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‘The economy is going to collapse,’ says Wall Street veteran Novogratz. ‘We are going to go into a really fast recession.’

‘The economy is going to collapse,’ says Wall Street veteran Novogratz. ‘We are going to go into a really fast recession.’

Veteran investor and bitcoin bull Michael Novogratz’s economic outlook is not rosy

Michael Novogratz, founder and chief executive officer of Galaxy Digital Capital Management LP, spoke with MarketWatch on Wednesday ahead of a historically aggressive Fed rate hike.

Veteran investor and bitcoin bull Michael Novogratz doesn’t have a rosy outlook on the economy, which he described as headed for a substantial downturn, with the likelihood of a “fast recession” on the horizon.

“The economy is going to collapse,” Novogratz told MarketWatch. “We are going to go into a really fast recession, and you can see that in lots of ways,” he said, in a Wednesday interview before the Federal Reserve decided to undertake its biggest interest-rate hike in nearly three decades.

“Housing is starting to roll over,” he said. “Inventories have exploded.”

“There are layoffs in multiple industries, and the Fed is stuck,” he said, with a position of having to “hike [interest rates] until inflation rolls over.”

Central-bank policy makers agreed to deliver an unusual 0.75-percentage-point rate increase, concluding a closely watched two-day policy meeting with a move that would push the Fed’s benchmark federal-funds rate rising to a range between 1.5% and 1.75% as it steps up the effort to quell an inflation rate that is hovering around a 40-year high.

It was the largest increase in the central bank’s policy rate since November 1994.

Before the Fed announced its decision, Novogratz speculated — accurately, it turned out — that the central bank would lift interest rates by 75 basis points and that the market would rally on that news. He also predicted that stocks will sell off in the coming days.

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

ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil

ECB Holds Emergency Meeting To Discuss Market Turmoil

Last week, shortly after the ECB’s latest meeting disappointed markets and concluded without a discussion of Europe’s growing bond market fragmentation (which is to be expected since QE – the glue that held the Euro area’s bond market together – is ending) and which has since sent Italian bond yields soaring above 4%, we joked that “at this rate the ECB would make an emergency rate cut” just hours after announcing an end to QT and guiding to a July rate hike.

Once again, our “joke” was spot on because on Wednesday morning, just hours before the Fed’s first 75bps rate hike sine 1994, and with Italian bonds in freefall, European Central Bank “unexpectedly” announced it would hold an emergency, ad hoc meeting of its rate-setters starting 11am CET in which it would “discuss current market conditions.” It wasn’t immediately clear if a statement would be published after the confab.

The meeting, which comes less than a week after the rate-setting governing council’s last vote, raised investor expectations that the central bank is preparing to announce a policy instrument to stave-off another debt crisis in the region, which can only come in the form of more QE… which is ironic at a time when the ECB just announced it was phasing out all QE!

Italian government bonds rallied in price following news of the planned meeting, reversing some of the recent sell-off that analysts said brought the country’s borrowing costs towards the “danger zone”. Gilles Moec, chief economist at Axa, an insurer, said the “stakes are high” for the ECB “now that everyone is dusting off their debt sustainability spreadsheets for Italy, they probably need to go up an extra notch”.

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

The Market Is “On The Edge Of A Huge Collapse”

The Market Is “On The Edge Of A Huge Collapse”

This week I had a chance to interview my friend Andy Schectman, President & Owner of Miles Franklin Precious Metals, a company that has done more than $5 billion in sales.

Andy is a world-renowned expert in the field of precious metals and took the time to answer some pressing questions I had about the global economic picture, metals and markets in general.

This interview is not an advertisement; I sought out Andy’s opinion because I believe him to be a thought-leader in the space of metals and monetary policy.

Here is my unedited conversation with Andy from this week:

Hi, Andy. First off, what do you make of China shutting itself down again for Covid this recent time. They may be starting to lift restrictions now, but is there any chance they are doing this on purpose and it’s unrelated to Covid, in your opinion?

Well that would certainly add to the price inflation in the west and perhaps force the hand of the Fed a bit faster, but I would like to think they are not that stupid.

You can see the massive unrest and anger from their population being forced to lock down. It seems that the Chinese probably created Covid in the Wuhan lab but I am not sure they deliberately released it.

As you can see, once let out of the bottle, it goes everywhere, even through lockdowns.

Regardless, when do you think China will return to some normalcy?

Normalcy? Not sure we will ever see normalcy as long as the communist party runs the show. However, Covid will burn itself out and the lockdowns will end but it could take months.

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

Ten Events That Could Trigger a Stock Market Crash in 2022

Surprises aren’t surprises if you’re prepared

A man at the NYSE looks up at the ticker tape.

It is unlikely that the American stock market will crash in 2022.

Consumer spending is ramping back up, inflation is soaring, credit’s cheap and easy, and politicians are so desperate to keep this hot potato from dropping on their watch that they’ll go to nearly any length to avoid a crash.

That said, there’s no excuse not to be vigilant and extremely wary in these economically absurd times.

We can only be certain about one thing: Uncertainty.

With that in mind, let’s look at ten of the most likely surprises that could crash the stock market despite all attempts to keep the house of cards rising ever higher.

1. No more free money

The Biden administration has signaled its intention to stop printing as many stimulus trillions this year as they did last year. This is a good thing for the economy, but passive market extractors don’t like it one bit.

If the Dems fully shut down the printing press, it could trigger a market crash. But they won’t. They’ll slow it down for a bit, watch the markets totter, then fire it back up again and say, “Well hey, we tried.”

Can you blame them? Wouldn’t you print free money if you owned the money printer and could use it to get yourself re-elected?

2. Snowpocalypse

All that is necessary to extinguish the human race is for winter to blow a little colder, a little longer.

No, I’m not talking about a Day After Tomorrow situation.

More of a Texas energy fiasco, which left 4.5 million without power and water, cost tens of billions, left thousands with crippling debt, and saw more than 200 people (including a baby) freeze to death.

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

The Clouds Have Cleared in 2021, and What We Are Seeing Is a Dystopian 2022

The Clouds Have Cleared in 2021, and What We Are Seeing Is a Dystopian 2022

Photo by Javier Quiroga

This year was a doozy. Right out of the gate, millionaires were sounding the alarm that the markets were looking overvalued while reducing their risk exposure.

In February we got a taste of what could be the “end game” for the U.S. dollar as we saw it lose more of its grip as global reserve currency. Of course, it won’t collapse overnight because market psychology is still propping it up (for now).

But three big major economic influences have made 2021 one to remember. This chaotic “trifecta of market turbulence” kept the media busy and retirement savers on the edge of their seats.

So without further ado, let’s dive into the first one…

The confused Fed

Back in 2019 when the repo markets started going crazy, we reported how the Fed’s “confused” response only added fuel to a fire that continued to burn into this year.

And this year, one word you might have heard coming from Powell’s mouth with nauseating frequency to describe rising inflation was “transitory.” Over and over again, Powell’s confused Fed kept downplaying inflation…

Until it was obvious to everybody that inflation wasn’t transitory any longer. When Senator Pat Toomey challenged Powell during an appearance before Congress, the Fed chairman was forced to change his tune:

Powell explained that while the word has “different meanings to different people,” the Federal Reserve “tend to use it to mean that it won’t leave a permanent mark in the form of higher inflation.

“I think it’s — it’s probably a good time to retire that word and try to explain more clearly what we mean,” Powell added.

(We’ll discuss this in greater detail in a moment.)

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

Look Out Below: Why a Rug-Pull Flash Crash Makes Perfect Sense

Look Out Below: Why a Rug-Pull Flash Crash Makes Perfect Sense

It makes perfect financial sense to crash the market and no sense to reward the retail options marks by pushing it higher.

An extraordinary opportunity to scoop up mega-millions in profits has arisen, and grabbing all this free money makes perfect financial sense. Now the question is: will those who have the means to grab the dough have the guts to do so?

Here’s the opportunity: retail punters have gone wild for call options, churning $2.6 trillion in mostly short-term calls–bets on gains now, not later. This expansion of retail options exposure is unprecedented not just in its volume but in its concentration in short-term bets (options that expire in a few days) and in mega-cap tech companies that are commanding rich premiums for options.

Goldman Stunned By The Record $2.6 Trillion In Option Notional Traded Last Friday

The options market is like every other market only more so. The price of an option–a bet that a stock, ETF or index will go up or down before the option expires–is sensitive to the volatility of the underlying equity, the demand of other punters for options and the premium being demanded for time: the farther out the expiration date, the higher the cost of the option.

Recall that anyone with 100 shares of the underlying equity can write/originate an option. Each option controls 100 shares, so a call option that is listed at $1 costs the buyer of the call $100.

This is very sweet leverage if the market goes your way. You get all the gains of the 100 shares for a cost considerably less than buying the 100 shares outright. No wonder retail punters are going crazy for this cheap leverage to maximize gains in “can’t lose” trades.

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

Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It

Why We Could Be Staring Down The Barrel of A Catastrophic NASDAQ Crash And Not Even Know It

Covid. Gamma. Options. Is it any wonder we haven’t noticed that we are teetering on the edge just yet?

It would certainly take a special confluence of factors for us to be staring down the barrel of a an unprecedented crash in tech stocks without noticing it’s coming. But I’m starting to entertain the idea that that is exactly where we are, we may not know how much pain we are truly in for – and we might not fathom how quickly it could come on and surprise us.

For a little while now my friend on Twitter @rosemontseneca has been quietly pontificating that we are living 1999 all over again, we just don’t notice it yet. I’m starting to seriously agree with him and I have been thinking to myself over the past week: “Why aren’t other people making this comparison yet? Stocks are extremely overvalued. What’s ‘different this time’?”

Indeed, I believe the next crash is going to come as a breakneck-style surprise. If I had a chance to publish this piece before Halloween, I was going to make the analogy of somebody sneaking in the back door of the house and waiting around the corner in the kitchen to hack us to death when we went to make our “stoned-in-our-underwear at 2AM” bologna sandwich. But instead I wound up going with the gun analogy for the title because I was too lazy to get this article out in the month of October.

Halloween Kills' Review: A Nostalgic Mix Tape Of Previous Michael Myers  Sequels
“Bologna sandwich, anyone?” / Photo: Halloween Kills

But analogies aside,  the point is still the same: the next big market plunge could be any day now, and will likely be led by tech. Let me explain my reasoning.

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

Albert Edwards: “It’s Starting To Feel A Bit Like July 2008”

Albert Edwards: “It’s Starting To Feel A Bit Like July 2008”

One of the theories seeking to explain the Lehman collapse and the ensuing financial crisis points to the record surge in oil prices which rose as high as $150 in the summer of 2008, and which combined with tight monetary conditions, precipitated a giant dollar margin call which in turn pricked the housing bubble with catastrophic consequences. In his latest note, SocGen’s resident permabear draws on that analogy and writes that “as energy prices surge with a backdrop of central bank tightening it’s starting to feel a bit like July 2008″ referring to that moment of “unparalleled central bank madness as the ECB raised rates just as oil prices hit $150 and the recession arrived.”

Is today any different?

Pointing to the recent surge in global energy prices (described in detail in Gasflation), Edwards writes that “the current high energy prices will hugely impact the debate about whether the post-pandemic surge in inflation is transitory or permanent.” And while we wait for the Fed (and to a much lesser extent the ECB) to commence tapering as neither will be willing to admit they were wrong about “transitory” being permanent, financial conditions are already sharply tighter with breakeven inflation rates (a proxy for market inflation expectations) surging, especially in Europe, and especially in the UK where the Retail Price Index points to 7% inflation as soon as April.

While market are perhaps hoping that central banks will reverse their path similar to what, the Fed did in Dec 2018, a toxic price/wage spiral has already taken hold as “ultra-tight labor markets conspire with households being bludgeoned by higher energy prices and the cost of living generally.”

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

Michael Pento: First Disinflation, Then Deflation, Then Big-Time Inflation

Michael Pento: First Disinflation, Then Deflation, Then Big-Time Inflation

Suddenly investors are panicked that (hyper)inflation is taking over.

But what if they’re mistaken? That could be a costly mistake if they’re betting their portfolio’s future on it. Because there’s a strong case to be made that we’re now actually entering a period of dis-inflation, one that has a high risk of tipping into outright deflation by next year.

To argue this, investment manager Michael Pento, who pulls no punches, joins Wealthion for this video explaining why the Fed and Congress don’t currently have sufficient air cover to continue the same magnitude of stimulus the market is now addicted to — and thus won’t be able to resume it until after the next painful market correction arrives.

Michael then proceeds to explain why the bond market is such a ticking time bomb right now for investors.

And, of course, he shares his views on his favored asset classes for each stage of the upcoming progression he sees:

1. first disinflation, then…

2. outright deflation, and then…

3. a hugely inflationary response from our central planners

Watch the full interview below:

If You Don’t See Any Risk, Ask Who Will “Buy the Dip” in a Freefall?

If You Don’t See Any Risk, Ask Who Will “Buy the Dip” in a Freefall?

Nobody thinks a euphoric rally could ever go bidless, but as Greenspan belatedly admitted, liquidity is not guaranteed.

The current market melt-up is taken as nearly risk-free because the Fed has our back, i.e. the Federal Reserve will intervene long before any market decline does any damage.

It’s assumed the Fed or its proxies, i.e. the Plunge Protection Team, will be the buyer in any freefall sell-off: no matter how many punters are selling, the PPT will keep buying with its presumably unlimited billions.

If this looks risk-free, ask who else will be “buying the dip” in a freefall?Former Fed Chair Alan Greenspan answered this question in his post-2008 crash essayNever Saw It Coming: Why the Financial Crisis Took Economists By Surprise (Dec. 2013 Foreign Affairs):

“They (financial firms) failed to recognize that market liquidity is largely a function of the degree of investors’ risk aversion, the most dominant animal spirit that drives financial markets. But when fear-induced market retrenchment set in, that liquidity disappeared overnight, as buyers pulled back. In fact, in many markets, at the height of the crisis of 2008, bids virtually disappeared.”

For the uninitiated, bids are the price offered to buyers of stocks and ETFs and the ask is the price offered to sellers. When bids virtually disappear, this means buyers have vanished: everyone willing to buy on the way down (known as catching the falling knife) has already bought and been crushed with losses, and so there’s nobody left (and no trading bots, either) to buy.

When buyers vanish, the market goes bidless, meaning when you enter your “sell” order at a specific price (limit order), there’s nobody willing to buy your shares at the current price. The shares remains yours all the way down.

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

The Stock Market, Fatally Wounded by the Truth, Will Stumble and Crash

The Stock Market, Fatally Wounded by the Truth, Will Stumble and Crash

It didn’t have to be this way, but this is the reality we must now face: truth is fatal to fraud, and our entire financial-political system is a fraud.

The stock market has just been punctured by the thin blades of truth. It is fatally wounded but nobody dares notice. The wounds are barely visible, but the internal damage is mortal. The stock market is already stumbling and will soon crash.

The banquet’s participants ignore the faltering market because the rules are we never reveal the truth, or acknowledge it, or discuss it, no matter how obvious, because truth is fatal to fraud. So the stock market’s vital signs are in freefall but the conversation remains upbeat and light: stimulus, rapid growth in the second half, etc., all the patter of a carefully constructed illusion that fraud is forever as long as the truth never comes out.

Alas, the truth has emerged from the shadows, despite the silence of the insiders and the financial media. Here are the truths that have emerged like karmic genies:

1. The stock market is nothing but one giant fraud. The entire market is corrupt and rigged from the ground up. The fraud is systemic, designed into every tendril of the market. It was a useful deception to blame it all on “bad players,” but now the truth has been revealed: the market is nothing but a rigged game enriching insiders.

2. The Fed is a fraud. All the Federal Reserve has accomplished in 13 years of goosing the stock market is unprecedented wealth and income inequality as the fraud of the Fed has boosted the fraud of the market, which has fatally undermined America’s social and economic orders. Please read this short paragraph and let it sink in. Monopoly Versus Democracy (Foreign Affairs):

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

UNIDOS HACIA EL FUTURO

“The markets are the product of 1999 & 2007 hooking up for a one night stand.”
Tweet by Danielle DiMartino Booth (@DiMartinoBooth), 25th August 2020.

“In the middle of the journey of our life, I came to / Myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost.”
Dante, Inferno.

“Zoom is now worth more than IBM.”
“I don’t know if that says more about Zoom or IBM.”
Tweets by Morgan Housel (@morganhousel), 31st August 2020.

By the mid 1970s, film director William Friedkin was on a roll. 1971’s The French Connection bagged him an Oscar and widespread critical acclaim; 1973’s The Exorcist became the highest grossing Warner Bros film of all time. How did Friedkin follow up on all this monstrous success ? He decided to adapt Georges Arnaud’s novel The Wages of Fear (Le Salaire de la peur), in which down-on-their-luck truck drivers in Latin America attempt to ferry nitroglycerine across a treacherous mountain range in order to extinguish an oil well fire. The resultant 1977 release was called Sorcerer. It sank more or less with all hands.

Which is a shame, because Sorcerer – or Wages of Fear as it was somewhat unimaginatively titled in the UK (see poster below) – has moments that are pure cinema. The sequence where Roy Scheider and Francisco Rabal pilot their ramshackle truck over a threadbare rope bridge across a river in flood is one of the most extraordinary in film history (and very Werner Herzog). All of which vindicates screenwriter William Goldman’s assessment that in the movie business, nobody knows anything.

Source: https://www.originalfilmart.com/products/sorcerer-quad

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

Memo from Insiders: Dear Bagholders, Thanks for Buying Our Shares at the Top

Memo from Insiders: Dear Bagholders, Thanks for Buying Our Shares at the Top

The self-sustaining recovery is a fantasy that’s evaporated.

What looks like a powerful, can’t-lose rally to newbies is recognized as distribution by old hands. In low-volume markets (as in the past few months), insiders holding large positions can’t dump all their shares at once or the price of the stock would plummet due to the thinness of the bid.

The only way to get top-dollar for one’s overvalued shares is to play distribution games: sell a little each day on the upticks, and buy back shares when they threaten to drop below the key support levels followed by trading algos.

When insiders have finished distributing their shares to naive and trusting bagholders at the top, then the price can flush lower with a velocity that shocks the complacent bagholders who saw only the inevitability of an endless rally rather than the inevitability of a collapse of bubble valuations.

Stocks are priced for a V-shaped recovery and/or $1 trillion in federal giveaways per month. Neither is possible. The V-shaped recovery hopes were based on $6 trillion in federal/Federal Reserve stimulus washing over the nation, boosting household incomes and opening spigots of cash for enterprises and local governments.

The basic idea was to give the economy a needed shot of adrenaline to get to to the point where a recovery would be self-sustaining: companies would hire back laid-off workers, people would start borrowing and over-consuming again, sales and income tax revenues would return to pre-pandemic levels, etc.

The self-sustaining recovery is a fantasy that’s evaporated. The spike in activity was all the giveaways being spent. Now that most of the free-money programs are expiring, there’s no more stimulus to spend.

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

If Stocks Don’t Hold Here We Could See Another Crash of Sorts

If Stocks Don’t Hold Here We Could See Another Crash of Sorts


Stocks have fallen hard over the weekend again. The media is pinning this drop on the potential for another COVID-19 pandemic, but the facts don’t support that theory.

At times like these, it’s essential to ignore narratives, and focus on price. With that in mind, the S&P 500 remains in an uptrend, barely (blue lines in the chart below). Stocks need to hold here for the bull market case to remain intact. 

If stocks break down from here, there are two items in play. One is support at 2,940 (lower green line in the chart below). The other is the gap established by the open on May 18th (blue rectangle in the chart below).

When we plot the S&P 500 against the VIX (inverted), it looks like there’s more downside to go here.

However, both breadth and credit suggest the downside is limited here.

My point with all of this is that today the market is literally a crap shoot. The easy money from the rally has been made, and the next trend is not clear yet. So now is NOT the time to be putting a load of capital to work.

However, if stocks don’t hold here, we could potentially see a crash down to 2,700.

That is a high reward type move. And one we need to consider.

Crash #2?

Crash #2?

President Trump is mocking Warren Buffett for having sold his airline stocks, Druckenmiller crying on TV about having been humbled by the market while every Robinhood retail trader piling into ever more into calls is laughing all the way to the bank. The professionals gobsmacked at the complete upside down events in markets compared to any other time in recorded history given the economic backdrop while retail is giddy jumping into any ticker symbol that’s moving valuations be damned, hey let’s even chase bankrupt companies, why not?


Sven Henrich✔@NorthmanTrader

This market is so bullish even bankrupt companies are rallying.

$HTZ

View image on Twitter

Anything goes in the market.

I myself, have been surprised by the recent vertical strength that keeps running from gap to gap to gap.

Sometimes you just have to laugh:


Sven Henrich✔@NorthmanTrader

$NYSE chart art.

View image on Twitter

On the day of the lows I talked about an awe-inspiring rally coming. Consider me sufficiently awe inspired.

And now the same folks that told people to buy stocks in January and February right before the crash are back out and telling people to buy stocks again except this time at much higher multiples and valuations.

My variant take here which may well turn out to be very wrong: The Fed is setting markets up for another crash. Why? Because they’ve set in motion a stock market mania we have not seen since the 2000 tech bubble. But this time while we’re still in a recession.

And it is a mania and it’s important to recognize this. And like all manias it’ll end badly. The amount of “ever’s” keep building up.

We have the highest market valuations ever (market cap to GDP) 151% on Friday’s close with old GDP data hence the real figure is higher. This chart from the beginning of June:

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

Olduvai IV: Courage
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