RISK OFF

Everyone out the same door at the same time

S&P 500: % of stocks above 50 day moving average:

$USD

IPO ETF...

In Greed We Trust: The Fitting Way to End

Maximum shock and awe. Zero preparation.

The Fed has been bailing out risk markets non-stop since 1987:

Dow (black) with options implied volatility

Meaning they have incentivized extreme risk taking and minimal risk management (hedging). What used to be called "moral hazard". A concept that today's EconoDunces seem to have forgotten.

The $200 trillion bet now is whether or not Wall Street's bukkake whores have enough ammo left to put humpty dumpty back together one more time, given that interest rates have been stuck at 0% for six years straight i.e. the first non-recovery in U.S. history.

Index put/call ratio

How Wall Street used to hedge

Delayed onset drip levitation (QE) can't offset a $200 trillion global risk off stampede. One moves at the speed of overnight. And the other one meets every six weeks. Heroin to a dead man.

It's hard to put something back together again, when you can't find all the pieces. 

How Deep The Crater?

The Scylla and Charybdis of Lies and Bullshit:

The stock market's worst case scenario just arrived - 

The economy is weakening but the Fed is trapped by their fake recovery meme, leaving the door open to rate hikes. Which means that stock market dopium seekers have to deal with collapsing profits AND reduced liquidity flows. Right on schedule, dopium addicts are clamoring for more printed money. Because in the Idiocracy, an economy devoid of jobs is a fair price to pay for ultimately worthless dollars. 

ZH: April 29, 2015

More Heroin Please

"In the third quarter, net liquidity is likely to turn negative. And the stock market is likely to correct. What then? The Fed will panic and announce QE4… and other measures" 

So for the next several months, Etraders will continue to throw their life savings away to keep this propped up, until the Fed abandons rate hikes, admits they've been lying this entire time, and starts printing money. Sure.

Stocks versus the economy as imputed from long-term Treasury yields (which peaked in 2011):

A mile deep. Over/under.

Fed Will Collapse Markets In June, If It Doesn't Happen Sooner

MW: April 29, 2015

The Fed says that if 0% interest rates can create 0% employment by June, it will raise interest rates and obliterate the financial ponzi apparatus. Stocks are not happy that the economy has been located. Albeit in China. 

Yes, this again:

In the centuries prior to 2008, Employment and Unemployment were always inversely correlated. Before the Big Lie:

What Stocks Should I Buy In a Meltdown?

iPhone is 69% of Apple revenue
Apple is up 140% in a straight line since July 2013 all due to iPhoney 6, which is one better than iPhoney5:

Apple with Fed balance sheet: History's first $4 trillion company

The Nasdaq with S&P price / sales ratio (highest ever):

My City Was Gone

Forty years of accumulated lies coming home to roost

ZH: April 28, 2015:
The Baltimore Riots: Symptom Of A Much Bigger Problem
John Angelos, Son of Baltimore:
"My greater source of personal concern, outrage and sympathy beyond this particular case is focused neither upon one night’s property damage nor upon the acts, but is focused rather upon the past four-decade period during which an American political elite have shipped middle class and working class jobs away from Baltimore and cities and towns around the U.S. to third-world dictatorships like China and others, plunged tens of millions of good hard-working Americans into economic devastation, and then followed that action around the nation by diminishing every American’s civil rights protections in order to control an unfairly impoverished population living under an ever-declining standard of living and suffering at the butt end of an ever-more militarized and aggressive surveillance state."

"The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. ... The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory, but to keep the very structure of society intact."
[George Orwell, "1984"]

The Faux News Collapse: Inconvenient Self-Obliteration

Livin' La Vida 

"I used to rule the world, seas would rise when I gave the word
I used to roll the dice, feel the fear in my enemy's eyes

One minute I held the key, next the walls were closed on me

I discovered that my castles stand, upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

Never an honest word, that was when I ruled the world"

The Faux Newstards are ALL IN, believing that the Baltimore riots are just another temporary misguided "Occupy Protest". Which is no surprise, given that they ridiculed the warnings from OWS in 2011, and hence remain massively leveraged to what comes next.

The Rydex Bull: Bear Asset Allocation is still off the charts manic:

We're in the normal range, between manic and panic
Speaking of manic, I find this chart of Canadian Solar to be mildly interesting. The second lower high in this cycle preceded the October 2014 sell-off. The second lower high in 2010 preceded the Flash Crash and the second lower high in 2008 preceded Lehman. Now we're on the third lower spike...

This ends with the Fauxtards getting monkey-hammered by their own fucking lies

Trouble In Paradise: Rioting At Peak Dow.

The Proles are taking to the streets. Protests against police brutality will be fixed with greater police brutality. The beatings will continue until morale improves.

ZH: Baltimore SWAT team attacked 

PonziWorld 2012: A Conspiracy of Dunces

"Step 9: Let simmer as long as possible until it eventually explodes in a molten hot fury of pent-up rage."

Did the country club elite think that a fake stock market and six seasons of the Kardashians had fixed the problem? 

The Last Temptation of Main Street: Maximum Rioting

ZH: April 27, 2015

China Considers Launching QE; Shanghai Stocks Soar

The Chinese government is encouraging everyone to throw their last savings away in worthless stocks, just prior to the economy collapsing. Which just happens to be the same strategy in the U.S., Europe, Japan, Canada...

ZH: April 23, 2015: WTF Chart of the Day - Chinese Etrading accounts:

Driving the divergence between fantasy and reality ever-wider:

Chinese stocks and GDP growth (red line):

Meanwhile, here in the U.S.:
U.S. Value Line Arithmetic Average (red) with Fed Balance Sheet (black)

"Ignorance is bliss"

Happy Disposable Batteries - All That Matters

"Faux News is bliss"

We're all actors now

The Big Short. Squeeze.

In 2008, Wall Street made bank shorting (selling) subprime. This time Monetary psychopaths made sure they're buying moonshots of worthless junk

Central Bank spoofing at its best

Pushing investors out on the risk curve...
Nasdaq / Dow ratio w/ Fed Balance sheet (black line):

ZH: April 26, 2015

How Central Banks engineered human history's largest short squeeze

In a nutshell, take away quality (top) and force investors to buy moonshots of worthless junk (bottom) all leveraged 680x
(stocks being the next option after CCC junk bonds)

Barron's: April 25, 2015:
"A MERE 5% of the Big Money are self-described bears today, down from 10% six months ago."

And by the end, there was nothing left to bail out.

Terminal Idiocracy

Catapulting itself into the brick wall of reality

The Idiocratic Divergence Visualized:
Stocks versus Treasury Yields

One of these is priced based upon future economic prospects and the other is priced solely based upon Central Bank spoofing.

ZH: April 18, 2015:
What Bernanke's new employer said two years ago
"One of the very sad negative characteristics of the Fed’s policies is it’s leading to job destruction - via overseas outsourcing and automation"

Bloomberg April 3rd, 2015

In summary: The Fed will raise rates above 0% only when all of the jobs have been destroyed via outsourcing and automation. 

ZH: April 23, 2015
Stocks reach new record highs due to worst Macro(economic) data in six years
In the meantime, the stock market will continue hitting new all time highs in anticipation of ever-more Fed dopium. Free heroin for dying addicts.

The Hotel California of Job Creation:
Interest rates and employment in a race to the bottom, all compliments of imported Third World deflation aka. "the global savings glut":

How We Got Here: Trusting Serial Psychopaths

Bernanke, Krugman, Summers and other PhDs all exhibit the same superhuman ability to refute reality.

They think this is a game of Dungeons and Dragons where you make up clever-sounding bullshit as you go along.

Can we borrow our way out of a debt crisis?

We must:

ZH: June 3rd, 2012: Larry Summers Does It Again:

The President of Harvard:

"The central irony of financial crisis is that while it is caused by too much confidence, too much borrowing and lending and too much spending, it can only be resolved with more confidence, more borrowing and lending, and more spending."

"Rather than focusing on lowering already epically low rates, governments that enjoy such low borrowing costs can improve their creditworthiness by borrowing more not less."

All based upon their shared belief that counter-cyclical Keynesian policy can be abused on a pro-cyclical multi-decade basis to fund serial military blunders and tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy. The ungodly conjoining of Fiscal Policy, Monetary Policy, and Supply Side Outsource Economics with Neocon Exceptionalism into one massive ball of insanity, all managed by and for total fucking dunces. 

Central Bank Spoofing: Moonshots of Worthless Junk

In Summary:
Stocks of real companies are rolling over, while stocks of worthless junk are gapping vertical. Skynet doesn't care about earnings and revenue, it only cares how many tools are left to suck into the market, which according to Barrons is not too many...

Barrons April 26, 2015:
U.S. Money Managers Turning Cautious
"A MERE 5% of the Big Money are self-described bears today, down from 10% six months ago. The higher the market has climbed, it seems, the more ambivalent erstwhile bears have grown." [You can't make this shit up]

WSJ Jan. 28, 2015

Amazon's cumulative profit over the past fifteen years is $1.9 billion on $400 billion in sales. Walmart makes that much every 35 days

AMZN Y2K and now: Same overvaluation

IPOScoop:

IPO Moonshots and Milestones

"A couple of moonshots skyrocketed off last week’s IPO calendar. 

By now, everybody knows Aduro Biotech (ADRO) and Etsy (ETSY) had breathtaking opening-day performances..."

Truth Or Consequences. That Choice Has Been Made.

The last of the Lehman indicators rolled over this week:

Correction, Northern Trust hasn't rolled over, it has merely carved out an identical pattern 

Bellwethers across all major sectors have rolled over...

The Grasshopper and the Ant

One prepares for adversity. The other pretends it can't happen. 

One survives. One doesn't.

Either way, it's a choice.

Politics: Game of Dunces

Politics can't solve the problem, politics is the problem

Election 2016: Who will be the next Captain of the Titanic?

At some point along the way, the U.S. political system stopped being the solution, and has now firmly become the problem. It's a system of dismemberment whereby the 14,000 Special Interest Groups operating in D.C. take turns at the public trough at the expense of the majority. The fact that this "system" engages the self-nominated "best and brightest" minds in the country, read as loudest and most over-confident, is the truly sad part. Generational liquidators. 

Politics: A System of rent-seeking and dismemberment

Historians will spend years figuring out what went wrong, but personally, I can't see how governments can be run by lawyers. By definition, the legal professional is about rent-seeking - a zero sum game of extracting one party's benefit at another party's expense. Over years and decades this has led to an accumulated detritus of overlapping, conflicting laws. A byzantine maze of regulation and red tape that even lawyers can no longer decipher. It's a Special Interest Group bonanza,because almost any type of rent-seeking can be legally approved based upon the myriad loopholes. According to Ron Paul, a net new 40,000 laws were put on the books on the first day of 2012. That ludicrous figure, came from the National Conference of State Legislatures. Even if that many new laws were put on the books in 10 years, it would be equally ludicrous. Laws are meant to guide behaviour, not catch citizens up in legal SNAFUs that they didn't even know existed. The vast majority of laws go on the books and are never removed. All of the pork trading of course goes on behind closed doors. While ordinary citizens are at work making ends meet, unbeknownst to them their rights and property are being systematically eviscerated and distributed to the privileged minority. 

More laws means less accountability

The concept of having a few laws that are strictly enforced with regards to the spirit of the law, rather than the narrowest interpretation, never saw the light of day. That would put too many lawyers out of work, render Special Interest Groups inert, enforce accountability, allow citizens to fully understand their rights, level the playing field between large and small business, and otherwise make way too much fucking sense. You don't ask a barber if you need a haircut, and you don't ask a lawyer (politician), if you need a new law. 

What is needed is more general awareness of this underlying political dysfunction, because today it's nearly non-existent. Everyone wants to pretend that their "team" has all the answers. Only when the rent-seekers and their cheer-leading acolytes experience first-hand the fruits of their self-destructing endeavours will everyone be on the same page. 

Too many people on both teams think they're winning, when in reality everyone is losing.

Weekly Ponzi Summary

The S&P, Nasdaq, and Russell 2000 reached new all time highs on 50% average volume. Unconfirmed by the Dow, Dow Transports, Utilities and Resources.

U.S. macro data came in worst in 6 years

U.S. economic optimism is highest in 8 years

The S&P 100 put/call ratios hit off the charts bearish records

And the number of Americans without a job is at a record as well (180 million), but fortunately "unemployment" is only 5.5%

A day trader living in his parents' basement near Heathrow was credited with causing the $1 trillion 2010 Flash Crash

Ben Bernanke re-joined Wall Street after a few months break from the Goldman Fed.

And the Earth is the hottest it's been in the past 135 years, although in no way related to pumping 85 million barrels of carbon every day into the atmosphere.

Central Banks Are Spoofing The Idiocracy

Manipulating greed so corrupt dunces ignore the imploding economy

Spoofing: "Stock market manipulation in which a trader with a position in a stock places an anonymous buy order for a large number of shares and then cancels it seconds later. The price of the stock will immediately jump, giving the impression of high demand, which draws others into buying the stock"

Chinese stocks versus Chinese GDP: Running away from reality

Central Banks are inflating stock markets to spoof morons into believing that the economy is just fine, while it implodes in real-time. They keep pushing the divergence ever-closer to its cataclysmic conclusion. 

If only 44% of Americans have jobs now, what does that portend on the other side of convergence?

It's all a testament to the almighty power of greed and self-delusion. Self-burial for a society addicted to 'more'. 

U.S. stocks versus jobs: Running away from reality

How ISIS & Company Views The West

Maximum Harvard Risk

Central banksters are ALL IN for the first time in world history. Even as their global pseudo-recovery grinds to a halt.

One by one throughout this pseudo-recovery, the major central banks have been cutting interest rates to zero and printing money to prop up stock markets. Giving lie to the notion that this was even a recovery.

Bernankentstein's new Wall Street employer:
"One of the very sad negative characteristics of the Fed’s policies is it’s leading to job destruction"

It was all a vain attempt to stem the relentless deluge of Third World deflation imported at an ever greater rate by multinational corporations. Competition that wipes out local businesses and destroys jobs. Central bank liquidity is merely heroin to a dying cancer patient. Worse yet, the 0% interest rates destroyed millions of jobs via capital substitution aka. automation. Something Bernankenstein's new boss even noted. There are 7.3 billion people on this planet, most of whom are unemployed, the average human being lives on $2.50 per day or less. According to Econ 101, the marginal cost of labour is $2.50/day. What the fuck were these morons thinking?

Now they're ALL IN. Maximum Harvard Risk.

Globalization Has Almost Finished Equalizing Incomes

There's one more step.

CNBC: April 24, 2015

The U.S. is the only major economy that's "growing"

"It could be called the Great American Dichotomy: As the rest of the world struggles, the American economy continues to slowly grow. But some traders say that investors are making a big mistake if they think this divergence will continue forever."

The best illusion the Grandkids' money can buy:

U.S. GDP adjusted for Federal Debt:

Total GDP - Total Debt:

A mega-lie, only a corrupt old age home would believe:

Year over year change: We've never seen this before: STILL borrowing GDP "growth" six years into pseudo-recovery ...And deficits are forecast to rise from this point forward :

To recap, the tallest midget in the circus is borrowing its entire year over year increase in GDP, and then some. The rest of the world is worse off. Europe overall borrows 2% of GDP for a 0% growth rate.

From BRICs to BRICKS: The failure of Globalization 

Aside from India, China, Brazil and Russia are all hitting the BRIC wall of reality

The weakest link: 
Submerging Market rising wedge with Oil: The next leg down breaks the trend line:

Only Ponzi debt accumulation forestalls Third World convergence.

The Idiocratic Divergence: Why Stocks Are Rallying

Stocks are celebrating the deteriorating economy, in anticipation of more Fed Dopium

ZH: April 23, 2015

S&P and Nasdaq reach new all time highs based on worst economic data in six years

Forward interest rate expectations via 2 year Treasuries:

The Idiocratic Divergence. Visualized
One of these markets is right and the other one is wrong. One is following the economic data, and the other is following the Fed dopium.

Stocks versus 30 year T-bond yields:

The 2015 Bear Market Is Well Underway

Y2K was my first encounter with lying psychopaths selling worthless garbage to the public.

Not that I'm bitter about it.

April 23, 2015

15 years and one month later, Nasdaq finally eclipses its all time intra-day and closing high set in March 2000:

What could go wrong?

Nasdaq with 8 week moving average of New 52 week highs which peaked in late 2013, almost a year and a half ago:

The average Nasdaq stock is ready for a third wave down, which will come as somewhat of a surprise given the unprecedented divergence.

Buffoonish Over-Confidence. Siren Song of the Idiocracy

"All forward decks are now open for swimming"

Only a fool is certain about uncertain things.

But it takes a dedicated comfort-seeker to be uncertain about certain things.

Everyone has grown extremely complacent watching the debts and the lies compound annually. 

"Too young to reason. Too grown up to dream."

Cynical Denialism. Tempting Fate.

Begging to get monkey-hammered into fucking oblivion

The last time Exxon was at this level (red line), oil (black line) was at $95 (42% higher)

This will resolve to the downside, at which point this graceless, crass era will violently implode under the weight of its own cynical depravity:

Wishful thinking

Entire energy sector versus oil. Mind that a-b-c retracement off of a rising wedge trend line. We see how that worked for WTIC. Submerging markets (not shown), identical wedge:

Nature's way of saying "enough of all this"

Stealth Liquidation: Institutions Are Dumping This Level

Goldman Sachs must have tipped them off

April 22, 2015 J. Lyons Fund Management

Smart Money Options Indicator Off the Charts Bearish

"Since 1998, the put/call ratio on open interest in OEX [S&P 100] options has been considered extremely elevated when it has risen above 2.00. From 1998 to 2011, there were just 6 days when the ratio got as high as 2.00. Each of those days either came in the vicinity of a significant market top or at least presented extremely limited upside in the intermediate-term.

"In the second half of 2014 alone, there were 8 readings."

"And 2015 has ratcheted up the frequency of such readings to a whole other level. There have now been no less than 34 readings above 2.00, all coming in the past 2 months."

"Before a week ago, the highest level of the OEX open interest put/call ratio since 1998 was 2.31 in November 1999. The past 2 days have seen readings of 2.77 and 2.79!"

Someone always knows something. Don't they?

Only Ever Larger Lies Sustain This Clusterfuck

The number of Americans who don't have jobs is at an all time high 180 million (including elderly, children). See chart below.

And yet the lamestream published "unemployment rate" is 5.5% ??? 

Only 44% of Americans have a job, despite U.S. "wealth" at an all time high. 

By this "logic", when everyone loses their job, we get to 0% unemployment. And the streets burn in celebration.

Total population - Number of jobs:

Psychopaths spread the lies and still others believe them.

DHL Risk: Overnight Delivery

Good news! The CFTC has identified the day trader who collapsed the U.S. stock market. His trading script accidentally activated the Skynet "unwind" algorithm, known as "Sell".

What are they doing about it? They arrested him.

So, we can all sleep well now.

MW: April 22, 2015

A day-trader working out of his home in London is blamed for wiping out one $trillion dollars in wealth.

The global financial system hanging by one fat fingered dumbfuck

Dispatches from Psychopaths: Don't Worry. Be Happy.

This would be a lot more fun if we hadn't been through it twice already in the past 15 years, we could pretend that we don't know how this is going to all end...

NYSE Composite Internals:

Nasdaq Up Volume / Total Volume:

Dow Internals (close-up):

Toronto Stock Exchange Internals

Chinese Stocks w/GDP: