I was looking at the economic database (available to premium members) and stumbled upon the odd symbol FR:ANXAVS which is described as “Value of Shipments” (defined in detail here). This spans decades, and the relatively steady up/down pattern is clear to see, in spite of all the Fed’s best efforts to strangle the life out of natural economic cycles:
I fired up the Layered Charts (again, a premium member feature) to overlay the S&P 500 cash with the above economic cycle.
Two things stuck out:
- How the stock market was prevented from its own natural alignment with the latest downturn, thanks to the trillions and trillions of Fed Bucks (that is to say, how the blue line kept climbing in the face of a clear economic downturn);
- My view that when the stock market finally does succumb to reality, it has a debt to pay (in the form of point #1) and the downturn will be that much more severe.
