Wall Street professionals wiped off all the poop from yesterday's 300+ price collapse on the DJIA and set about to bidding up risky assets to even riskier levels, sending the Dow and other averages soaring to new all-time closing highs.
Making matters even more preposterous, sinister, or outlandish was the reading of the Fed's Beige Book at 2:00 pm ET, which sent the US Dollar index off three-year lows to near the highs of the day at 4:00 pm ET, the closing bell on Wall Street.
If there's a soul left on the planet that hasn't bowed to the power of the Federal Reserve and its host of central bank and commercial cronies, then that person is simply out-of-touch.
Silver and gold have wallowed near multi-year bottoms for four long years while stocks have gone absolutely ballistic. Paper promises are worth much, much more than solid gold or silver in today's phony funny money world.
It's almost enough to make one give up writing on the subject (pondered here nearly every damn day).
Today's gains on the Dow Industrials were the largest since the election of November 8, 2016.
At the Close, Wednesday, January 17, 2018:
Dow: 26,115.65, +322.79 (+1.25%)
NASDAQ: 7,298.28, +74.59 (+1.03%)
S&P 500: 2,802.56, +26.14 (+0.94%)
NYSE Composite: 13,352.39, +105.53 (+0.80%)
Wednesday, January 17, 2018
Tuesday, January 16, 2018
Turnaround Tuesday: Stocks Sink Into S---Hole
After soaring over 26,000 in the early going, the Dow Jones Industrial Average - and the rest of the main US indices - took an ugly turn to the negative, an elongated move which comprised nearly the entirety of the trading session.
The Dow, once as high as 26,086.12 fell to an intra-day low of 25,702.99, a 383-point decline. The blue chips gathered some momentum at the close, likely the work of short-covering, as sellers dominated the day's activity.
While the Dow finished with just a blemish, the NASDAQ was more badly injured, dropping nearly half a percentage point, though it too was soaring earlier in the session, as were the S&P and Composite.
There was little news upon which to hang the selling spree and it came as quite a surprise in the opening session following the MLK holiday. The energy and basic materials sectors took most of the downside, falling by 1.16% and 1.43%, respectively. Crude oil lost three-quarters of a percent, with WTI crude ending the day at 63.82 per barrel. The abrupt turnaround in the oil price could be the canary in the coal mine, but perhaps the biggest story of the day was the almighty US dollar, which fell to a three-year low, bottoming out at 90.28, the worst intra-day price since December, 2014.
Having the dollar and oil fall in unison is not the usual course of business. Such activity is the stuff that keeps the stomachs churning on Wall Street. No doubt, copious amounts of bismuth subsalicylate were consumed by belly-aching analysts.
If not apparent enough already, Tuesday's action prompted more than a few to reconsider portfolio allocations and question whether or not the Fed really does have the market's back.
Fear of sliding into some kind of hell hole or other equally unattractive place became paramount throughout the day.
Congress has three days in which to craft some kind of compromise budget, risking yet another blow to its already badly-damaged reputation.
At the Close, Tuesday, January 16,2018:
Dow: 25,792.86, -10.33 (-0.04%)
NASDAQ: 7,223.69, -37.38 (-0.51%)
S&P 500: 2,776.42, -9.82 (-0.35%)
NYSE Composite: 13,247.85, -46.49 (-0.35%)
The Dow, once as high as 26,086.12 fell to an intra-day low of 25,702.99, a 383-point decline. The blue chips gathered some momentum at the close, likely the work of short-covering, as sellers dominated the day's activity.
While the Dow finished with just a blemish, the NASDAQ was more badly injured, dropping nearly half a percentage point, though it too was soaring earlier in the session, as were the S&P and Composite.
There was little news upon which to hang the selling spree and it came as quite a surprise in the opening session following the MLK holiday. The energy and basic materials sectors took most of the downside, falling by 1.16% and 1.43%, respectively. Crude oil lost three-quarters of a percent, with WTI crude ending the day at 63.82 per barrel. The abrupt turnaround in the oil price could be the canary in the coal mine, but perhaps the biggest story of the day was the almighty US dollar, which fell to a three-year low, bottoming out at 90.28, the worst intra-day price since December, 2014.
Having the dollar and oil fall in unison is not the usual course of business. Such activity is the stuff that keeps the stomachs churning on Wall Street. No doubt, copious amounts of bismuth subsalicylate were consumed by belly-aching analysts.
If not apparent enough already, Tuesday's action prompted more than a few to reconsider portfolio allocations and question whether or not the Fed really does have the market's back.
Fear of sliding into some kind of hell hole or other equally unattractive place became paramount throughout the day.
Congress has three days in which to craft some kind of compromise budget, risking yet another blow to its already badly-damaged reputation.
At the Close, Tuesday, January 16,2018:
Dow: 25,792.86, -10.33 (-0.04%)
NASDAQ: 7,223.69, -37.38 (-0.51%)
S&P 500: 2,776.42, -9.82 (-0.35%)
NYSE Composite: 13,247.85, -46.49 (-0.35%)
Monday, January 15, 2018
Goldilocks Stock Market Is Becoming Idyllic Unicorn Utopia
Party hats and noise-makers for everyone!
The major US indices closed the second Friday in January at record levels. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!
The most recent stock market maneuverings are enough to make people consider quitting their jobs, as their money invested is making more.
How much more? Well, anybody with $100,000 invested in, say, a Dow index fund, on the last day of trading in 2017 (December 29), is ahead by $4386 as of the close Friday, January 12. That's like making over $2000 a week, or more than $100,000 a year.
Back in the 2006, the heyday of the sub-prime mortgage mania, people in places like San Diego were literally quitting their jobs, simply because their homes had risen in value by so much, sometimes as much as 150-200%. People in tony neighborhoods with $250,000 homes were being offered $500,000, $600,000 and more.
Well, we all know how that turned out, but the point of making money, either in real estate, or stocks, or anything else for that matter, relies largely upon one's entry and exit points.
To say that sometime in January would be a good time to at least trim some of one's stock holdings would not be considered bad advice. However, who would want to give up on a stock market that appears to be heading to the moon, orbiting it and then taking off toward outer space. After the great returns of 2017 - and the eight years prior to that - it's become apparent that "buy and hold" is the preferred strategy.
That makes sense, since the ongoing bull market is the second longest in market history and nudging along toward the longest ever, having begun in 2009, when the Dow bottomed out at 7,278.38 on March 20th. Having already tripled in value, another solid year could push the Dow (and the other averages) to quadrupling levels.
In other words, if you had $100,000 invested in March of 2009, you'd have over $350,000 today, on your way to $400,000. If you had $500,000 back then, you'd be close to $2 million, and if you haven't cashed out and retired already, you're a fool. (Seriously, anybody who can't make $2 million last 30 years is an idiot. It's $66,666 a year, or $1282 a week. That should be more than enough, even if you aren't keeping some of it in bonds at two percent).
So, stocks continue to ramp higher and probably aren't coming down any time soon. Plenty of people are what they call baby boomers and they're retiring in droves, many of them pulling money out of retirement funds. No matter how much these people remove from the market, it won't matter. There will be new buyers lining up to take their places, bid stocks higher, reap profits.
It's really amazing. Next, unicorns and money trees will be abundant.
At the Close, Friday, January 12, 2018:
Dow: 25,803.19, +228.46 (+0.89%)
NASDAQ: 7,261.06, +49.28 (+0.68%)
S&P 500: 2,786.24, +18.68 (+0.67%)
NYSE Composite: 13,294.34, +83.57 (+0.63%)
For the Week:
Dow: +507.32 (+2.01%)
NASDAQ: +124.50 (+1.74%)
S&P 500: +43.09 (1.57%)
NYSE Composite: +191.11 (+1.46%)
The major US indices closed the second Friday in January at record levels. Huzzah, huzzah, huzzah!
The most recent stock market maneuverings are enough to make people consider quitting their jobs, as their money invested is making more.
How much more? Well, anybody with $100,000 invested in, say, a Dow index fund, on the last day of trading in 2017 (December 29), is ahead by $4386 as of the close Friday, January 12. That's like making over $2000 a week, or more than $100,000 a year.
Back in the 2006, the heyday of the sub-prime mortgage mania, people in places like San Diego were literally quitting their jobs, simply because their homes had risen in value by so much, sometimes as much as 150-200%. People in tony neighborhoods with $250,000 homes were being offered $500,000, $600,000 and more.
Well, we all know how that turned out, but the point of making money, either in real estate, or stocks, or anything else for that matter, relies largely upon one's entry and exit points.
To say that sometime in January would be a good time to at least trim some of one's stock holdings would not be considered bad advice. However, who would want to give up on a stock market that appears to be heading to the moon, orbiting it and then taking off toward outer space. After the great returns of 2017 - and the eight years prior to that - it's become apparent that "buy and hold" is the preferred strategy.
That makes sense, since the ongoing bull market is the second longest in market history and nudging along toward the longest ever, having begun in 2009, when the Dow bottomed out at 7,278.38 on March 20th. Having already tripled in value, another solid year could push the Dow (and the other averages) to quadrupling levels.
In other words, if you had $100,000 invested in March of 2009, you'd have over $350,000 today, on your way to $400,000. If you had $500,000 back then, you'd be close to $2 million, and if you haven't cashed out and retired already, you're a fool. (Seriously, anybody who can't make $2 million last 30 years is an idiot. It's $66,666 a year, or $1282 a week. That should be more than enough, even if you aren't keeping some of it in bonds at two percent).
So, stocks continue to ramp higher and probably aren't coming down any time soon. Plenty of people are what they call baby boomers and they're retiring in droves, many of them pulling money out of retirement funds. No matter how much these people remove from the market, it won't matter. There will be new buyers lining up to take their places, bid stocks higher, reap profits.
It's really amazing. Next, unicorns and money trees will be abundant.
At the Close, Friday, January 12, 2018:
Dow: 25,803.19, +228.46 (+0.89%)
NASDAQ: 7,261.06, +49.28 (+0.68%)
S&P 500: 2,786.24, +18.68 (+0.67%)
NYSE Composite: 13,294.34, +83.57 (+0.63%)
For the Week:
Dow: +507.32 (+2.01%)
NASDAQ: +124.50 (+1.74%)
S&P 500: +43.09 (1.57%)
NYSE Composite: +191.11 (+1.46%)
Friday, January 12, 2018
Central Banks Have Complete Control Over Global Economies, Governments
US stock indices had their best showing of the new year on Thursday, with all the averages reaching new all-time highs.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is higher by 875 points in just the first eight sessions of 2018. That is extraordinary. It is so extraordinary that, at that pace - of a little more than 100 points per day - the Dow average would nearly double in value this year.
The gain would be over 20,000 points, putting the Dow Jones average somewhere in the range of 45,000 by year's end. In percentage terms, it would be up 80%. Anybody who has over 100,000 invested in stocks and is making less than $80,000 this year might as well take the year off. Why work when your money is doing so much of the heavy lifting?
Of course, that's a speculation. The Dow won't gain 80% this year, or will it?
Is the economy that good? Are US companies making that much money, that they are severely undervalued today?
Or, are central banks intervening in stock markets with money created out of thin air?
For answers, or, at least, hints, to the answers, see yesterday's post, or, any of the posts from the past eight or nine years which have tags or labels "central banks", "central bankers", or, "Federal Reserve."
At the Close, Thursday, January 11, 2018:
Dow: 25,574.73, +205.60 (+0.81%)
NASDAQ: 7,211.78, +58.21 (+0.81%)
S&P 500: 2,767.56, +19.33 (+0.70%)
NYSE Composite: 13,210.77, +104.17 (+0.79%)
The Dow Jones Industrial Average is higher by 875 points in just the first eight sessions of 2018. That is extraordinary. It is so extraordinary that, at that pace - of a little more than 100 points per day - the Dow average would nearly double in value this year.
The gain would be over 20,000 points, putting the Dow Jones average somewhere in the range of 45,000 by year's end. In percentage terms, it would be up 80%. Anybody who has over 100,000 invested in stocks and is making less than $80,000 this year might as well take the year off. Why work when your money is doing so much of the heavy lifting?
Of course, that's a speculation. The Dow won't gain 80% this year, or will it?
Is the economy that good? Are US companies making that much money, that they are severely undervalued today?
Or, are central banks intervening in stock markets with money created out of thin air?
For answers, or, at least, hints, to the answers, see yesterday's post, or, any of the posts from the past eight or nine years which have tags or labels "central banks", "central bankers", or, "Federal Reserve."
At the Close, Thursday, January 11, 2018:
Dow: 25,574.73, +205.60 (+0.81%)
NASDAQ: 7,211.78, +58.21 (+0.81%)
S&P 500: 2,767.56, +19.33 (+0.70%)
NYSE Composite: 13,210.77, +104.17 (+0.79%)
Thursday, January 11, 2018
First Red Day of 2018 is Laughable
Major US indices had their first negative day of the year on Wednesday, but the losses amounted to nothing more than rounding errors.
Stocks were off early in the day after reports that Japan and China were reducing their purchases of US treasury bonds, but the notion was simply shrugged off by the equity captains as buyers emerged to limit the losses.
Stocks have gain six of the first seven trading days of 2018, a trend that is likely to continue until central banks cease buying stocks outright. This story is getting rather stale, even though most Americans fail to realize that their pensions and 401k profits are being fueled by cash injections from the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England, People's Bank of China, and, the US Federal Reserve.
To believe that the Fed, being the world's most influential central bank, is not engaged in the purchase of stocks - either outright through their trading desk at the NY Fed or through member banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and others - is to suspend reality.
Global markets have neither seen nor experienced anything like this unprecedented and outrageous activity by financial sources which create money at will, the ramifications of which are likely to result in a massive, destructive inflationary hyper-spiral.
Here in the US and across the pond in Europe, central bankers openly wring their hands and express concern that inflation is too low, when in fact the worldwide money supply - the lone reliable barometer of excess liquidity - has been increased by trillions of dollars during the post-crisis era which began in March of 2009.
Nearly nine years have passed since the great financial crisis and the excesses have only grown, reaching monstrous proportions. For what other reason would gold and silver be suppressed so virulently other than to eliminate their standing as real money? Why are governments so intent on clamping down on cryptocurrencies? Central banks do not want competition in currencies.
It is clear that the central banks of the world have pulled the global economy into a fully fiat regime, printing money backed by nothing at an unprecedented pace.
Future historians and economists - if there is indeed a future at the end of this madness - will look upon this era as one of rampant money creation by policy-makers whose only aim is to keep the failed economies of developed nations in endless debt.
The idea that the Federal Reserve wishes to "normalize" interest rates is a laughable concept. Doing so would only facilitate the ballooning of debt everywhere, to utterly unplayable levels.
Enjoy the ride.
At the Close, Wednesday, January 10, 2018:
Dow: 25,369.13, -16.67 (-0.07%)
NASDAQ: 7,153.57, -10.01 (-0.14%)
S&P 500: 2,748.23, -3.06 (-0.11%)
NYSE Composite: 13,106.60, -14.24 (-0.11%)
Stocks were off early in the day after reports that Japan and China were reducing their purchases of US treasury bonds, but the notion was simply shrugged off by the equity captains as buyers emerged to limit the losses.
Stocks have gain six of the first seven trading days of 2018, a trend that is likely to continue until central banks cease buying stocks outright. This story is getting rather stale, even though most Americans fail to realize that their pensions and 401k profits are being fueled by cash injections from the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, Swiss National Bank, Bank of England, People's Bank of China, and, the US Federal Reserve.
To believe that the Fed, being the world's most influential central bank, is not engaged in the purchase of stocks - either outright through their trading desk at the NY Fed or through member banks such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and others - is to suspend reality.
Global markets have neither seen nor experienced anything like this unprecedented and outrageous activity by financial sources which create money at will, the ramifications of which are likely to result in a massive, destructive inflationary hyper-spiral.
Here in the US and across the pond in Europe, central bankers openly wring their hands and express concern that inflation is too low, when in fact the worldwide money supply - the lone reliable barometer of excess liquidity - has been increased by trillions of dollars during the post-crisis era which began in March of 2009.
Nearly nine years have passed since the great financial crisis and the excesses have only grown, reaching monstrous proportions. For what other reason would gold and silver be suppressed so virulently other than to eliminate their standing as real money? Why are governments so intent on clamping down on cryptocurrencies? Central banks do not want competition in currencies.
It is clear that the central banks of the world have pulled the global economy into a fully fiat regime, printing money backed by nothing at an unprecedented pace.
Future historians and economists - if there is indeed a future at the end of this madness - will look upon this era as one of rampant money creation by policy-makers whose only aim is to keep the failed economies of developed nations in endless debt.
The idea that the Federal Reserve wishes to "normalize" interest rates is a laughable concept. Doing so would only facilitate the ballooning of debt everywhere, to utterly unplayable levels.
Enjoy the ride.
At the Close, Wednesday, January 10, 2018:
Dow: 25,369.13, -16.67 (-0.07%)
NASDAQ: 7,153.57, -10.01 (-0.14%)
S&P 500: 2,748.23, -3.06 (-0.11%)
NYSE Composite: 13,106.60, -14.24 (-0.11%)
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