance that the low price value COULD a new support low.

Notice that I didn’t say WOULD be a support low. We do not see confirmation of that in a reversal candle, so odds are, there is still a chance for even lower lows. The weekly chart does not show one either, and you can look at that yourself.

The daily chart of MNQH25 does show potential as you can see below:

There is only one problem with this chart (similar to the discussion I had last week about the monthly chart candlestick price bars. We closed up on Friday, but we did not close above the next highest green candle. The close was at 19550.25 and the recent candle high was 19996.25. That would not even qualify as a type I DeMark pivot point.

In redneck technical analysis lingo, we ain’t there quite yet. We probably get some kind of confirmation or refutation of the pivot next week.

IF (and I emphasize IF) we see that low hold and we get time and price symmetry to line up, an AB=CD rally through the other VWAP control lines would give you this as a new target, 23928.50:

That is only an estimate and is in NO WAY GUARANTEED. We do not know what is going on between the bond market, GDP estimates, which has fallen, consumer confidence, which has also fallen, earnings estimates being revised, and other insanity including the escalation of military action in Yemen between the Houthis and the USA.

I explained last week that as long as the “free money” flowed from the Congress, the Fed, and the U.S. Treasury that the party could go on “forever” until the “cash cocaine” is cut off. The continuing resolution passed through Congress on Friday, so the free money still flows. Thomas Massie is mad of course, but I wonder if he thought to including wording in the bill that would allow President Trump to have full control over DOGE without Uniparty fascist judges unconstitutionally blocking that legislation (which could have been done)?

Naa, he was probably too busy making and distributing budget lapel pins and doing water tricks in front of Congress. He didn’t think to push for truly effective legislation to stop the theft. He did say no, but I have been saying no to waste spending and theft for over 30 years and voting to force my “no” vote. I dislike bloviation from either side of the aisle. Just sayin’.

Can We Still Go Lower on MNQM25?

It is hard to know which way things will go, but the answer is yes it could. We could, given the late Summer 2024 weakness in NQ, run all the way back to a low 18 handles before anything settles in terms of support lows, and if that breaks, there more below that into the lower 15 handles if things get crazy. For now, however, let’s stick to what we know and watch what happens beginning Sunday evening. We will see soon enough how retail and institutional traders feel about things as we open back up tonight.

If you feel like you need to lighten up, use judgement as to which positions you want to pare back and keep looking for other things to buy as the market settles.

That is all for me at the moment. Stay turned, more content is on the way! Thank you as always for supporting the Buffalo Trader’s Writing Desk!

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