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According to Bloomberg, ECB staff “have been in contact with market participants over the current selloff in stocks to gauge if there is any risk to financial stability.”

As Bloomberg adds, the latest communications are part of the ECB’s regular interactions with financial institutions and the central bank isn’t yet overly concerned by the global equity rout. The underlying assumption is that “it’s simply a correction because valuations may have become overstretched.”

Of course, if the VIX explosion continues, the ECB will be far more worried.

As a result, staff are “watching for signs the downturn might enter a self-reinforcing spiral or spread from equities to bonds.”

One worry is that the selloff was triggered by strong U.S. economic data that led to expectations of faster interest-rate increases, a symptom that financial markets are still relying on monetary support, one of the people said.

Meanwhile, across the Atlatnic, White House Spokeswoman Mercedes Schlapp said on Fox that “obviously we’re concerned about setbacks that happened in the stock market” however, she was quick to hedge that “with that being said, we’re looking at the long term strong economic fundamentals.”

Seeking to distance the White House from Trump’s relentless boasting about every uptick and sudden silence now that stocks have crashed, she instead decided to sound like your typical, worthless sellside analyst, and said that people should focus on “improving fundamentals” instead:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

So What Do I Think about the “Crash” in Stocks?

February 6, 2018

So What Do I Think about the “Crash” in Stocks?

A lot more will have to happen before this turns into a crash; and markets are not there yet.

With all this wailing in the media about stocks, you’d think there’s at least some blood in the streets. But no. Not a drop.

The Dow fell 4.6% today to 24,345. This 1,175-point drop, as it was endlessly repeated, was the biggest point-drop in history – but irrelevant given how relentlessly inflated the industrial average had become. The percentage drop today, combined with the drops of last week, took the Dow down just 8.5% from its all-time high on January 26.

For the year, the Dow is down merely 1.5%. I mean, what horror. The last time this sort of debacle happened was way back in ancient history of January and early February 2016.

The Dow is not even in a correction (defined as -10% from its recent high). But that messy Friday and Monday, following a record 410-day streak without a 5% decline, did break the recently pandemic illusion that you cannot lose money in stocks.

When the Dow gained 1,000 points in the shortest time ever, after having already booked the fastest-ever 1,000-point gains in prior months and years, no one was complaining about it. These rapid-fire 1,000-point-gains had become the new normal. So today, one of those 1,000-point gains has been unwound.

The S&P 500 dropped 113 points, or 4.1%, to 2,648. This took the index back to December 8, 2017. The past six trading days were the worst decline since … well, since the weeks leading up to February 7, 2016, at which point the S&P 500 was off 19%, not quite enough for a dip into an official bear market.

The Nasdaq fell 272 points today, or 3.8%, to 6,967, below 7,000 for the first time since the end of December, but remains, if barely, in positive territory for the year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Liquidity Punch Bowl

January 29, 2018

THE LIQUIDITY PUNCH BOWL

It is appropriate with the inauguration of this weekly column to look at the “Big Picture”. The biggest risk to world stock markets, and asset prices in general, in 2018 is that G7 central banks (led by the Federal Reserve) are finally attempting to normalise monetary policy nine years after the American central bank commenced quantitative easing in December 2008, in the midst of the so-called “global financial crisis”.

Since late 2008, G7 central banks, comprising the Fed, the Bank of Japan, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England, have committed to massive balance sheet expansion (through the purchase of mortgage and government debt). Their balance sheets continued to rise in aggregate during 2017 even though the Fed itself stopped expanding its own balance sheet in November 2014. Aggregate assets of G7 central banks increased by 17.2% last year to $15.2tn at the end of 2017, up from US$4.3tn at the beginning of 2008 (see following chart).

Sources: Bloomberg, Federal Reserve, Bank of England, ECB, Bank of Japan, CEIC Data, CLSA

That the Fed has commenced balance sheet reduction from last October is a risk for stock markets since it amounts to another form of monetary tightening, in addition to interest rate hikes. That it has not yet caused market fallout reflects two factors:

The Fed is beginning extremely tentatively by decreasing its reinvestment of principal payments from maturing bonds.
Other G7 central banks are still expanding in aggregate, albeit at a slower pace. This is why there will be much focus on what the European Central Bank will do in coming months. For now, it looks like G7 central bank balance sheets will start to contract in aggregate in 2019 rather than 2018.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Goldman: “Expect A Market Correction In The Coming Months”

January 29, 2018

Goldman: “Expect A Market Correction In The Coming Months”

While there are reasons to be bullish on global equities in 2018 and bear market risks are low, a correction is becoming increasingly likely, Goldman’s equity strategist Peter Oppenheimer writes in an overnight note, repeating our observation from Friday that this has been the strongest start for global equity markets in any year since the infamous 1987.

As Goldman notes, this “melt-up” has occurred despite the already strong returns last year. The S&P 500 had its second-highest risk-adjusted returns in more than 50 years and MSCI World ($) had its second-highest risk-adjusted returns since the index began in 1970. More concerning, at least for the risk-party folks, is that te year-to-date sharp rise in equity returns has also continued even as bond markets are experiencing sharp risk-adjusted losses.

Confirming that a major market move lower is likely imminent – something Bank of America cautioned on Friday – the Goldman Bull/bBar Market Risk Indicator is at elevated levels – in fact at the same level it was before the dot com and credit bubble crash – though, Goldman adds in an attempt to mitigate growing fears, “the continuation of low core inflation and easy monetary policy suggests a correction is more likely than a bear market.” And while monetary policy may be easy now, is getting tighter by the day…

In this context, and expecting the inevitable, Goldman writes that “drawdowns within bull markets of 10% or more are not uncommon” and points out that “there are many historical examples of corrections — drawdowns of 10-20% – – that are short-lived and do not turn into drawn-out bear markets associated with economic weakness.”

Of course, there are many drawdowns of 10% or more which turn into full blown recessions, if not a depression. GS defines a bear market as a drop of 20% or more.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Hugh Hendry On “The Arrogance And Conceit Of A Well-Formed Argument”

January 28, 2018

Hugh Hendry On “The Arrogance And Conceit Of A Well-Formed Argument”

In his latest interview with RealVision’s Grant Williams, former Eclectica asset management co-founder Hugh Hendry delineates what he calls the “arrogance and conceit of a well-formed argument,” using examples from his own career, which has recently taken a difficult turn.

In September, Hendry shuttered Eclectica after 15 years, angrily declaring that “markets are wrong” after a badly timed long-vol bet resulting in some of the worst monthly P&Ls of his career back in July and August…

At the time, the 9.8% YTD loss triggered massive redemptions, which left the fund – which as recently as a few years ago managed billions – with just $30.6 million as of Aug. 31. At the time, an exasperated Hendry declared it wasn’t supposed to be like this…

Eclectica’s final P&L:

But a few months distance has clearly helped rejuvenate Hendry. In the interview, he shared some of the lessons he learned from one of the biggest defeats of his career:

He started by recounting a bet on Readers’ Digest magazine, an iconic American brand, Hendry said. He described his thought process at the time thusly: Because of its stature and its utility to working-class people, Hendry said he “bought in to the story” that the magazine would endure…but he was wrong…

“…So Reader’s Digest, you know here’s something where it’d been around forever. Dee Witt and Lionel Wallace had set this up were unbelievably rich, and you were just taking newspaper clippings, putting it together, and there are all these stories about after the Berlin wall came down. For so many people were trapped on the wrong side of the wall, except with communism, Reader’s Digest was like Coca-Cola; if only. I really bought into the story that Reader’s Digest was this iconic everything about America…”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Happy Landings

January 26, 2018

Happy Landings

The blow-off orgy in the stock markets is supposedly America’s consolation prize for what many regard as the electoral bad acid trip of the Trump presidency. Sorry to tell you, it’s just another hallucination, something you’re going to have to come down from. Happy landings!

While the markets have roared parabolically up, in Technicolor, with sugar-on-top, that ole rascal, Reality, is working some hoodoo in the other rings of this psychedelic circus: namely the dollar and the bond market. The idiots on NPR’s Marketplace and the Cable TV financial shows haven’t noticed the dollar tanking the past several months or the interest rates creeping up in the bond markets. Well, isn’t that the point of living as if anything goes and nothing matters, the mantra of the age?

Alas , things are connected and consequences await. It would be rich if a flash crash ripped the Dow, S & P, and the Nasdaq to shreds twenty minutes after the Golden Golem of Greatness finished schooling the weenies of Davos on the bigly wonderfulness of his year in office. In fact, it would be a crowning comic moment in human history. I can imagine Trump surrounded by the fawning Beta Boys of Banking as the news comes in. Poof! Suddenly, he is alone in the antechamber backstage, nothing left of his admirers but the lingering scent of aftershave. The world has changed. The dream is over. In the mirror he sees something that looks dimly like Herbert Hoover in a polka-dot clown suit, with funny orange wig….

A financial smash-up is really the only thing that will break the awful spell this country is in: the belief that everyday life can go on when nothing really adds up. It seems to me that the moment is close at hand. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin told the Davos crowd that the US has “a weak dollar” policy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bob Shiller Warns World’s “Priciest Stock Market” Could “Absolutely Turn Suddenly”

January 23, 2018

Bob Shiller Warns World’s “Priciest Stock Market” Could “Absolutely Turn Suddenly”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Robert Shiller told CNBC Tuesday that a market correction could come at any time and without warning…

“People ask ‘well what will trigger [a market correction]?’ But it doesn’t need a trigger, it’s the dynamics of bubbles inherently makes them come to a sudden end eventually…”

Shiller, who won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2013 for his work on asset prices and inefficient markets, said that markets could “absolutely suddenly turn” and that he believed the bull market was hard to attribute totally to the U.S. political scene.

“The strong bull market in the U.S. is often attributed to the situation in the U.S. but it’s not unique to the U.S. anyway, so it’s hard to know what the world story is that’s driving markets up at this time, I think it’s more subtle than we recognize,”

Additionally Shiller writes in Project Syndicate that it is impossible to pin down the full cause of the high price of the US stock market, warning that this fact alone should remind all investors of the importance of diversification, and that the overall US stock market should not be given too much weight in a portfolio.

The level of stock markets differs widely across countries. And right now, the United States is leading the world. What everyone wants to know is why – and whether its stock market’s current level is justified.

We can get a simple intuitive measure of the differences between countries by looking at price-earnings ratios. I have long advocated the cyclically adjusted price-earnings (CAPE) ratio that John Campbell (now at Harvard University) and I developed 30 years ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

WARNING: Markets Reaching Extreme Leverage

January 20, 2018

WARNING: Markets Reaching Extreme Leverage

As investors’ bullish sentiment moves up to euphoric levels, the markets are reaching extreme leverage. This is terrible news because a lot of people are going to lose one heck of a lot of money. According to CNN Money’s Fear & Greed Index, the market is now at the “extreme greed” level and if we go by Yardeni Research on “Investor Intelligence Bull-Bear Ratio,” it’s also is the highest ratio in 30 years.

But, of course… this time is different. I continue to receive emails and comments on my blog that the Fed will continue to prop up the markets. Unfortunately, there is only so much the Fed can do to rig the markets. Furthermore, the Fed can’t do much to mitigate investor insanity in record NYSE margin debt or the massive $2 trillion in the global short volatility trade.

The record NYSE margin debt suggests traders have racked up a record amount of margin debt (33% more since 2007) and the largest short volatility trade in history. By shorting volatility, investors are betting that it will continue to move lower. A falling volatility index suggests more calm and complacency in the markets.

So, the market will likely continue higher and higher, until it finally POPS. And when it does, watch out.

I’ve put together some charts showing the extreme amount of leverage in the markets. While this leverage may increase for a while, at some point the insanity will end in one hell of a market correction-crash.

The Commercial Banks Are Betting On Much Lower Oil Prices

As I mentioned in previous articles and my Youtube video, Coming Big Oil Price Drop & Market Crash, the Commercial banks have the highest net short positions in the oil market in over 20 years. In the video, I explained how the Commercial net short position in oil increased from 648,000 to 678,000 contracts in just one week.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The day I found out it was all rigged

January 8, 2018

The day I found out it was all rigged

May 6, 2010 started off as a pretty boring day.

The most exciting stories from the morning’s newspapers were reviews of the upcoming Iron Man 2 film.

But all that changed at around 2:45pm when, without warning, the stock market crashed, and the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 1,000 points within minutes.

It was unprecedented… especially because there was absolutely no reason why stocks should have fallen so much.

It’s not like Apple had declared bankruptcy, or the Central Bank had jacked interest rates up to 50%. Up until that point it had been pretty quiet in the markets.

As it turned out, the reason behind the crash was that the investment banks’ fancy trading algorithms had gone completely haywire.

Several of the largest banks had developed autonomous software that was capable of trading billions of dollars without the need for human beings.

And at 2:45PM that day, their software started to fail… inexplicably selling stocks to the point that prices collapsed nearly 10% in minutes.

They called it the Flash Crash, and, even though stocks had largely recovered by the end of the day, the banks lost an enormous amount of money.

Then something interesting happened. Within a few days, the major exchanges announced that they would CANCEL many of the trades that took place during the Flash Crash window.

In other words, they were handing the banks their money back.

I never forgot that moment… because I received an email from my broker informing me of the news.

They were canceling a profitable trade that I had placed during the Flash Crash window, effectively giving it back to the banks.

When the banks’ trading algorithms performed well and they all made money, the profit was theirs to keep.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Much Death and Destruction Awaits Us in 2018?

December 31, 2017

How Much Death and Destruction Awaits Us in 2018?

The New Year is one full of economic, political, and war threats.

Among the economic threats are stock, bond, and real estate markets artificially pumped up by years of central bank money creation and by false reports of full employment. It is an open question whether participants in these markets are aware that underlying reality does not support the asset values. Central banks support stock markets not only with abundant liquidity but also with direct stock purchases. The Japanese central bank is now one of the largest owners of Japanese equities. Central banks, which are supposed to provide economic stability, have created a massive fraud.

Throughout the Western world politics has degenerated into fraud. No government serves the public’s interest. (See: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/12/29/eric-zuesse-explains-americas-worst-enemy/ ) Except for some former Soviet satellites in Eastern Europe, European governments have defied the will of the people by admitting vast numbers of refugees from Washington’s wars and others pretending to be refugees. The European governments further imperil their citizens with their support for Washington’s rising aggression toward Russia. The universal failure of democratic politics is leading directly to war.

The Saker explains that Americans with intelligence, honor, courage, and integrity have disappeared from the US national security establishment. In their place are arrogant morons high on hubris who believe: (1) We can buy anybody, (2) Those we cannot buy, we bully, (3) Those we cannot bully, we kill, (4) Nothing can happen to us, we live in total impunity no matter what we do. http://www.unz.com/tsaker/2018-war-or-no-war/

Scott Bennett reports that US soldiers are being propagandized that Russia is an enemy with whom we are headed to war. https://www.facebook.com/capsule.ninetynine.7/videos/1992321041038611/
The Anglo-Zionist empire is trying to overturn the Iranian agreement and to restart the attempt to overthrow the government of Syria. Lebanon’s Hezbollah is also in the empire’s sights. Washington is arming Ukraine in order to enable an attack on the breakaway provinces of Novorussia.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Darkest Hours

December 18, 2017

The Darkest Hours

The Tax “Reform” bill working its way painfully out the digestive system of congress like a sigmoid fistula, ought be re-named the US Asset-stripping Assistance Act of 2017, because that’s what is about to splatter the faces of the waiting public, most of whom won’t have a personal lobbyist / tax lawyer by their sides holding a protective tarpulin during the climactic colonic burst of legislation.

Sssshhhh…. The media has not groked this, but the economy is actually collapsing, and the nova-like expansion of the stock markets is exactly the sort of action you might expect in a system getting ready to blow. Meanwhile, the more visible rise of the laughable scam known as crypto-currency, is like the plume of smoke coming out of Vesuvius around 79 AD — an amusing curiosity to the citizens of Pompeii below, going about their normal activities, eating pizza, buying slaves, making love — before hellfire rained down on them.

Whatever the corporate tax rate might be, it won’t be enough to rescue the Ponzi scheme that governing has become, with its implacable costs of empire. So the real aim here is to keep up appearances at all costs just a little while longer while the table scraps of a four-hundred-year-long New World banquet get tossed to the hogs of Wall Street and their accomplices. The catch is that even hogs busy fattening up don’t have a clue about their imminent slaughter.

The centerpiece of the swindle, as usual, is control fraud on the grand scale. Control fraud is the mis-use of authority in applying Three-Card-Monte principles to financial accounting practice, so that a credulous, trustful public will be too bamboozled to see the money drain from their bank accounts and the ground shift under their feet until the moment of freefall.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Interest Rates Starting To Bite

December 18, 2017

Interest Rates Starting To Bite

We have long held that interest rates have been so low (especially real rates) that it will take some time to reach a level for them to really matter and impact markets. The 2-year yield crossing over the S&P500 divie yield this past week for the first time in the last ten years is unlikely to slow the momentum driving risk markets. Nevertheless, they are getting closer to the zip code — after two years since the tightening cycle began — where they will begin to impact fundamental valuations (what is the fundamental value of Bitcoin?) and the relative pricing of risk assets. Keep it on your radar.

Long-term rates are so utterly distorted by the central banks we are not sure if the markets even pay attention anymore. Pancaking of the yield curve? Not the signal it used to be. Meh!

The above, of course, is somewhat offset by the massive stock of central bank money in the global financial system which has driven up asset values to a level that has finally kicked the real economy into third gear. This has created the perception of a Goldilocks global enviornment and positive feedback loop between markets and the economy. Now add fiscal stimulus.

The unprecedented reservoir of the mix of this type of money is still so full it will take some time to drawdown central bank balance sheets to parch the risk markets. A higher share of central bank money relative to credit based bank money reduces global systemic risk and thus asset price risk premia. Thus, additional market distortions.

The party continues. Momentum is a powerful thang! Until it isn’t.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

U.S. ECONOMIC CRISIS AHEAD: Major Failure Of Analysts To Spot Danger

December 9, 2017

U.S. ECONOMIC CRISIS AHEAD: Major Failure Of Analysts To Spot Danger

The U.S. economy continues towards an epic crisis while the overwhelming majority of analysts are completely in the dark. Even though some alternative media analysts understand that our highly leveraged fiat monetary system and markets will crash, they fail to understand the underlying reasons. Thus, we are heading into a future we are not prepared because… the BLIND continues to lead the BLIND.

I don’t mean to be harsh on my fellow analysts, but the truth remains that the public is being misled due to the inability of market analysts unable to spot the real dangers. So, we continue to move step-by-step closer to the edge of the cliff while “no one seems to notice or no one seems to care” (George Carlin-comedian). I have to tell you; I miss ole George Carlin. Yes, he had a filthy mouth, but the truth in his comedic material gave me hours of much-needed laughter.

To explain what I mean about the “Major failure of analysts to spot Danger,” I am going to provide two examples and some additional information. It is crucial that the reader understand the FACTS and REAL DATA about our dire predicament and not become lost or confused in regards to lousy conspiracies or misinformation.

When I wrote the article, THE BLIND CONSPIRACY: The Gold Market Is Heading Towards A Big Fundamental Change; I thought for sure the individual and his analysis that I was calling into question would read the facts and data in my article and realize his error. However, it seems as if it provided quite the opposite reaction.

Mr. Weir spent 50 minutes of his time putting together another video about the Massive Billion Ounces of Hidden Gold in the Grand Canyon:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Stock Market 2018: The Tao vs. Central Banks

December 4, 2017

Stock Market 2018: The Tao vs. Central Banks

The central banks claim omnipotent financial powers, and their comeuppance is overdue.

I will be the first to admit that invoking the woo-woo of the Tao as the reason to expect a reversal of the stock market in 2018 smacks of Bearish desperation. With everything coming up roses in much of the global economy, there is precious little foundation for calling a tumultuous end to the global Bull Market other than variations of nothing lasts forever.

Invoking the Tao specifically calls for extremes to return or reverse to the opposite polarity: this is expressed in the line from Lao Tzu, The way of the Tao is reversal or Reversal is the movement of Tao.

In other words, extremes of bullishness lead to extremes of bearishness, just as the extremes of bearishness in March 2009 (S&P 500 at 667) led to the current extremes of bullishness (S&P 500 2,600).

Translations of this line add color to the concept:

To return is to complete the movement of the Tao.

Reversion is the action of Tao.

Turning back is Tao’s motion.

Tao moves by returning.

Cyclic reversion is Tao’s movement.

Reversal is the action of Tao.

Polar opposition helps the movement of the Way.

But there is another more subtle interpretation of The way of the Tao is reversal: in this view, only those who have rebelled against the Tao by distorting the natural order of things can push dynamics to extremes. Those who rebel against the Tao by pushing things to extremes will find the Tao will reverse their extreme to the opposite polarity.

Central banks have pushed markets to extremes of liquidity, leverage, moral hazard, low volatility and “the central banks have our back” complacency.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

October 5, 2017

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The Waiting Is The Hardest Part

Tom Petty’s anthem for today’s investors

Man, what an awful stretch of events.

When I penned last week’s article on tragedy, little did I expect something as horrible as the Las Vegas massacre would immediately follow. And nearly lost in the headlines was the untimely passing of rock legend, Tom Petty, one of my all-time favorite musicians. Sure can’t wait for this week to be over…

In memory of Tom, I’ve been listening to a lot of his and the Heartbreakers’ best hits. The lyrics to one song in particular, The Waiting, well-captures an important message today’s investors should take to heart:

The waiting is the hardest part

Don’t let it kill you baby, don’t let it get to you

Those waiting for the financial markets to experience some sort (any sort!) of pullback have been waiting a long, looong time. How long?

It has been over 100 months (more than 8.5 years) since the current bull market began in April of 2009
It has been 15 months since the last (and very brief) drop of 5% in the S&P 500
This past September saw record low volatility, including a stretch now claimed to be “the most peaceful days in the history of the markets”
Since last year’s presidential election, at which point the markets were already considered dangerously overvalued, the Dow Jones Industrial Average is up over 20%
As of this article’s publishing, the Dow, the S&P and the NASDAQ are all trading at record highs

Or, to put it visually:

The stock market is now 70% higher than it was at the previous bubble peak immediately preceding the 2008 Great Financial Crisis.

Reflect for a moment how painful the crash from Oct 2008-March 2009 was. How much more painful will a crash from today’s much dizzier heights be?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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