Allow me to present a very plain contrast. Please observe the weekly chart of the SPY below, from not so long ago. Notice how a bunch of the bars are green and a bunch are red? And how sometimes it goes down for a while, then it goes up, and then it goes down again? That’s a two-way market.
Now kindly observe the weekly chart of the exact same market over about the past half year. See any difference? Feel any difference? I sure do. It’s comic. Did they bring Bernie Madoff back from the dead?
And while all of this is going on, and even over a longer period, volatility has collapsed. I’m not even sure “collapsed” is a dramatic enough word, when we’ve plunged from 40 to barely-hanging-to-double-digits (and already sub-teens). Perhaps “pathetic” is a more appropriate adjective.
I would like to hoist my glass to one market, however, which seems to be getting healthier every day, which is good old gold. If anyone thinks the central bankers have things under control, look no farther than the record price of gold every day to understand how false this claim is.
