"It's called 'Free Trade'. It costs everything"
I'm all for God, I'm just not into hairless monkeys playing God while taking their Idiocracy to a whole new level, which is what happened this week. This was a litmus test for who would believe the exact opposite of the truth in every direction. It turns out nearly everyone...
This week, Trump went into panic mode and wondered aloud if he could pardon himself for doing nothing wrong. He pounded the table for new casino highs while deriding weak economic data as merely "fake news". He should know, because no one knows fake better than the con-man-in-chief. There is absolutely NOTHING real about the clown, so those who believe (in) him to the end, deserve their BIBLICAL fate.
And yet, even as clown was going into meltdown mode, casino volatility/complacency reached a new record low, across stocks AND Treasury bonds.
The Tech sector finally recovered all Y2K losses, compliments of record risk appetite:
The reach for risk spanned every junk asset class known to man: crypto-currencies, micro cap stocks, FANG internet, Chinese internet, Biotech, inverse volatility, IPOs, and Emerging Markets.
This era's financial WMD short-volatility trade reached a new speculative short interest record, despite the fact that a reversion to just "average" volatility is now enough to implode the casino:
Meanwhile, unwinding of the fake reflation trade accelerated in banks, Energy, and the collapsing dollar
Republicans proved their unflagging dedication to corruption by failing to agree upon how many millions should lose healthcare coverage to fund their tax cut. Some said 22 million was too many, for others it was too few. In the end they couldn't agree, so they left Donny twisting in the wind.
It doesn't really matter since healthcare stocks went parabolic anyways...
Wall Street's last pump and dump further imploded to a new low
OPEC's latest production cut turned out to be a production increase, but really, what's the difference to a stoned Idiocracy?
Therefore gamblers INCREASED their bets on higher oil prices:
But the really fucked up fake narrative of the week, if you can pick just one, was the implosion of the last bastion of retail vis-a-vis the economic black hole of Amazon . All of which of course is really just a cover-up for economic implosion, amid ubiquitous belief in the jobless consumer, who lives with the Sasquatch. Despite having only 5% of total retail sales, we are to believe that Amazon has imploded all department stores, dollar stores, Walmart/Target, all specialty apparel, sports equipment, home furnishings, grocery stores...
And now this week, the last holdout, home improvement and appliances. Because now jobless consumers are buying lumber on the internet...
"Are we sure it's not interest rates and high debt levels causing this problem?"
"Don't worry, just buy Amazon. Stop being an idiot"
"Bypassing the U.S. economy is good for the consumer"
As I said earlier this week, this late stage reflation reminds me of 2011 when Gold was the alternative currency of choice vis-a-vis surging EM currencies. In other words, the fake reflation narrative has been exported from the U.S. where it's collapsing, to the rest of the world...
"There has to be somewhere to hide from fake reflation"
You CAN fool everyone...
"Fool me every time, shame on me"
