Illusive tax reconciliations are unlikely to be any sort of panacea for the nervous money managers of Wall Street; but are essential for the markets; merely to have them hold together (not necessarily advance much) after the event. There is however a bigger risk - two of them, actually.

With a presumption that FIFO will not be a required for Capital Gains, that takes us to the next issue. That's a concern (leaked if valid by Goldman in the final moments of today's trading session) that Corporate tax rates, cut purportedly to the 21% level (fine); won't be effective until 2019 (not fine).
 

I've previously opined that if they mix this up, and generate the really small individual tax cuts to 2018 and delay corporate cuts to 2019; the market's not going to be pleased. That may not be the case; but that's the worry we saw expressed in the day's final moments; even though we thought stocks would do no better than up-and-then-on-hold ahead of tomorrow's Fed rate decision.

That rate decision is expected to be 25 bp higher on the Funs rate; and we suspect the market is ready to absorb that with some momentary shuffling. If however the Fed moves 50 bp higher, that's likely a different story; so it's likely to invite some volatility. Prepare for 'trench warfare' especially if that happens.

Bottom line: for the moment that's really where things stand and we won't elaborate much tonight (in harmony with our pledge to shorten most of the evening reports unless there's a significant topic to discuss).

There's also continued discussion that this is not a really effective tax plan; but I think we all already grasped that it was fiddling with what we had with rate changes; and not genuine reform or simplification as many hoped for.

Various studies have shown that revenue losses are going to overwhelm a slew of purported savings measures; and that might be partially 'why' (if so for that matter) the story of a delay in corporate cuts to 2019 is circulating.

But it is baloney to say that the Bill (as far as anyone knows) will really be 'revenue neutral'. Sweden has a similar Bill being crafted; but they have a surplus not the deficits we run. So again consider the 'context' of all of this.

Whether causation of the American complexity is a consumption-oriented tax system, combined with insanely high corporate taxes relative to all the major industrial countries (which is presumably going to be cut to 21% but when is the question remaining), the U.S. has run one of the biggest deficit spending programs along with slower growth than other OECD members.

At the same time the 'delusion' that it's going to be revenue-neutral means a mess is being left for future addressing; and that's why we've opined it's not perfect, won't see adequate growth to offset the cuts; and nevertheless has to occur. The miracle would be if Oil's price stays high enough and we become a major exporter of crude (we export but not majorly) then there's an ancillary income stream to the Nation that we haven't had in decades.

Conclusion: the market is on tenterhooks and increasingly vulnerable.