Mnuchin later stopped by several survivalist stores to stock up on freeze-dried food, gas, and ammunition before heading off to his office in Cheyenne Mountain. https://t.co/qSLEOeigQv
— Rudy Havenstein, Russian-Israeli diamond oligarch. (@RudyHavenstein) December 23, 2018
Secretary Mnuchin convened individual calls with the CEOs of the nation’s six largest banks
The banks all confirmed ample liquidity is available for lending to consumer and business markets.
If amid the barrage of negative news hitting the market this quarter there has been one outstanding item which would have sent it sharply (even) lower, that would be a flashing red headline – or a tweet from the president – announcing that Trump has fired Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
And while to many such an act would seem unthinkable, even from someone as unorthodox and unpredictable as Trump, it now appears that’s precisely the outcome the market will have to worry about next as Bloomberg reports that the president has discussed firing Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “as his frustration with the central bank chief intensified following this week’s interest-rate increase and months of stock-market losses”, citing four people familiar with the matter.
Continue reading “Trump Is Considering Firing Fed Chair Powell”
Guest Post by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – The last leaves are falling from the trees. And the last days of December are counting down, like the quiet moments before an execution.
Friday, the Dow fell nearly another 500 points.
From Bloomberg:
Investors rushed out of U.S. equity funds in the second-biggest weekly exit on record, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, as the market sell-off pushed traders to seek safe havens.
U.S. stock funds bled $27.6 billion in the days through Dec. 12, which includes last Friday’s plunge in the S&P 500 Index that capped the worst week for the gauge since March, according to BofA’s note, which cited EPFR Global data. This is the second-biggest redemption since February’s spike in the VIX volatility measure, according to Jefferies Financial Group Inc.
Is this one of those rare times when the doom-mongers’ predictions understate the approaching danger?
Guest Post by Sven Henrich
This year many technical and macro warning signs were ignored by investors and Wall Street alike.
Long gone is the record optimism that permeated the landscape not only in January but even as late as August and September. Wall Street analysts kept raising price targets on key stocks such as Apple AAPL, -1.98% and telling investors to buy every dip. Only now are they downgrading those same stocks by 20%-25% from where they were in September.
With a record 90% of asset classes down for the year and almost half of S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.77% components in a bear market, hopes are for a Santa Claus rally to save what’s left of a terrible investment year. And while markets may still see sizable rallies, the warning signs are still all around us, and they send a clear message: The 10-year bull market will come to an end, and the investing and trading climate is changing dramatically, possibly, for years to come.
I’m outlining several of these key technical and macro warning signs as they are important to understanding what investors and traders have to contend with into 2019.
Continue reading “Stock investors, you have now been warned for the last time”
Guest Post by Bill Bonner
BALTIMORE, MARYLAND – Trading continued yesterday… with stocks swinging lustily from tree to tree like drunken monkeys.
When the closing bell finally sounded, the Dow was down just 79 points. The monkeys were greatly relieved.
And today, the Fed sets up another drink. Here’s a headline from The Wall Street Journal:
Fed May Slow Rate Increase Pace
Our advice to readers: Relax… and enjoy the comedy show.
“This country, and with it most of the Western world, is presently going through a period of inflation and credit expansion. As the quantity of money in circulation and deposits subject to check increases, there prevails a general tendency for the prices of commodities and services to rise. Business is booming. Yet such a boom, artificially engineered by monetary and credit expansion, cannot last forever. It must come to an end sooner or later. For paper money and bank deposits are not a proper substitute for non-existing capital goods. Economic theory has demonstrated in an irrefutable way that a prosperity created by an expansionist monetary and credit policy is illusory and must end in a slump, an economic crisis. It has happened again and again in the past, and it will happen in the future, too.” – Ludwig von Mises – 1952
And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you, I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it’s a very very
Mad world, mad world
/https://public-media.smithsonianmag.com/filer/4f/9b/4f9bad96-304a-4451-85a7-c9fa56f4cc53/screen_shot_2017-10-04_at_54310_pm.png)
The haunting Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears’ Mad World speaks to me in these tumultuous mad times. It must speak to many others, as the music video has been viewed over 132 million times. The melancholy video is shot from the top of an urban school building in a decaying decrepit bleak neighborhood with school children creating various figures on the concrete pavement below. The camera pans slowly to Gary Jules singing on the rooftop and captures the concrete jungle of non-descript architecture, identical office towers, gray cookie cutter apartment complexes, and a world devoid of joy and vibrancy.
The song was influenced by Arthur Janov’s theories in his book The Primal Scream. The chorus above about his “dreams of dying were the best he ever had” is representative of letting go of this mad world and being free of the monotony and release from the insanity of this world. Our ego fools us into thinking the madness of this world is actually normal. Day after day we live lives of quiet desperation. Despite all evidence our world is spinning out of control and the madness of the crowds is visible in financial markets, housing markets, politics, social justice, and social media, the level of normalcy bias among the populace has reached astounding levels, as we desperately try to convince ourselves everything will be alright. But it won’t.
Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
October can be an unforgiving month.
Continue reading ““It’s Possible The Decline Has Already Begun…””
Guest Post by Jesse
Asks my old friend, Dominique, from the Côte d’Azur.
No, not yet.
Close, but no cigar.
This is still just a correction. It is steeper in the big cap tech, but that is natural given its high beta and outsized role in this latest bubble.
But looking at the three, they do not yet bear the mark of an attempt at a rally back from the first drop that ultimately fails, and breaks key support to the downside. This would set up a more substantial plunge of around twenty+ percent.
Continue reading “Are US Equities Flashing a ‘Crash Signature’”
“In retrospect, the spark might seem as ominous as a financial crash, as ordinary as a national election, or as trivial as a Tea Party. The catalyst will unfold according to a basic Crisis dynamic that underlies all of these scenarios: An initial spark will trigger a chain reaction of unyielding responses and further emergencies. The core elements of these scenarios (debt, civic decay, global disorder) will matter more than the details, which the catalyst will juxtapose and connect in some unknowable way. If foreign societies are also entering a Fourth Turning, this could accelerate the chain reaction. At home and abroad, these events will reflect the tearing of the civic fabric at points of extreme vulnerability – problem areas where America will have neglected, denied, or delayed needed action.” – The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
The paragraph above captures everything that has happened, is happening, and will happen during this Fourth Turning. It was written over two decades ago, but no one can deny its accuracy regarding our present situation. The spark was a financial crash. The response to the financial crash by the financial and governmental entities, along with their Deep State co-conspirators who created the financial collapse due to their greed and malfeasance, led to the incomprehensible election of Donald Trump, as the deplorables in flyover country evoked revenge upon the corrupt establishment.
Guest Post by John Hussman
Let’s be clear. October’s market decline was a rather mild warning shot. At its lowest close, the S&P 500 lost -9.9% from its September peak, before rebounding in recent sessions. As I noted during the 2000-2002 and 2007-2009 collapses, intermittent “fast, furious, prone-to-failure” rebounds are among the factors that encourage investors to hold on through the entirety of major declines. After particularly severe down-legs in the market (which we have not yet observed), these rebounds can extend for weeks, and sometimes approach gains of as much as 19% before the market plunges again.
Get used to that kind of volatility. Though it will be essential to monitor market internals for periodic shifts in investor psychology, by the completion of the current market cycle, I continue to expect the S&P 500 to lose nearly two-thirds of its value.
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
Nobody dares discuss it openly for fear of triggering a panic, but there aren’t enough lifeboats for everyone.
There’s no shortage of explanations on the whys and wherefores of the US stock market’s recent swoon / swan-dive / plummet. Here’s a few of the many credible explanations:
Continue reading “What’s The Real Meaning Of The Stock Market Swoon?”
Authored by Chris Martenson via PeakProsperity.com,
Is this the market’s breaking point?
I admit: I’m a permabear.
This is no surprise to those who know and have followed me over the years. But I’m publicly proclaiming my ‘bearishness’ because doing so might open up a needed and long overdue dialog.
Here’s my fundamental position: Infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible.
Cutting to the chase, this is why I predict a major crash/collapse across stocks, bonds and real estate is on the way.
The recent market weakness seen over the past two weeks is nothing compared to what’s in store. As we’ve been carefully chronicling, bubbles burst from ‘the outside in’, starting at the weaker places at the periphery before progressing to the center.
Emerging market equities are now down -26% from their January highs and -18% year-to-date. China’s stocks market is down -32%, even with substantial intervention by the government to prop things up.
Continue reading “Is The Long-Anticipated Crash Now Upon Us?”
Only 13 days to the mid-term elections. The Brett Kavanaugh hearings were a disaster for the Soros led left wing lunatics. The blue wave was turning into the blue puddle. Trump’s poll ratings were the highest of his presidency. The dimocrats had been a shoe in to take back the House by flipping 30 or 40 seats. But, you could sense by the tone of the left wing propaganda media, things had changed. Trump’s legions were motivated. Moderates were leaning right due to the hysterics of the left wingers in trying to stop Kavanaugh. Even blacks are moving toward Trump.
So with their dreams of regaining the House slipping away, there suddenly appeared a horde of 8,000 Hondurans heading thousands of miles for the U.S. border riding on trucks and being paid by someone. This “spontaneous” army of the 3rd world shitholers somehow is being transported and fed by someone at a cost of hundreds of thousands per day to arrive on our border on elections day. I wonder who could be behind this.
Then today, every left wing politician and news organization in the country receives a bomb in the mail, designed to be caught before it could ever do any damage, even if it was capable of doing damage. Those poor dimocrats. It must be those evil Trump supporting right wingers who sent these faux bombs. The narrative is being constructed as we speak. Vote for Republicans and they will bomb you. I wonder who benefits by this blatant false flag operation.
On the same day as the bomb narrative we have the stock market falling 608 points. It had hit an all-time high three weeks ago. It is now down over 2,300 points since then. Trump had been crowing about the record and has taken credit for this soaring stock market. Did he inadvertently set himself up as the fall guy? Are his Deep State enemies on Wall Street purposely tanking the market before the mid-terms? What if it goes down another 2,000 or 3,000 points by November 6. Do you think that will swing some voters to the left? I wonder.
This sure seems like an organized coordinated operation to derail Trump and his Red Wave in the upcoming elections. The 2008 financial collapse most certainly benefited Obama versus McCain. Will these transparently blatant tactics work. I wonder.
Authored by Kevin Muir via The Macro Tourist blog,
The other day I wrote a piece “When will chasing the hot stock no longer work?” which outlined how “price momentum” was the main driving factor during the recent stock market rally. I went through how value stocks have been sucking wind ever since the Great Financial Crisis.
The article got a lot of feedback, but there was one email that I wanted to share. It comes from Andy Mayer – Albion Green founder – a financial markets trainer, lecturer, consultant, and just all-around-good-guy. He sent me an interaction he had with one of his students:
Continue reading “Are Millennials About To Get Slaughtered?”
