Friday, October 4, 2013

Rage Against the Machine

The shutdown of the U.S. government this week was a symbol of the totally dysfunctional clusterfuck that has become the nation's capital. Worse yet, the attack at the Navy Yards two weeks ago, the attack on the Capitol Building this week and news of a self-immolation late this evening on the D.C. Mall are all blatant signs that social mood has peaked and rage is rising...

The Sound of Gunfire is Getting Ever-Closer
Even at this very late juncture, the lamestream media and apologists for the status quo are going about their normal routine of pretending that everything is business as usual. The desperation to believe in the indefinite sustainability of the status quo, is palpable. It was a self-immolation in Tunisia that launched the Arab Spring of 2011. The lamestream media gave it full and imminent coverage. But when it happens right here on the nation's doorstep, it's described as a "man on fire", as if he spontaneously combusted. After all, the mass disenfranchisement of citizenry that occurs in the Middle East, couldn't possibly occur in the world's most exceptional country, could it? This obsession with maintaining the illusion of stability, is because the nation's largest cohort - the Baby Boomers know exactly the kind of clusterfuck they themselves largely created and therefore are desperate to make sure nothing changes on their watch. The unspoken assumption is that the only thing that matters is Baby Boomer retirement. Everything else is not secondary, it's not even on the agenda. Fuck every other generation. History's largest "me" generation is large and in charge. For now. Because, as we see, the stewed masses are now stirring from their food coma and there is not enough Prozac in the world to paper over the cracks in the yawning reality facade. Years and decades of Extend and Pretend were inevitably going to end in societal meltdown. Decadence yielding to anarchy. The Boomers are only fooling themselves when they think that "all of this" will have a shelf life longer than a few more mass shootings.

Nothing Matters Except the Dow Netflix
For the moment, all of this societal acrimony now playing out on a daily basis can be easily ignored as long as the Dow is still rising. However, a funny thing happened these past few weeks - the Dow stopped rising. So now it's only up to the Nasdaq and the new "four horsemen" of tech (Facebook, Tesla, Yelp and Netflix) and the various IPO stocks that have gone parabolic over these past weeks and months. Amazingly, consumer sentiment peaked fourteen years ago in 1999. Jobs, real estate, global stocks, and commodities all peaked in 2007. Gold peaked in 2011. The Dow is rolling over now, so this entire shit show is hanging by Netflix? You can't make this shit up...

The Dow (aka. the real economy) Is Rolling Over


The Nasdaq is Attenuating In a Parabolic Arc (Don't Buy This At Home)...


Trading Volume Is Holding at 15 Year Lows
A Phony Rally for A Phony Society...


The Yawning Gap Between Market Breadth and the Market Itself is Unprecedented.
Under the radar, there were two major sell-offs in the pre-market futures this week; these were masked by dip buyers who came in during the day session to close the gap. However, this is exactly what we should expect - heavy selling in the futures as the big money tries to get out the back door, until the dip buyers realize that they are holding the bag, at which point this entire clusterfuck goes full Lehman...


Netflix is very similar to Facebook. It initially soared and crashed due to concerns over the sustainability of its business model. Now it's making a massive resurgent comeback even though many of the same concerns still linger. Both stocks have roughly a ~400 Price/Earnings Multiple:



Priceline.com is the leading large cap stock, now definitively through $1,000. Meanwhile PotBelly's went public today, gaining a mere 118% on its first day (not shown):



And in the background, the VIX rose strongly all week, signalling that reality was starting to seep into the markets...


But, as we know, nothing matters until it collapses, so BTFATH...