Talk about a volatile stock. It still hasn't hit its former highs and the stock bottom shows the downside risk. I'd say it is a bit too late to buy into this now.

More often than not TBTF banks are pushed into investments that make little sense at the urging of the country they reside in. Likewise, TBTF banks have focused increasingly on trading and derivatives, real estate, and other gambles they felt they controlled and have harmed medium and small businesses who they viewed as too small and too risky harming economic growth.

The sad fact is TBTF banks are increasingly dependent on central banks and have forgotten in large part how to do banking anymore. This applies to other big state banks including Germany. It is sad to see these behemoths flounder because they, by their nature imperil the whole population in their failures. TBTF and state banks are by their nature horrible for any country. They should be broken up and regionalized. They can make pacts to share ATMs etc., but if they get big enough to imperil the whole country they are TBTF and something should be done. And not what the US did which was to grow them even bigger and let them gamble with depositors money by tearing down Glass Stegall.

Indeed buying on dips is good, however, one must be sure the downturn is finished before buying, especially if the downturn leads to a full on market crash which is hard to tell at first. It's best to give up some of the gains to make sure the bottom is in.

LOL, perhaps if we can get to zero or negative population growth we too can lower unemployment after decades and even more massive government debt.

Agreed. What is also striking is how some tech stocks have pulled away much like the dot com bubble with respect to other tech stocks.

It's not so mysterious actually. It's slow grinding movement as commodities bounce slightly and the rest of the market lurches as it can not grow or raise prices to account for the slight increases. What will be scary is if commodity prices actually stage a rebound. Then there will be nothing to hide the lack of real growth and compressing margins.

Maybe she's setting the stage for direct stock buying. There is little care for any structure to her actions and price discovery is already shot to hell as is economic signaling.

Very good warnings and insights. Well done.

What they should be talking about is their collective utter failure in helping economies by artificially driving interest rates to practically zirp or lower. Economic forces are vey good at offsetting actions taken to try to artificially manipulate it and often results in even worse outcomes. There is clearly too much money chasing asset valuation that actually slows the economy and denies money going productive uses like capex. Likewise, the Fed's actions have created disincentives for corporations to increase capex and so many have decreased it. Horrific.

I would argue that dropping energy is more an effect of slower economic activity than the cause. There is some argument that dropping energy use mirrors slower growth in that people are living in smaller housing which also inhibits consumption and the housing prices are increasing thus adversely impacting spending as well. This is more a housing issue similar to Japan than energy related though.

Likewise, factory and business energy consumption is slowing because of the adverse effect of monetary policy which discourages capital investment and encourages stock buybacks, debt, and dividends over capital investment. This, however is the tragic effect of monetary policy gone off the capitalist rails.

Last, decreases in travel and shipping are also the effect of a poor economy and not the result of lower energy spending save in states like Texas.

Energy is a good catch all to see the effects of bad economic policies and a worsening economy. The good news it is seems to have reached the bottom unless the Federal Reserve does something worse to exacerbate the situation.