“BTFD”, “Goldilocks”, “Climbing a wall of worry”, “Powell Put”, “Trump Put”, “It’s different this time.”

The excuses to buy stocks – no matter what headline tape bomb explodes – grow longer and more desperate as asset-gatherers and commission-takers know the end is nigh (and judging by the level of insider-selling, so do C-level execs). Of course, to the onlookers, the record-breaking stock markets provide just the ‘price’ evidence that everything must be awesome (right?), but as former fund manager and FX trader Richard Breslow points out, “there’s danger in knowing price, but not value.”

The most accurate thing anyone has said today is also the scariest. Not because it isn’t true. There is no shortage of examples to prove it. Italian assets are getting hammered on budget-deficit-busting news. The European Union won’t like it. The rating companies may take exception. Our own story described it as dealing a “body blow” to the establishment. But Deputy Premier Matteo Salvini’s reaction was, “Markets will come to terms” with it. And that’s the problem. They most likely will.

Via Bloomberg,

But every time “investors,” to use the term loosely, limit their response to selling some futures before deciding to move on and pick-up some carry in the cash market,the ante will continue to be raised at the next episode.

Traders are meant to be regulators on behavior, economic as well as political, but have utterly ceded that function.

This is nothing new, but it’s getting worse. And more dangerous. As I’ve been watching the BTP and MIB markets trade this morning at each dead-cat bounce I’m told things are stabilizing. There’s no contagion. Buyers are looking for value. That markets are orderly.

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