The Great Fall From The Great Wall
[Editor's note: this post includes time-sensitive and time-specific material]
The Great Fall from the Great Wall - of worry and angst. A sober grasp of reality by more market participants was heightened a bit more overnight by China's latest Yuan devaluation, and to a lesser extant, North Korea's nuclear test (they claim H-bomb, which some scientists say unlikely; it really isn't known other than all of it violates UN Resolutions and regional stability).
While pundits will 'blame' the nuke test or some other aspect, that's not the real cause. This is a 'continuation pattern' of a Bear Market that we have contended began in July of 2015. To me it's pathetic that experienced technicians require a market to break to lower levels before they call a spade a shovel, and recall that breadth, oscillators, and lots of internals have telegraphed this for ages.
That's the case even if they insist on totally ignoring fundamentals, which also have deteriorated and pointed-to lower earnings and GDP realities well prior to a Wall Street inclined to grasp how important it was to get clients out of stocks and risky positions, not into more danger. They are still catching knives. Why?
Perhaps because they have seasonal reinvestment funds coming in; and they tend to put that to work almost regardless of the worthiness of doing so. That's probably part of why intraday squaring recovered somewhat toward the end of a projected ideal down-up-down session, as they threw money at it. Those are already lost funds given this evening's decline.
I need to share with you (before a very thorough 'live' market video you'll see below) a chart or two of China; that's the action that's going on this evening. Bottom-line: stay short or stay-out; all rallies should be false & abortive and a major (yes major) downtrend, in-effect in stages since July, should continue. At this hour (9 pm ET US); Nikkei is off 356; Shanghai halted off 245 or 7.3% and Hang Sang is off 595 or 2.84%. S&P futures are down 2075 (20 handles) or double the decline in the main video below (crashing as I recorded; watch below). I encourage sharing this report with other investors, as there really needs to be broad understanding of the implied risks of what's happening.
(Extended final video as China crashed 'to halt'; futures 'in' the vacuum now.)
Wednesday (final) MarketCast
Pre-close (intraday) MarketCast
Disclosure: None.
Market monetarists don't believe in speculation or credit issues. It is all about the money supply. But you have show throwing money is not so productive unless you have unlimited money to throw.
M2 (money supply, as we show subscribers at ingerletter.com this weekend) is expanding; just at a slower pace. Indeed we've argued Fed reticence on pulling back falitated the length of the preceding uptrend. Now, increasingly, it's overly-optimistic Bulls that are 'fighting the Fed'.
Gene, question. We all don't want a cashless society. How do we reflate and prevent the cashless society without doing so in a toxic manner. We always offer easy credit loans to people who can't pay them back and call that reflation. I have been discouraged by the Market Monetarist solutions. Perhaps you have some ideas I could look into. :)
Gary; therein lies the rub. You asked about reflation and credit; not BitCoin or an alternative to fiat currency (it's certainly not Gold; even if it rallied). Above my pay grade; but maybe it takes a total market meltdown even more negative than my Bear Market outline (from July forward) to prompt a serious global approach. Won't it be interesting if they 'actually' discuss this at Davos this month in Switz? I'll reflect on this to our readers (temporarily you see my reports here in-full; often a day or two later than sent to our subscribers; mostly focused on the S&P).
I will be looking for your reports, Gene.
Same here.