Having telegraphed this outcome for weeks, the mainstream media is in their glory spot, with a contested election virtually assured as votes for president in Nevada, Alaska, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are all too close to call on Wednesday morning.
What this portends is certain recounts in most of those states, along with court pleadings contesting mail-in and absentee ballots which have likely kept President Trump from a second term in office. The most contentious and important states yet remaining to call a clear winner are Georgia, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Michigan.
In the pre-dawn hours Wednesday, Trump's lead of more than 200,000 votes in Michigan magically was cut down to 68,000 and continues to shrink. By noon today, as the counting continues, Michigan may have turned from a Trump lead to one for Joe Biden.
North Carolina may be counting votes for days as their constitution gives them up to nine days to count votes. Trump currently holds a slim edge of roughly 60,000 votes. Trump's lead in Georgia is more than 100,000 as of this writing, but the count will resume this morning, focusing on Dekalb county, the Democrat stronghold of Atlanta.
Pennsylvania is a nightmare, with less than 30% of the votes in Philadelphia having been counted. As of Tuesday night, when counting stopped, President Trump held a lead of more than 600,000 votes, but Democrats are energized by the huge numbers of mail-in and absentee votes not yet counted in their base of Philadelphia and its suburbs.
Any result will trigger recounts in at least five states, if not more. Court challenges have already been filed, with more to come. All of this leaves the American public in a state of deja vu, harkening back to the contested election in Florida between George W. Bush and Al Gore, which was eventually decided by the Supreme Court, in a decision that is, to this day, a sore spot for constitutional scholars as there is no written guideline that gives the court the power to decide elections.
With the presidential outcome and that of several senate races completely up in the air, America faces hard days ahead. The process could play out over a week, a month, or longer. Despite the uncertainty, stocks continue to trend positively. On the heels of back-to-back gains Monday and Tuesday, futures Wednesday morning are wildly positive.
Making predictions on where all of this is headed, in markets, in politics and in social response is a fool's errand. Only one thing is certain: the pre-election polls, which had Biden handily winning in many states that are still being contested, were not polls at all, but guidance points for the corrupted media that has been in the tank for Democrat candidates for years. Pre-election polls have become an endangered species, believable by only the truly daft or gullible members of society. They have become highly politicized and tools of the mainstream media.
At the Close, Tuesday, November 3, 2020:
Dow: 27,480.03, +554.98 (+2.06%)
NASDAQ: 11,160.57, +202.96 (+1.85%)
S&P 500: 3,369.02, +58.78 (+1.78%)
NYSE: 12,877.45, +215.29 (+1.70%)
Whatever this guy - Keith Lerner, chief market strategist at Truist/Suntrust Advisory - is smoking, he better not be sharing it, because it seems to be pretty potent.
"We think we're in the early stages of an economic cycle, and we think we're in the early stages of a bull market," Lerner said, talking to Yahoo! Finance.
Two things: One, it would be nice to finish the current economic cycle, the one that includes a recession and high unemployment, massive bankruptcies, and a commercial real estate bust. Two, don't trust advice or articles from any site purporting to be a finance portal that has an exclamation point in its name, especially the day before an existentially-impactful national election.
Lerner is advising investors to "lean into that weakness," whatever that means. He could just say, "buy the dip," but then he'd sound so pedestrian. He likes material and industrial stocks, also, regional banks, which isn't surprising, given that he is employed by one, via Truist/Suntrust Advisory.
Truist Financial Corporation was birthed in 2019 upon completion of the merger between Suntrust and BB&T, two regional banks serving primarily the Southeast with somewhat sketchy pasts. Both were the subject of fraud investigations and paid fines within the past five years. Now, the merger has made Truist the sixth-largest bank in the country.
While there may be some of the opinion that the corona panic was a one-off event that isn't likely to repeat nor cause lasting damage to economies, the measures taken in response to the virus have been far-reaching. Even now, some countries, especially in Europe, are re-instituting lockdowns and other measures that will surely crimp any economic growth and the future is largely unknown.
To the extent that a virus that effective kills only 0.01% of the adult population under retirement age, the draconian measures taken by advanced nations boggles the mind. In response, populations in France, Spain, Italy, and elsewhere have taken to the streets to express their outrage over having their lives turned upside down by government action that they consider excessive.
How the eventual drama plays out over the next six months is a matter of speculation, but one would be hard-pressed - with the exception of Mr. Lerner - to make the case for a speedy recovery and return to bullishness.
Of course, top of mind on this thrid day of November is the presidential election in the United States, which has shaped up to be a tight race that may take days, weeks, or even months before an actual victory is made official.
Democrats are dug in against President Trump, who has been making reference to the ultimate veracity of the results, suggesting in very strong terms that early, mail-in, and absentee voting - indirect results of the coronavirus scare - opened the door to cheating and voting irregularities. Legal challenges have been mounted on both sides, with more to come, for certain, but on Tuesday, voters will head to polling places to cast ballots that should be counted by later in the evening.
While most polls have Biden leading in important states, the margins are razor thin and polling was proven to be faulty in the last presidential election of 2016, when Trump pulled off a major upset of Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Largely overlooked, all 435 seats in the House of Representatives are being contested. A swing from a the Democrat majority earned in 2018 to a Republican edge would have profound effects on governance no matter which presidential candidate is chosen. In the Senate, Republicans seek to retain control of the slim 53-47 edge they currently hold, with as many as nine of their seats in tight races.
Whatever the outcome, participation this year is projected to be the best since 1990.
Wall Street's Monday rally took the form of a serious rebound from last week's drubbing, though the NASDAQ did not participate to any great extent. A solid cohort of market participants see an oversold condition and may have piled into some of the more beaten down equities on Monday, their motivation to be ahead of the curve when election results are announced Tuesday night. With futures pointing to another positive start in US markets, a continuation of the snap-back rally is being foretold. If the presidential election is not clear-cut and might be contested, they may be caught wrong-footed, especially if the race is too close to call in places like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, North Carolina, or Georgia. Lawsuits could be flying to courthouses across various jurisdictions. Hope is that the Supreme Court does not have to be involved as it was in 2000, when they appointed George Bush the victor over Democrat Al Gore.
So much is riding on the presidential outcome that it's easy to envision a condition wherein markets could be whipsawed for weeks.
At the Close, Monday, November 2, 2020:
Dow: 26,925.05, +423.45 (+1.60%)
NASDAQ: 10,957.61, +46.02 (+0.42%)
S&P 500: 3,310.24, +40.28 (+1.23%)
NYSE: 12,662.17, +232.89 (+1.87%)
With the hotly-contested presidential, state and local elections (Senate, House, governors, etc.) looming just two days hence, Americans are rightfully focused on polls, news and voting for people who will supposedly lead the nation for the next few years.
As quaint notions as voting and elections may be, the idea that ordinary people are electing leaders may be as far from reality as a distant asteroid is from crashing into planet Earth. Truthfully, Americans are voting for people who will manage the government, another anachronistic relic of the past that has, in many ways, outlived its purpose.
It's been many decades since government was actually a function "of the people, by the people, for the people" and while it is true that more people will likely vote in this election than in any other in the nation's history, the results will neither lead to an enlightenment nor to a radical shift of long-standing values.
Partisanship aside, President Trump, who won the 2016 election as an outsider, is now the status quo candidate, whereas Joe Biden - who has spent 47 years in public office - is appealing as the agent of change. The transmogrification is unique to this episode of presidential politics.
While there is a case to be made that President Trump is a once in a generation leader, the same cannot be said about other high muckety-mucks like House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi, Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, and other high profile contestants for public office. These are not leaders in the traditional sense. They are negotiators, players, figureheads of a government transfixed upon retaining power. Both sides of the aisle share equally in the quest to maintain their status over the general population.
What this concentration of power (and money) by mostly septuagenarians and octogenarians is doing to the United States is dragging it all slowly into an abyss of greed, corruption, and reliance upon broken or outdated systems by which the country will gradually fall from its mantle of world power.
This is manifested by the concentration of wealth by so-called "one percenters," the multimillionaires and billionaires spawned out of Wall Street's public corporations, by the inability of congress to pass legislation that improves the lives of its citizens such as infrastructure spending, a health care bill that is affordable and detached from deep-pocketed vested interests, the recent faux negotiations over a second major stimulus bill, and, generally, a congress that has spent the better part of the past four years trying to undo the results of the 2016 presidential election, which put into the White House an outsider, Donald Trump, who vowed to "drain the swamp."
Rather than appear to be an endorsement of President Trump, this article aims to reveal some of the issues facing the United States as elections loom and the specter of the coronavirus still overhangs via the media. For all his faults (and there are many, just as everyone is far from perfect), President Trump has tried to lead, but the choices he was presented with, in terms of choosing qualified people to man his administration, came mostly from the same swamp he pledged to drain. So entrenched is government, politics, academia, and big business at the top levels, it was nearly impossible for the president to find quality and qualified individuals who weren't already compromised by money, fealty, or long-standing connections.
The rot at or near the top of the political system, the business structures, the medical, educational, and financial systems is deeply entrenched. Individuals and institutions strain to retain their cherished positions of power, making real change impossible. Electing Joe Biden will likely make matters worse; re-electing president Trump is at least an attempt to step away from the institutionalized behaviors, crony capitalism, and corruption that has plagued the country for at least the past twenty years and to some degree, much, much longer.
By clinging to antiquated functions like the borrow and spend policies that have produced massive, unpayable debt of more than $27 trillion such as the Federal Reserve and its unconstitutional currency, political favors arranged by lobbyists for the good of themselves and their business interests, congressional legislation that is so dense to be not understandable, and reliance upon measurements such as GDP, the stock market, and corporate profits to gauge the health of the economy, the United States is being left behind on innovation that is transforming entire industries and nations open to adoption of new ideas.
As the US dollar becomes less relevant around the world, the United States faces a crisis at the very root of its existence. While the dollar may retain value against other currencies like the euro and the yen, it is losing ground to China's renminbi, to crypto-currencies like Bitcoin, to gold and silver. Debt-based currencies, as are most in the developed world, eventually fail. The euro, yen, pound sterling, and the dollar are vestiges of the past, doomed to lose purchasing power as the giant debt balloon central banks have created eventually overwhelms everything and then explodes. Not only the United States, but the entirety of the developed world, using fiat currencies, are at a tipping point.
Recently, the IMF, itself a vestigial construct of American hegemony and supremacy of the dollar, called for a "new Bretton Woods," - referencing the 1944 agreement that established the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency in the aftermath of World War II - as the debt-based economies continue to crumble. The IMF and World Bank are pushing on a string, hoping to keep the failing fiat currency systems intact for a while longer, all the while piling up odious debt upon odious debt as the real solutions - gold-backed or digital currency (Bitcoin) stare them in the face and continue at an accelerating pace to be adopted by the general public and increasingly, the business community.
Governments around the world have long ago acceded their power to the central banks. Without their currency creation machines they would lose all power and ability to govern. This is being manifested daily by millions sinking into poverty, growing protests, demands for fairness for the middle and lower classes, and the ascendancy of alternative currencies and the growth of countries like China, Indonesia, Russia, and other developing nations that are developing and adapting to new paradigms in finance, industry, and culture, leaving the mostly Euro-centric nations in their dust.
One glaring example of how the staid and stodgy functions of central banks and their shareholders - the multi-national untouchable, too-big-to-fail banks and financial institutions - extend their reach and hold onto their failing, unfair systems is presented below, outlining how the banks and government are able to change the rules and move the goalposts to their own ends, none of which will eventually aid in transitioning to a more sustainable and prosperous society.
New Revelations About Banks' Bottom Lines and Credit Loss Reserves
The following is from Discover Financial Services' (DFS) third quarter earnings report (emphasis Money Daily):
Adoption of Accounting Standard for Measurement of Credit Losses
The company’s results for the third quarter of 2020 reflect the January 1, 2020 adoption of Accounting Standards Update No. 2016-13, Financial Instruments-Credit Losses (Topic 326): Measurement of Credit Losses on Financial Instruments for the Company (the "ASU"). For purposes of calculating the company’s regulatory capital, the company has elected to defer recognition of the estimated impact of the ASU on regulatory capital for two years in accordance with the interim final rule adopted by federal bank regulatory agencies on March 27, 2020. Pursuant to the interim final rule, the estimated impact of the ASU on regulatory capital will be phased in over a three year period beginning in 2022.
In other words, Discover isn't going to be reporting adequate credit loss reserves until, at the earliest, the second quarter of 2022. This is a complete scam of the financial system, similar to the March 2009 ruling by the FASB that allowed banks to mark assets to whatever benchmarks they desired, eliminating the mark-to-market standard that had kept banks somewhat sane for decades.
The accounting change in 2009 is roughly comparable to valuing your 2002 Honda Civic at $24,000 on your balance sheet, rather than close to the Kelly Blue Book value of $1200. What the one crucial change did for banks was allow them to shore up their balance sheets by pricing assets that were basically toxic soup at par or close to it, even if they were non-performing loans.
Now, the Fed has allowed the banks and financial institutions to take the next step forward into the world of bizarre finance, by allowing them to underreport credit loan loss reserves. Prior to March 27, 2020 - again, coincident with the market bottom - banks and financial firms which deal with credit cards, personal loans, mortgages and all manner of consumer loans were supposed to make reasonable assumptions about future credit losses (i.e., delinquencies and defaults) and report them as such. Now, they don't have to make any assumptions, just defer the expected losses to some later date.
By not reporting expected losses as they are building (these companies know this; they monitor delinquencies with an eagle's eye), they're allowed to boost share price by giving the impression that they are profitable and growing, when, in fact, the opposite is occurring. Most of these firms, like Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Capital One, and Discover, took fairly large provision for credit losses in the first and second quarters. Discover, for instance, took a $2.046 billion provision in the second quarter, but only provisioned $750 million in the third, all the while allowing personal loan and credit card users the luxury of deferring their payments for as many as six months in some cases, just as people were beginning to feel the effects of the wearing off of the first stimulus without a second round approved by congress.
Discover may have sealed its own fate by believing congress had its back and would pass another bailout or relief bill, as the company cancelled its deferral program, leaving customers with the untidy prospect of making a payment and strapping their cash or falling into delinquency. With millions out of work and hundreds of thousands of small businesses closed for good, the chances are many chose the latter course of action, leaving Discover with unpaid credit cards, mortgages, car loans, personal loans, and student loans, and a massive loss that they didn't have to report.
In their third quarter report, Discover's net income of $771 million would have been a loss had they reported true credit loss provisions. They plugged in the $750 million number for credit losses to make it just better than year ago results of a net profit of $770 million. How convenient. The other financial firms did exactly the same thing, making the third quarter results look surprisingly robust.
The media roundly criticized President Trump for downplaying the threat of COVID-19, but are completely silent when it comes to huge financial firms fudging the numbers to meet or exceed analyst expectations, which is a nice way of saying "committing widespread fraud at the behest of the Federal Reserve."
There's no proof that the banks under-reported their credit loss provisions, only the evidence that every one of them provisioned much less in the third quarter than in the second quarter of 2020, as if the economy had rebounded and everybody was paying their bills. Anybody paying attention would have known that the "V-shaped recovery" narrative being pushed by Wall Street and the White House was a complete fraud, about as good as the "Russia, Russia, Russia" hoax deployed by the Democrats on President Trump over the past four years. Good for goose, good for gander.
An October 24 article by MarketWatch, titled Big U.S. banks’ day of reckoning is delayed, illustrates the extent to which the ten biggest banks in America managed to use accounting trickery to beat analyst estimates, in some cases, blowing them completely away. For instance, Goldman Sachs (GS) was supposed to return earnings per share of $5.28. They reported $9.68 for the quarter. Capital One (COF) buried their estimated eps of $2.08 with a stunning $5.06 per share performance. For Capital One, whose revenue is derived overwhelmingly from credit card income, this was a coup, as their third quarter oan loss provision was a mere $331 million, when they were estimated to provision $2.16 billion.
Capital One's amazing quarter can be attributed to only one thing: excessively creative accounting, which, although it's extremely sleazy and misleading, is all perfectly legal. This puts the onus on stock pickers and self-driven investors who either don't bother or can't properly read or interpret quarterly reports. They see blowout numbers and dive right in, like unseasoned RobinHood traders. Down the road, Capital One's deceit and eventual collapse will rival that of Countrywide in the sub-prime era. Sometime in the next two years, when people ask Capital One "what's in your wallet?" the answer will be "Nothing. Nothing but bad loans."
And the Fed will swoop in to buy them all, at par, to save yet another insolvent institution.
As the week progressed and the electioneering became more bizarre by the day through revelations of possible corruption and criminality on the part of Democrat candidate Joe Biden and his family, stocks continued to sink. Making matters even more alarming to the pubic and Wall Street was the mainstream media blackout of the Hunter Biden laptop containing damning evidence. Outright censorship of the New York Post's stories - where the news was originally broken - by Twitter and feigned ignorance by the television networks, New York Times and the Washington Post served only to increase the public's distrust of the media and expose its obvious political bias.
Stocks had their worst week since March, but it could have been much worse. Friday's late-day rally saved the Dow Industrials and the S&P 500 from falling below their 200-day moving averages. As it was, all the major exchanges fell 5 1/2 to 6 1/2 percent for the week and on the cusp of a correction, which, in all likelihood will be achieved on Monday or Tuesday as Americans continue to the polls.
Friday's late afternoon rally lifted the Dow more than 360 points, the S&P by nearly 38 points, the NASDAQ 102 points, and the NYSE Composite 132 points. All together, the lift of one percent or more left the averages just above correction levels.
At Friday's close, the Dow was down 10.3% from its February high; the NASDAQ 9.5% lower from its September 2nd record close, the S&P 500 down 8.7% from its record close of September 2nd, the NYSE down 12.1% from its February all-time high. Thus, the push at the end of the day saved the bacon of the most prominent indices. While the Dow and NYSE Composite are technically in correction, the supine financial media uses the most recent highs of September 2nd instead of the pre-COVID February highs, thus avoiding use of the nasty term "correction."
On an intraday basis, all of the averages are firmly at or beyond correction levels. It's just more or the conditioning and institutionlized fraud that keeps the public sadly misinformed.
Treasury yields saw some movement during the week but ended higher by Friday as the massive movement of money out of fixed income that began in earnest at the start of October offered no indication of waning, with both the 10-year note and 30-year bond finishing at high points, 0.88% and 1.65%, respectively.
Oil was taken to the woodshed and severely beaten, closing at $35.79 per barrel, down from $39.85 the prior week, the price decline reflective of increasing COVID-related quarantines and lockdowns in parts of Europe, notably France, and slack demand overall. This was the weakest price for WTI crude since June 1, a five-month low.
Gold ended another down week at $1881.00, a decline of $11.90, from $1902.90 the week prior and the second time since reaching its peak (2058.90, August 6) three months ago. Silver was also punished for being real money, ending the week at $23.63, also well off it's August 10 high of $29.23. While the paper prices for the metals continues to be put under pressure by the bullion banks and other nefarious sources, premiums remain elevated, as shown below.
While stocks and bonds fell, oil was crushed, and precious metals took a hit, the big winner of the week was Bitcoin, which trades continuously, not taking the weekend off, like other asset classes. From Sunday of last week (10/25) to its present price, the world's most recognizable cryptocurrency added 700 points, to 13,748.393. The week was an extension of the rally which began September 23, when the value was 10,225.86. That's a gain of 25.6% while the established financial order was largely falling apart.
Here are the weekly prices for common gold and silver items on eBay (numismatics excluded, shipping, often free, included):
Item: Low / High / Average / Median
1 oz silver coin: 29.00 / 46.46 / 38.05 / 38.40
1 oz silver bar: 28.00 / 56.20 / 37.49 / 35.25
1 oz gold coin: 1,975.00 / 2,037.31 / 2,006.59 / 2,010.00
1 oz gold bar: 1,965.00 / 2,001.79 / 1,982.16 / 1,981.34
Finally, here are Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert explaining how Jamie Dimon was wrong and they were right about Bitcoin. The second part of the video is an interview with entrepreneur, Dan Collins, who recently returned to the United States after 20 years in China, who envisions that country as the dominant new world power.
At the Close, Friday, October 30, 2020:
Dow: 26,501.60, -157.51 (-0.59%)
NASDAQ: 10,911.59, -274.00 (-2.45%)
S&P 500: 3,269.96, -40.15 (-1.21%)
NYSE: 12,429.28, -73.01 (-0.58%)
For the Week:
Dow: -1833.97 (-6.47%)
NASDAQ: -636.69 (-5.51%)
S&P 500: -195.43 (-5.64%)
NYSE: -770.58 (-5.84%)
Wednesday's market drops - the worst since June of this year - were followed by a cut-and-paste type of relief rally, with dip-buyers jumping into some of the more beaten down names, and even more buying up of the tech stocks which fueled the rally after March and are being counted on to bring the US equity markets back to summer levels.
Following Thursday's close, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet all reported quarterly results. Each of these companies beat estimates handily.
Interestingly, Apple ended Thursday up four points, but was selling off into the close and is down another four points (roughly 4%) in pre-market trading. Amazon was higher on Thursday by 48.23 points (+1.52%), but has given all of that back Friday morning, down 51.01 (-1.59%), to 3,160.00.
Facebook plowed ahead 13.16 points (+4.92%) Thursday, but is trending lower, down 4.03 (-1.44%), at 276.80, 90 minutes prior to the opening bell. Alphabet, parent company of Google bucked the early morning trend. It was up 50.62 (+3.34%) in Thursday's cash market session and has tacked on 96.51 (6.16%) in the pre-market. Its share price of 1,663.75 is closing in on the all-time high of 1728.28, marked on September 2, coincident with all-time highs of the S&P and NASDAQ indices.
Through Wednesday’s close, the FAAMNG stocks, Facebook (FB), Amazon (AMZN), Apple (AAPL), Microsoft (MSFT), Netflix (NFLX), and Google (GOOG, parent company Alphabet), are up 7.19% this year, against a 5.44% drop for the rest of the S&P 500, a 12.63% performance spread between the FAAMNGs and the rest of the market.
Obviously, there are a good number of companies in the market's 500 largest companies that have not done so well through the coronavirus crash and into the election season. This kind of crowding into select market darlings has pushed the market caps and stock prices of this group of tech giants to stratospheric levels, leaving the rest of the market in the dust.
The market has been weighed down by victims of the coronavirus, predictably led by elements of the travel and tourism industry. Cruise line, airlines, and energy firms take up most of the top spots in the 50 worst-performing S&P stocks of 2020.
Investors seeking bargain-basement plays can find stocks on this list that are down between 48 and 81 percent on the year, many of them household names, like Carnival Cruise Lines, American Airlines, Boeing, Slumberger, Marathon Oil and financial firms Wells Fargo, Citizens and Discover. These stocks, and many in the tiers above them, down between 20 and 48 percent continue to pressure the market, forcing more money into the tech giants, increasingly seen as the only game in town.
This sets up a dangerous situation. Should the six stocks that are leading on the year stumble or investors decide that they've made enough for 2020 and consider them overvalued, the discounting in the market would set off a cascading effect to the downside. A slew of funds are closing their books for the year today, the final trading session of October, and many more will simply hold through the end of the year.
Without active gains by the leading stocks, US equity markets ar staring straight into an abyss leading up to the election and beyond. Funds with gains on the year will want to lock them in, leaving little choice for smaller market participants who may become holiday bag-holders of some of he top names.
Overnight, Asian shares were off sharply, though none of the main exchanges down more than two percent. US market futures were in a slaughterhouse, but have pared some of the declines leading into the cash open. European stocks are flat, but under pressure.
Unless stocks rally magnificently on Friday, this week will look like a bloodbath, already sporting losses in from three to five percent in the worst weekly decline since early June. Any further deterioration will exceed that, though it would take near capitulation to rival the losses from February and March. Dow stocks have been particularly hardest hit, with that index down nearly six percent.
Putting pressure on the entire market, oil prices have been hammered. WTI crude futures are hovering just above $36, breaking down from the steady-state $40 level than has been in place since June. The current level is a five-month low, the result of a continued glut of product globally and threats of a second wave of widespread shutdowns, such as has already been put into place in France and parts of Britain and some Eurozone countries.
It's worth noting that even with the recent declines, the NASDAQ and S&P are still above September's lows, though the Dow appears to be falling off a cliff.
At the Close, Thursday, October 29, 2020:
Dow: 26,659.11, +139.16 (+0.52%)
NASDAQ: 11,185.59, +180.72 (+1.64%)
S&P 500: 3,310.11, +39.08 (+1.19%)
NYSE: 12,502.29, +86.87 (+0.70%)
Wednesday's massive stock beatdown was not without warning. Stocks had been trending lower since the beginning of September, when all of the indices made new highs, for the NASDAQ and S&P these were all-time highs.
After significant drops in September, markets stabilized and made gains from late in the month through October 12. After that, it was all downhill. For the past eleven sessions stocks had been trending lower, the losses accelerating over time. The media's incessant focus on the failure of congress to pass a stimulus bill surely had impact on trader sentiment, but chartists saw a clear double top had formed and lower lows and lower highs were obvious danger signs.
Now in the midst of third quarter earnings season, reports aren't doing much to inspire investor confidence. In fact, the first batch of reports - from the nation's major banks - were met with elevated levels of skepticism, as the largest issuers of consumer debt - credit cards, mortgages, personal loans - such as Bank of America, Citi, Wells Fargo, and JP Morgan Chase massively under-reserved for credit losses, a policy endorsed by the Federal Reserve and codified into the first coronavirus stimulus bill, the CARES Act. (Money Daily will have a more in depth look at the accounting trickery banks employed to boost their third quarter earnings in Sunday's WEEKEND WRAP.)
What stood out to investors and interested onlookers of the banking industry was the overwhelmingly negative response. Instead of seeing their stock prices boosted by what were, for some, blowout earnings reports, bank stocks were among the weakest trades in the immediate aftermath of their reporting. Astute money managers were simply not buying the story the banks were peddling.
Beyond some disappointment in the earnings space and the slapstick stylings of congress and the administration in the failed negotiations over stimulus - which had persisted since late July - presidential politics and mainstream media's constant, over-the-top bias also added a degree of uncertainty to the mood of the market. A narrative that a Democratic sweep, a "blue wave" theory, had made the rounds in recent weeks, and that somehow, socialist, free-spending policies of a president Biden and a left-leaning senate and house, would usher in an era of utopian prosperity.
Hard-core capitalist economists and seasoned political pundits dismissed such a scenario as pipe-dreaming even as polling numbers - largely reporting that Biden and some Democrat senate candidates had built large leads - were being questioned and President Trump was drawing his usual overflow crowds at rallies in swing states.
When bombshell reports on the exploits of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden's son, began to emerge via the New York Post and Rudy Giuliani, suggesting that serious improprieties by the candidate had been committed while he was Vice President under Obama, involving not just dealings in Ukraine, but also in Russia and China, the blue wave theory began to unravel. When, on Tuesday evening, Tucker Carlson devoted his entire show to a Biden business partner by the name of Tony Bobulinski and more damning revelations, it became clear that Biden's campaign was in serious trouble. Making matters worse were the outright bans on referencing these allegations and news stories on Twitter and Facebook and complete silence from TV networks and major newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post.
The media made the choice to ignore a story that should have been front-page, special report material, instead focusing more on President Trump's flaws and policies with which the media disagreed and consequently disparaged, endlessly.
Politics doesn't often influence stocks, but in this case, it was the tipping point. Beyond a weakened economy with dim prospects to escape from a deep recession, the Biden revelations and media reaction was beyond the pale, shaking confidence in government and the revered fourth estate. The confluence of economic forces, overvaluation (if anyone can even decode what "value" means in today's markets), and frightening political prospects culminated in a colossal spasm of lost confidence and global retching.
Despite the suddenness of the selloff, stocks still have not even fallen beyond the levels seen in late September, so more of the same is to be expected. It's not out of the question that by the end of next week regardless of political winners and losers, stocks could be another five to eight percent lower than current levels.
Already, stocks are close to correction levels. The Dow, S&P 500 and NASDAQ are uniformly down nearly nine percent from September 2nd's highs. All are trading well below their 50-day and close to their 200-day moving averages. The next step lower will confirm a correction and the follow-up should result in resumption of the bear case, regardless of Fed jawboning, bond-buying, and special dispensations to distressed publicly-traded companies.
There's simply nothing to inspire a positive attitude. Dip-buyers, those who haven't already been reamed by the recent movement, are heading for slaughter. Put-call ratios are elevated, as is the VIX, to say nothing of the inner seething of the general populace. People will put up with a lot, but there is hardly an individual who can stomach liars and cheaters. All together, the mood is ugly and about to devolve into complete disarray and that's not good for anything, especially your investments.
At the Close, Wednesday, October 28, 2020:
Dow: 26,519.95, -943.24 (-3.43%)
NASDAQ: 11,004.87, -426.48 (-3.73%)
S&P 500: 3,271.03, -119.65 (-3.53%)
NYSE: 12,415.42, -402.45 (-3.14%)
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