- NYSE volume 32% below its one-month average;

- NASDAQ volume 8% below its one-month average;

- VIX index: + 2.52% to 14.63

I have converted all of my short common in the indices to short calls.

With S&P cash +4 handles, I have shorted more in-the-money index calls for January and February.

Bitcoin, the object of great affection (here and there), may be tracing a possible "head-and-shoulders" topping pattern:

Here is something I bet you weren't aware of:

A couple of days of stability after a -25% fall may mean nothing — but homebuilder stocks seem to have stabilized over the last few trading sessions.

I have been buying JOE, but I might broaden out my buys to include some homebuilder equities as short-term trading long rentals.

I will be out for a lunch with some friends between 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. ET.

• New York Stock Exchange volume is 34% below its one-month average;

• Nasdaq volume is 4% below its one-month average;

• The Volatility Index is up 7.01% to 15.27

And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe

That light I never knowed

And it ain't no use in turning on your light, babe

I'm on the dark side of the road

-- Bob Dylan - Don't Think Twice, It's All Right (Official Audio)

With S and P cash -11 handles I have added to my short index calls.

I have modestly added to my ELAN long and I am bidding below the market for more JOE.

Upside:

-COEP +113% (completes acquisition of NexGenAI Affiliates Network Platform and Launch of Coeptis Technologies)

-NTIP +36% (commences patent litigation against Citadel Securities and Jump Trading)

-WISA +12% (to acquire privately-held data management Compusystems)

-ASMB +5.3% (Phase 1b Results from Clinical Trial Evaluating Next-Generation Capsid Assembly Modulator Candidate ABI-4334 in Chronic Hepatitis B)

-GME +4.0% (trades higher in pre-market following another X post yesterday)

-QTRX +3.6% (earnings)

-HOTH +2.9% (enters partnership with the Department of Veterans Affairs to develop obesity treatment)

-KULR +2.9% (launches Bitcoin Treasury with purchase of 217.18BTC for $21M)

Downside:

-BNRG -11% (appoints Emilio Lopez, Visionary Renewable Energy Executive, as Chairman of its Board)

-MSTR -3.4% (plans to issue stock to purchase additional BTC)

-IREN -3.1% (shares sold by Tidal Investments LLC; BTC weakness)

-RIOT -2.7% (BTC weakness)

-MARA -2.5% (BTC weakness)

-CLSK -2.4% (BTC weakness)

-CORZ -2.2% (BTC weakness)

*Is December 2024, December 1972?

It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe

If'n you don't know by now

And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, babe

It'll never do somehow

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

Look out your window and I'll be gone

You're the reason I'm a-traveling on

But don't think twice, it's all right

-Bob Dylan, "Don't Think Twice It's All Right"

What does a Jewish boy from Long Island do on a Christmas morning?

This one went to Boca Raton's Cinemark to see the opening of "A Complete Unknown" at 9:20 a.m.!

The movie, a story of Bob Dylan's life, premiered on Christmas Day.

For me, it was a trip down memory lane — during my formative years of the mid- to late 1960s. It was like visiting with an old friend.

Though the movie wasn't especially revelatory, the acting was exceptional and the songs, well... from the greatest minstrel in modern history, you all know how it feels (like a Rolling Stone). Timothée Chalamet played Dylan brilliantly with the support of Monica Barbaro (Joan Baez) and Ed Norton (Pete Seeger). Here is the trailer.

The movie begins with Dylan, straight off from a bus from Minnesota, visiting Woody Guthrie, who was suffering from Huntington's disease in a hospital in New Jersey.

In the movie, Dylan is celebrated for his lyrics, but his greatest contribution to music was his voice, which redefined the whole idea of singing.

Nasal and nasty, raw as barbed wire, Dylan has always been an enigma.

His voice recasts Muddy Waters' electric blues as a medium for expressing both aesthetic outrage and a lust that's as much intellectual as it is carnal. The beat of his songs (especially the seminal "Like A Rolling Stone") is sodden with anger and the biting accents of his songs are acid-etched.

Most of all, I enjoyed the songs sung in "A Complete Unknown." In particular, "Like A Rolling Stone" with the biting accents contributed by Mike Bloomfield's guitar and Frank Owens' piano. Al Kooper's nervous two-finger organ playing was also a highlight. (Nervous because Kooper apparently had never before played the instrument, he simply showed up for the session and angled his way into the empty organ chair because he recognized the chance to enter history). Together with Dylan, the singing and the organ keep "Like a Rolling Stone" from being just another icy hipster bitch session at the level of "Positively Fourth Street" (or worse — say, "Masters of War").

Like a lot of other Dylan songs in the movie, "Like A Rolling Stone" is often misunderstood as advice or instruction, but it's really both a contemporary myth that actually has the nerve to begin with... "Once upon a time..." and the narration of a tragedy. Despite the sharp-tongued surface, when Dylan sings (and, in the case of the movie Chalamet sang all the songs!), "When you ain't got nothin,' you got nothin' to lose," he comes as close to expressing heartbreak as he ever would. That's why he almost strangles on the next-to-last "Hey, to be on your own."

To Be On Your Own

I have been on my own with an ursine market view. 

My theory has been that the December 2024 investing backdrop may resemble that of December 1972. 

Let me explain.

In both periods, we faced a combative President (Nixon/Trump), narrow leadership (it was the Nifty Fifty in the early 1970s and the Mag Seven in recent years), interest rates and inflation turned up (from the prior few decades) and public sector debt was climbing rapidly — like in 1972, we lack visibility today (and a sense of fiscal responsibility on the part of our political leaders with regard to future fiscal policy). 

In both periods the forward PE was extremely elevated (today, at nearly 23x), the market advance was not broadening out, the "animal spirits" look stock prices higher without a commensurate change in future profit forecasts and the equity risk premium was paper thin. 

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

How many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, and how many times must the cannonballs fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind

The answer is blowin' in the wind

-Bob Dylan, "Blowin' In The Wind Blowing"

Doomberg on "Fit For Purpose."

The S&P Short Range Oscillator slipped from a heavily oversold -7.24% to a still-high oversold at -5.39%.

* At about 9 p.m. Christmas Day..

Sold short more Tesla TSLA at $471.55.