Of all the charts flickering this morning, the one that has me the most concerned is Bitcoin.
This “coin” has pushed about $1600 higher and, far more important, it is approaching that dashed line which represents a breakout level. Strictly speaking, BTC needs to clear $82,000 to really get going, but even the act of pushing past last weeks’ high will give it momentum.
Such a breakout in crypto which add even more fuel to the endlessly fueled asset rally which has been in place since late 2008/early 2009. At this point, it has been about eighteen years since an honest-to-God bear market has visited the country, and since $40 trillion in debt has managed to stave off any others, maybe the government has found the ultimate source of public placation: just keep throwing trillions at the issue to permanently establish a false sense of prosperity.
Earnings season is pretty much over, although the energy giants Exxon and Chevron reported this morning. In spite of oil doubling in price over the past couple of months, these reports actually sent both companies into a bit of a tumble.
I did a premium post yesterday about the price gaps for XLE and XOP, so perhaps those trades will work out nicely.
Any surviving bears out there, such as I, are surely feeling quite dispirited right now (daily lifetime highs will do that to a man). I am still profitable for the year of our Lord 2026, but good God, March was a festival compared to the misery of April. No chart better captures the demolition of the bears than the VIX, which has been cut by more than HALF, plunging from around 36 to 16.
I am entering the day medium-conservative, and frankly I’m probably just going to keep trimming, since only global thermonuclear war is going to take this market down more than 5%.
