[petejh]

Here's a fun opportunity for space nerds to indulge in some wall-street bets type degeneracy.. today the lunar lander 'Odysseus' carries out some engine burn tests prior to commencing entry into lunar orbit, and an attempt tomorrow at the first lunar landing by the US since 1972 . News: https://www.space.com/intuitive-machines-moon-lander-engine-burns-on-track

The lunar lander was built by a public-listed company called Intuitive Machines - ticker 'LUNR'
Their the share price is currently also moon-bound on the excitement surrounding this event. Talk about event-driven investing!

Chart below, up ~400% since the mission launched last week. Today it's up another 25% pre-market. Market opens 2.30pm UK.

You can watch the landing live on NASA's youtube tomorrow afternoon, here: https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-artemis-science-first-intuitive-machines-flight-head-to-moon/

So here's a chance to do some online gambling and place a bet on a horse lunar landing. This is not a recommendation! Sell on a successful landing (sell the news). The price has just closed the 'gap' I circled in yellow, I'd expect it to hit one of the two levels in red I've lined up around $22 or $40. I'd then expect price to plunge back to earth quicker than the lunar module! If landing is unsuccessful, well you lose at a guess 70-90%. But who knows, it could be one of those max-stupid event driven things that captures the public sentiment just right. 





edit: btw if the normal LUNR share is too boring for you, you can buy the warrants (LUNRW) for increased rocket fuel, +ve120% yesterday versus a sedentary +ve50% for the normal share

[petejh]

Scheduled to softly touch down (or smash into pieces) on the moon  at 10.30pm UK time: https://twitter.com/nasa/status/1760483302807368171?s=46&t=6d-8pE1NdoFl1h5W80yCwA

Sneakily 90mins after the Nasdaq closes.. expect it'll be a volatile last hour.

[petejh]

Don't know if anyone's watching the live feed..  It's pretty amazing. I hadn't grasped the scale of the US's plans to use commercial delivery  (rather than NASA delivery) of payloads to the moon for a miniscule cost compared to previous missions; prior to sending humans there in 2026 - it's suggested to stay to begin building a base. Tonight's is the first commercial payload of many to lay down the resources ready for when humans arrive 2 years from now. Lots of talk on the live feed of 'the lunar economy' and the commercial-NASA joint enterprise.

Pretty amazing to watch something as historic as this live on my laptop. Bigger than a live stream of Burden of Dreams... I'm getting the impression this has makings of an inflection point for markets similar to how AI put a rocket up the market last year and continues to. Feels the magnitude of the project about to commence to resource the moon over the next 2 years has flown under the radar a bit.

On Intuitive Machines - I saw a Bloomberg terminal view with estimate of $400m in revenue within the next 4 years. 10x earnings giving a $4bn valuation as reasonable ballpark. Currently valued around $1bn (this wildly fluctuating by the hour!). They're contracted by NASA to deliver further payloads, a $118m contract.

Live feed here, landing 11.25pm:

 

 

[mr chaz]

Dramatic but successful landing!

[Dingdong]

Don't know if anyone's watching the live feed..  It's pretty amazing. I hadn't grasped the scale of the US's plans to use commercial delivery  (rather than NASA delivery) of payloads to the moon for a miniscule cost compared to previous missions; prior to sending humans there in 2026 - it's suggested to stay to begin building a base. Tonight's is the first commercial payload of many to lay down the resources ready for when humans arrive 2 years from now. Lots of talk on the live feed of 'the lunar economy' and the commercial-NASA joint enterprise.

Pretty amazing to watch something as historic as this live on my laptop. Bigger than a live stream of Burden of Dreams... I'm getting the impression this has makings of an inflection point for markets similar to how AI put a rocket up the market last year and continues to. Feels the magnitude of the project about to commence to resource the moon over the next 2 years has flown under the radar a bit.

On Intuitive Machines - I saw a Bloomberg terminal view with estimate of $400m in revenue within the next 4 years. 10x earnings giving a $4bn valuation as reasonable ballpark. Currently valued around $1bn (this wildly fluctuating by the hour!). They're contracted by NASA to deliver further payloads, a $118m contract.

Live feed here, landing 11.25pm:

Glassdoor reviews also show a great work culture and helps the CEO is the ex director of JSC meaning they’re receiving lots of contracts from NASA and have great links to them. Funnily enough the landing lasers failed and the instrumentation sent up by NASA was used to assist in the landing 

[Rocksteady]

Dramatic but successful landing!

Yeah I hadn't planned to be watching footage at 11.30pm last night but it was amazing and did feel really historic.

Interested to see what the share price does today...

[Duma]

when humans arrive 2 years from now.

this will not happen in 2 or even 3 years

[petejh]

Yeah I hadn't planned to be watching footage at 11.30pm last night but it was amazing and did feel really historic.

Interested to see what the share price does today...

Pre-market up around 45% for the shares, 65% for the warrants. To just above the last high. I wouldn't be surprised to see that sell off on open as early profit-takers jump ship. I think it could possibly be a longer burner now though, lot of excitement around this, I think it captures the imagination in a positive way and reminds people progress and exploration is still ongoing, away from all the negative stuff playing out. In the short term due to the weak signal it's left people hanging a bit - if the images and data still haven't transmited by the time market opens.. a lot of people waiting for the first images/data, I think if/when they come through it'll be another +ve price catalyst. 

[Fultonius]

Yeah I hadn't planned to be watching footage at 11.30pm last night but it was amazing and did feel really historic.

Interested to see what the share price does today...

Pre-market up around 45% for the shares, 65% for the warrants. To just above the last high. I wouldn't be surprised to see that sell off on open as early profit-takers jump ship. I think it could possibly be a longer burner now though, lot of excitement around this, I think it captures the imagination in a positive way and reminds people progress and exploration is still ongoing, away from all the negative stuff playing out. In the short term due to the weak signal it's left people hanging a bit - if the images and data still haven't transmited by the time market opens.. a lot of people waiting for the first images/data, I think if/when they come through it'll be another +ve price catalyst.

Kind saddens me a bit this... Just when we need to have all the best minds and all investment (human energy, real energy)  focussing on fixing our clear and present danger to stable humanity and ecological balance, they're all off being fucking space invaders, trying to win the next unbounded resource arms race.

I listend to Bezos on the Lex Fridman podcast. Interesting guy, insightful in how to run dynamic organisations and....IMO...totally wrong. Summary: "yeah, we've fucked earth and run out of ways to exploit things so LET's go to SPACE where we can exploit even more..." 

He actually said (paraphrased) "human progress has correlated with energy use, so we should not be trying to reduce energy use, but expand it, as that will lead to more better goodness"     

Doooooomed, we're fucking doooooomeed. So let's go to space and start again. 

[Dingdong]

Yeah I hadn't planned to be watching footage at 11.30pm last night but it was amazing and did feel really historic.

Interested to see what the share price does today...

Pre-market up around 45% for the shares, 65% for the warrants. To just above the last high. I wouldn't be surprised to see that sell off on open as early profit-takers jump ship. I think it could possibly be a longer burner now though, lot of excitement around this, I think it captures the imagination in a positive way and reminds people progress and exploration is still ongoing, away from all the negative stuff playing out. In the short term due to the weak signal it's left people hanging a bit - if the images and data still haven't transmited by the time market opens.. a lot of people waiting for the first images/data, I think if/when they come through it'll be another +ve price catalyst.

Kind saddens me a bit this... Just when we need to have all the best minds and all investment (human energy, real energy)  focussing on fixing our clear and present danger to stable humanity and ecological balance, they're all off being fucking space invaders, trying to win the next unbounded resource arms race.

I listend to Bezos on the Lex Fridman podcast. Interesting guy, insightful in how to run dynamic organisations and....IMO...totally wrong. Summary: "yeah, we've fucked earth and run out of ways to exploit things so LET's go to SPACE where we can exploit even more..." 

He actually said (paraphrased) "human progress has correlated with energy use, so we should not be trying to reduce energy use, but expand it, as that will lead to more better goodness"     

Doooooomed, we're fucking doooooomeed. So let's go to space and start again. 

Loads more FAs to be done in space anyways

[Bradders]

He actually said (paraphrased) "human progress has correlated with energy use, so we should not be trying to reduce energy use, but expand it, as that will lead to more better goodness"

Well, this statement isn't actually wrong is it?

If we take "progress" to mean the dramatic improvement in living standards which can be observed worldwide, this absolutely is correlated with energy usage, and in many ways you can identify direct causation.

Also, to my extremely simple mind the amount of energy used isn't really a problem it's the source and by products that can be issues. As a for instance, if in the future we were able to obtain all of our energy from wind, why would we want to reduce consumption of it?

[Fultonius]

True that the correlation isn't wrong, but I'd be forking off into a massive essay if I were to start picking apart the reasons why it's not necessarily causative, and, whether or not the metrics of what we even define as "progress" are vaguely sensible....

Suffice to say, I think he's full of shit.

Re: the second point. If we were starting at more of an equilibrium then, and energy was truly renewable, abundant and cheap then yes, I suppose, have at it.

However, when we in a massive arms race against AI / big data development / global economic expansion, then even renewable resources are *massively* constrained, yet the likes of amazon etc. are gobbling up all the new solar in wind capacity with corporate power purchase agreements, this just pulls it away from other, more difficult to mitigate energy consumers.

Then there's the mineral resource required to produce the wind farms, cables, batteries, solar farms etc. None of these things are infinite...

[petejh]

The prerequisite for these type of discussions about energy use and living standards should be following reading some of this guy's writings:  https://vaclavsmil.com/

Here's one his books, available on Bezo's site: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-World-Really-Works-Scientists-ebook/dp/B08SGC3TD3


I'll follow my own advice.

[thomas røllins]

Here's one his books, available on Bezo's site: https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-World-Really-Works-Scientists-ebook/dp/B08SGC3TD3

An outstanding book. Reads a lot like his swansong (Smil is 80).

[stone]

I'm ignorant about Vaclav Smil. Thanks for the links.

One thing that stands out for me in the energy-supply=affluence cause-versus-effect debate is the example of Paraguay. They were/are a fairly undeveloped country. They built a vast hydro scheme and so became blessed with vast amounts of very cheap electricity. It didn't lead to much economic development, certainly not transformative development. In the end they built a huge (and hugely expensive) transmission line to export electricity to Brazil.

My general take is that what is needed for national affluence is for a society to have trust and respect across every citizen and institution. That will prevail over any geographic or historical blessing or adversity. Without it, anywhere can go to poverty and violence. With enough of it, anywhere can become the envy of the rest of the world.

[Johnny Brown]

Hope you sold before they realised it fell over Pete.

[petejh]

I didn't buy!

[petejh]

Here's the UKB for lunar landers, lots of geek details about the antennae: https://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=59696.660

Sounds like many of the antenna are pointing down into the lunar surface. And still no pics.. if there were going to be any I'm guessing they'd have shown them by now.

[Duma]

"On Friday, Intuitive Machines had disclosed that the laser range finders – designed to feed altitude and forward-velocity readings to Odysseus’ autonomous navigation system – were inoperable because company engineers neglected to unlock the lasers’ safety switch before launch on 15 February. The safety lock, akin to a firearm’s safety switch, can only be disabled by hand.

The range-finder glitch, detected just hours before the final descent, forced flight controllers to improvise an experimental work-around to avoid what could have been a catastrophic crash-landing."

[petejh]

Should’ve used a check list 

I love how we can be smart enough to create autonomous machines that land on the moon but then fuck it up with the most basic human error! Somewhere an AI is rolling its eyes at human ineptitude.

Bit smaller scale than a moon landing, but I once almost crashed a plane into some trees by forgetting to follow a check list (forgot to switch off a (power-reducing) carb-heat).

[stone]

https://atulgawande.com/book/the-checklist-manifesto/

[Johnny Brown]

In other 'to the moon' news, I hope you all held onto a little crypto. Trying not to sell to early this time, but interested in any opinions on timing the top...

[petejh]

I rarely trade in crypto, a few short-term trades in and out over the last 5 years. When I do, I trade shares of crypto miners as a proxy for btc as it means gains can be tax free in my isa.

Traders in crypto and forex are heavily into TA signals, as there is so much sentiment involved and a lack of strong underlying fundamentals.

I follow northstar/badchart's content, among a few other TA folk. It's difficult talking about TA without people thinking you're using it as your sole guiding light to make decisions, or that you believe using TA gives a high probability of success without needing to understand anything else about the fundamentals of companies/markets/macro - I don't believe this.
For me it's about creating an overall context and trying to understand probabilities as well as possible, rather than only following my own TA or any other TA's calls.

I don't place a lot of weight on northstar's specific calls - some are complete garbage revealing his total lack of understanding of a sector/company  - e.g. last week he claimed that based on his view of the technical chart, Barrick - a $25 billion company - was at risk of going to zero because they were near to breaking a 'key' technical support line. This is such an utterly stupid claim that it's almost unbelievable how successful many of his other calls have been. He openly says he knows nothing about the companies and their valuations/fundamentals and events/catalysts, he's purely a technical trader. Technical traders claim, some almost religiously, that the chart is a proxy for all known information about an asset. I disagree - the market is inefficient, and there are time lags, and other distortions, but it's a long essay of little intertest here.

Anyway that long rant is a pre-amable to saying, according to northstar, btc is likely heading to the previous high at $68-69k. This level will be a resistance level. If it breaks the $69k level, then he estimates the top to be around $120k. Timscale is suggested on his site.

He also said the same as this 18 months ago, so do with it what you will - if you claim something enough you'll probably eventually be proven 'correct'.  If you want to pay £8 you can see his work in pretty pictures which look very convincing but I'm entirely unconvinced. He's basically making money from his site, and doing some trading with it, if he was that convinced about his skill he'd be making more than enough money from his calls without needing to create a subscriber base.

[petejh]

Can see the relation of btc's price to its 200 day moving average here, it's getting stretched.

But there's enough room on other indicators - one being the weekly timescale rsi (not shown) - for btc to break the previous high before pulling back. Doesn't mean it will, just that based on the level of the weekly rsi the previous time btc hit $68k, there's still room to go higher.




Here's the bigger picture, with my TA.
1.BTC formed an arc pattern at previous high. Then fell to last's year's lows.

2. Where it formed an inverse head/shoulders - the three little 'arcs', first highlight being the neckline of the left shoulder.

3. It broke the downtrend - within the second large highlight blob you can see it broke up through the 200 day moving average, broke the diagonal downtrend, hit horizontal resistance (the neckline of the inverse head/shoulders), bounced again off the downtrend line and 200 day - this time as support versus previous resistance, formed the right shoulder.

4. Then broke the horizontal resistance (neckline), bounced twice again (2 righthand highlights) off the horizontal support (previous resistance) and the 200 day, and moved higher.

All easy to see after the event but not convincing enough to place a trade in advance, knowing nothing else about fundamentals (as there are so few with btc!).





edit: one other piece of useful info gleaned from northstar - there has been a pre-halving rally the previous two halvings. This is likely self-fulfilling behaviour, regardless of any fundamental value of the halving. The next halving is sometime around April this year.

[Johnny Brown]

Thanks Pete. Trading purely on TA brings to mind the old line about rationality. I've been following Northstar on twitter for a while and he hasn't tempted me to subscribe yet - I had the same conclusion about why he'd bother with subscriptions.

Looking at previous peaks I think I can afford to wait 'til after any peak rather than trying to get out ahead. I got in on your final highlighted bounce, so currently well-placed, but mostly in Eth and Sol, less in Btc. 

edit: one other piece of useful info gleaned from northstar - there has been a pre-halving rally the previous two halvings. This is likely self-fulfilling behaviour, regardless of any fundamental value of the halving. The next halving is sometime around April this year.

Yeah, aware of that. I think there's a way to go, but like you say there's a lot of sentiment.