Tag Archives: Stock Market

Commentary Producer prices (PPIACO) looked unpleasant for July; +1.18% m/m, +19.79% y/y. That’s the largest increase since 1973-74. But don’t worry; Powell tells us it is transitory. It was transitory back in the 70s too – but the “transition period” lasted about 8 years, resulting in prices jumping from PPIACO=40 to PPIACO=100. Now that’s the…

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In addition to presenting a major public health risk, the coronavirus is already doing serious economic damage. China, the world’s second-largest economy, is essentially “closed for business” right now.

The disruption to global trade the coronavirus is likely to cause is going to be material, perhaps severe. And that will have serious negative consequences for the financial markets, which have been (and is still!) trading at the highest valuations in history.

The coronavirus has all the hallmarks of a true Black Swan event.

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The US Federal Reserve is once again force-feeding liquidity into the system. At its fastest rate ever.

The result? Record high stock prices whose valuations defy all logic.

What’s wrong with that? Shouldn’t we just enjoy the party and be grateful for our rising 401ks?

What’s wrong is that the Fed’s actions are dooming us. Their poisonous cocktail of endless cheap money and rock-bottom interest rates is hastening a terminal breakdown of the economy, while deliberately enriching a tiny cadre of elites to the ruin of everyone else.

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Nothing seems right anymore.

In whichever direction we choose to look, things are unraveling at a quickening pace.

Welcome to the Fourth Turning; and with it, a profound loss of trust in institutions and government.

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Asset bubbles are brutal.

The most difficult time to remain centered and focused is during their last stages as everyone around you is going nuts. Logic has been tossed out the window, sentiment is manic, and every narrative – the stories we hear and use to make sense of our world – is thoroughly ungrounded.

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A full decade and some $14 Trillion in newly-printed money later, plus the cheapest interest rates in recorded history, and yet the central banks have not been able to restore growth to the global economy. The experiment has failed.

What good is Dow 30,000 if 75% of us can’t afford a house or scrape together $400 in an emergency?

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Well, stocks are back at all-time highs. Ignited by the Fed’s “Not-QE” program and endless Trump administration teases of an “imminent” China deal, the S&P 500 has been propelled above its upward Bollinger band — a hyperextension only seen one other time since 2007.

Every week since Not-QE was announced has seen the S&P close green (this week finally ending the streak, barely). We’re officially in a melt-up, where both good news and bad news are accepted as valid reasons to push stocks even higher.

But what’s notable about this melt-up is that it’s missing a compelling narrative. Every past asset price mania required a feel-good mantra that convinced the masses “This time is different!”.

But today? What’s the radically better future being promised? Where’s the party train headed to?

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The most hated stock market rally still has room left to become truly despised, according to Martin Armstrong.

With so much of the rest of the world beginning to succumb to the arriving global recession, capital is fleeing towards the relative safety and positive returns offered by America’s financial markets. As a result, Armstrong sees the US stock market continuing to power higher from here, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average potentially tagging 35,000 by 2021.

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“A bully is always a coward.”

~ Thomas Chandler Haliburton

The current market rally is like a playground bully; shoving to the ground anyone in its path.

But like all bullies, the braggadocio belies an underlying cowardice.

Those in charge of the status quo must be absolutely terrified to resort to the unnatural lengths they are going to right now to keep the current rally intact.

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Stocks provide a return to today’s investors via two mechanisms: dividends and capital gains.

Dividends provide and income stream which can be quantiatively values. Capital gains result from speculation — an expectation that future dividends will be higher than the market currently expects.

But what’s the value of a company that continuously pays no dividends and does not appear as if it ever will in the foreseeable future?

Former financier and current statistician Tan Liu, author of the recent book The Ponzi Factor: The Simple Truth About Investment Profits explains how many of today’s perpetually dividend-less companies traded on the public market are operating as ponzi schemes by definition.

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