I’ll start by saying how pleased I am to know that Dave Chapelle was unharmed during the potentially fatal attack on him last night (and how cosmically great it was that Chris Rock was on hand to jump on stage and ask “Was that Will Smith?”). I mean, having lost Richard Pryor, George Carlin, Norm MacDonald, and Gilbert Gottfried, we need to keep our remaining talent safe. I simply do not want to live in a world where Amy Schumer is considered the funny one.
As for the markets, let’s just say I will be absolutely relieved when this stupid day is over. I can’t stand Fed days. Seriously. I’ve got plenty of dry powder, though, and for the /ES, my general view is that a rally to 4250 represents a good-to-short-stocks level, whereas 4300 is the oh-God-please-don’t-go-any-higher level. The reaction to whatever garbage the Fed vomits will be violent, and utterly confusing, and you must NOT interpret any given move as THE move. It’s going to be a shit-show.
Of course, it is utterly understandable that folks anticipate a hearty rally, because we have been awfully battered down in recent weeks. Over the course of 2022, the NQ (shown below) has had a series of massive beatings and stomach-churning recoveries, none of which broken the general bearish trend. The bounce we saw Monday and Tuesday doesn’t undo much of the damage, and in this fake trading world we often find ourselves in, it would be a cinch for the masses to pile in to stocks on the basis they are “cheap”. That fat dork Jim Cramer is already loudly touting “Five Stocks to Buy Now“, which to my mind just saves me the trouble of coming up with new short ideas. All the same, for bears, yeah, this isn’t a slam dunk.
But it all comes down to timeframe, folks. Yes, yes, the market might rally. Hell, it might rally for two weeks, like during that horrible March 14-29 instance. But I’m not talking days or weeks. I’m talking months and years (which is my my options go so far out in the future). I’ll say it as plainly as I can: in a lifetime spent as a chartist, this is the cleanest market top I have seen since the year 2000l
All of which leads me to one inescapable pronouncement.
