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One of the most disturbing scenes in the series Breaking Bad was when Todd shoots and kills a boy on a dirt bike after he witnessed Heisenberg, Jesse and Todd heist 900 gallons of methylamine. Jesse: “Todd, that Opie Dead Eyed piece of shit…”
That is similar to the feeling I got after the Fed hiked the funds rate as expected, but then declined to offer the stock market much relief for its ongoing temper tantrum.
(more…)Below are the Opening Notes and Bond Market segments from last Sunday’s edition of Notes From the Rabbit Hole, NFTRH 530. Jerome Powell was actually more firm than I expected. Atta boy Jay! Aside from my prognostication the more important stuff (IMO) begins at the 4th paragraph. That is where I put on my tin foil hat and tell what I think. It does seem to dovetail with what we saw today out of the Fed chief.
It is likely that the Fed is going to raise the Funds rate on Wednesday because this is a confidence game and a Fed suddenly showing weakness and doubt could exacerbate the market’s already frayed nerves. As a side note the 76% reading of CME futures traders expecting the hike to happen has not changed in the last few weeks.
(more…)Our target for the first half of 2019 is and has been the 2100 to 2200 area for the S&P 500. A friend asked…
I’ve been meaning to ask (and possibly) know the answer, 2100-2200 for H1 2019 is your ultimate bear market target or opening act?
Opening act. It could be the ultimate target because there is a lot of support at that area and a good solid bear phase could put the Fed on ice and impose some changes to Donald Trump’s bull in a China shop policy style.
(more…)The macro has moved through a time of moderately rising inflationary concerns when economies were cycling up, many commodities were firm and risk was ‘on’. Contrary to the views of inflation-oriented gold bugs, that was not the time to buy gold stocks.
As I have belabored again and again, the right time is when the inflation view is on the outs, gold is rising vs. stock markets, the economy is in question, risks of a steepening yield curve take center stage (the flattening is so mature now that steepening will be a clear and present risk moving forward) and by extension of all of those conditions, confidence declines.
Well?…
“The Harbinger of Doom”? Of course we (well, the media) are talking about the yield curve AKA Amigo #3 of our 3 happy-go-lucky riders of the macro. I have annoyed you repeatedly with this imagery in order to show that three important macro factors needed to finish riding before situation turns decidedly negative.
Amigo 1: SPX (or stocks in general)/Gold Ratio
Amigo 2: 30 Year Treasury Yield
Amigo 3: Yield Curve
In honor of Amigo 3’s arrival to prime time let’s have a good old fashioned Amigos update (going in reverse order) and see if we can annoy a few more people along the way. 🙂 (more…)
