Commodities are actually bottoming out unless a bigger downturn appears. Even so, it will be other market sectors that will then get hurt. Capital investment in commodities have been low for some time. No longer can producers rely on lower inputs to drive profit anymore.

Very sad statistics. Unfortunately the way the market is being manipulated by the Federal Reserve debt will grow and eventually when the cost of borrowing rises or when a downturn collapses asset prices including housing the numbers will look even worse. Encouraging more debt will not help solve a crisis caused by too much debt to begin with.

Last time it was too much housing debt that was unsustainable. This time too much education debt and business debt. Eventually it will be too much government debt. A crisis caused by too much savings is solvable. Too much debt inevitably leads to nasty downturns with no easy solutions. Although the Federal Reserve would like you to think there is a too much savings crisis, sadly, the issue is the latter not the former.

The Fed doesn't have to actually buy to support the stock market. Likewise, the Fed's actions are inflating all asset classes besides commodities. One needs not do much to support asset classes than to drop rates to zero or near zero and regularly print liquidity and buy up who knows what type of TBTF bank assets at higher than market value.

The Fed being the regulator of TBTF banks also makes it easy to get them to do anything you want them to do whether it is to buy the stock market or play nice when a TBTF bank's derivatives book is about to burst. Face it. TBTF banks are on par equal to banks in semi-socialist countries. This alone is scary enough and needs to be stopped.

Earnings are horrible YoY but only positive in terms of nerfed expectations. The market has been rising on Federal Reserve weak policy for a long time now and is behaving exactly like Japan. Asset prices will stay astronomically high even if the yield is low as the economy sputters to a death.

That said the US will fare a bit differently than Japan. Japan survived this long on decades of surpluses and massive savers. The US has massive debts and massive spenders already. However, the US has an extraordinarily robust economy built by years of a free market. Thus we still get growth even though the Federal Reserve's actions deter capital investment and encourages stock buybacks, dividends, and debt.

We will see how this ends, but it doesn't look good long term.

Interesting. Solar is a interesting field, although it is still in quite a bit of flux. It's good to see it survive even with low oil prices.

There is inflation. It's just not reported accurately. Housing is experiencing high inflation. The other effects are even worse though. Their actions devalue work as well as those producing and encourage nothing but asset bubbles and speculation fueled by debt. Things get much worse than simply doing nothing. Far worse. Look at Japan. Eventually there is no easy way out and potentially no way out at all.

The Fed is shooting something, it's a bullet and it's aimed right at the head of free market capitalism.

LOL the Fed's zirp and QE is meant to be gifts to the TBTF banks. You are not wanted, invited, and certainly the Fed doesn't want you to get it and spend it. You may then cause inflation which they say they want but in reality don't want because it ends the private get rich party doing nothing productive.

Thanks for the technicals without biased blurbiology.

Like all those in space, the longer you stay out there away from gravity the weaker you get even though you feel just fine. In this case gravity is the free market and real economy. What put us in outer space is the Federal Reserve's ZIRP, QE and other daft policies including blatant lying.

I think the economy realizes Fed stimulus is for a limited time which begs the question, what happens when it ends which puts a greater negative bent on such actions than positive given it does little for the broader economy besides inflate assets and help banks make select like TBTF banks bigger margins.

That said, inflation is here. It's just in housing which is almost in hyper inflation territory compared to economic growth. This will eventually put the US in the same horrible economy as Japan which the Federal Reserve is copying because it gives them power even though it kills the economy and the average citizen. Sad.