"Businessmen, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line
Know what any of it is worth"
What comes next will end Globalization as we know it. There is too much accumulated leverage and too much complacency to prevent systemic meltdown. Too much ignorance. Too much arrogance. Too much exceptional buffoonery obfuscating the end of empire. They can't handle what this all means.
Serial-conned fools eagerly bounding down the road to perdition.
December 19th, 2017:
Banana Republicans Pass Tax Cut To Make Ultra-Wealthy Ultra-Wealthier
With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, it's clear that Trump hijacked a two year global central bank balance sheet expansion at its mid-point and rode it to its zenith while claiming full credit. What any scam artist would do. To what extent his trillion dollar tax cut and incessant Twitter gibberish served to accentuate the Central Bank-sponsored speculative orgy, will be for historians to decide. Suffice to say, we live in a society run by and for salesmen. With the penultimate reality infotainer enthroned at the very top. The endgame result of a consumption-oriented corporate Idiocracy, as predicted by The Lonely Crowd. The arguments in favour of continued economic expansion are now so specious they verge on pathetic. On the way "up" it was so easy for the con men at large to piggyback on mass delusion and invent any lazy rationale to attend the rally. Now on the way down, those exact same rationale are as flaccid as the con men still advancing them.
Here we see that Trump's election fell at the midpoint of the two year global rally which spanned from February 2016 to February 2018:
I just skimmed Northman Trader's latest bland warning on casino risk. Which no doubt will fall on deaf ears. Recall that just a few weeks ago he was predicting a meltup rally into year-end. It's these vacillations that generate mass confusion - what he calls ideological "flexibility". The fact remains that literally nothing has changed since he was predicting a melt-up other than the fact that it hasn't taken place.
Here is the part where we agree:
"First, let’s be clear what happened in 2018: After liquidity infusions of $5 trillion in record global central bank intervention between 2016 and 2017 and the U.S. tax cut that followed, we witnessed a global blow-off top in January"
These "new" warning signs are as true now as they were several months ago, which means that the rally ended in late September. Followed by decline in October, failed rally in November, and renewed selloff in December. Which means this is all far too already over for predictions that "this will soon be over".
"This could soon be over"
It appears that S&P futures gamblers were more convinced by the Santa bullshit hypothesis, having raised S&P bullish bets ahead of this week's rate hike:
Home gamers are just starting to realize this was another con job...
"Lipper data shows largest weekly outflow from U.S. stocks since tracking began"
The figure is also nearly twice as large as any other week on record"
It's a tad late in the game to sell in 2x record size into a no bid market.
The ECB picked the perfect time to end stimulus
"This could soon be over"
It appears that S&P futures gamblers were more convinced by the Santa bullshit hypothesis, having raised S&P bullish bets ahead of this week's rate hike:
Home gamers are just starting to realize this was another con job...
"Lipper data shows largest weekly outflow from U.S. stocks since tracking began"
The figure is also nearly twice as large as any other week on record"
It's a tad late in the game to sell in 2x record size into a no bid market.
The ECB picked the perfect time to end stimulus
Sadly, this has nothing to do with "actionable trade setups". A meltdown at this juncture will imperil Globalized capitalism as we know it. A mega bubble which in the past ten years has grown far larger using the exact same failed alchemy that caused 2008. Now, of course, if one only looked at the S&P 500 and drew multi-decade trendlines wide enough to conceal 10% moves in either direction then this could all seem quite "ambiguous". Unfortunately, beneath the seemingly perma-bid S&P 500 futures are all of the various imploded dominoes that comprise the real economy. And beneath those sectors are all of the various contracts and promises that were entered into on the basis that this wasn't all just another scam and fraud like last time.
Beneath that of course lies a bottomless reservoir of rage so deep and explosive that it defies any rational description. But sadly, there is no "actionable trade set-up" for those who waited until the point of ignition to figure out that this is all just another con job.
