The reason. have you looked at the governments spending bill after the tax break. Ridiculousness like when Bush Jr. was in office is about how I can best describe it.

There is a good chance a down cycle will drag the value of stocks down 30% or more. The issue is when will this happen. It doesn't seem likely this year and next year is looking decent besides potentially being weaker because growth may slow after this years government spending increases.

The US has been able to avoid a lot of the global slowdown despite being a big cause for it with the trade wars. This is largely based on its strong tech, service industry, and growing oil business. Recently the US seems to be on attack mode against tech companies as well, so if it shoots itself in the foot here things will look much worse a year from now. We will see.

Governments should be more interested in preventing housing bubbles and should also be more concerned with the welfare of their people by insuring they have housing for their population. One may notice if they work to insure the public has access to decent affordable housing it helps solve housing bubbles. So basically it tends to mean governments are failing at the issue of insuring basic affordable living needs for their population.

There are some exceptions. Countries can work to provide decent rental prices for their population and housing prices rise on speculation which is arguably what is happening in Canada. That is a whole nother issue given the speculation is a lot of foreign capital often with 0% interest in even living there let alone care about anything else besides treating the purchase as a gable and/or getting capital out of their country's restrictive monetary controls (mainly China).

Cutting coal usage certainly helps. The good news is that coal usage is being cut due to lack of economic viability more than clean energy environmental reasons. With natural gas drops, it would be nice to see the US use its pooling excesses of natural gas to move transportation away from gas and towards LNG like China is doing. Not only is this environmentally positive but is makes financial sense.

Anyways, we are moving along. The main problem is actually the continued development of emerging markets where they are unfortunately mirroring the developed nations making too many roads and not enough mass transit leading to mass automobiles and mass traffic. You'd think we would have learned by now what not to do. Apparently not.

Yes, the best strategy is to trade as little as possible. Sadly mutual funds, brokers, etc. are all capitalizing on trading often and pocketing the transaction charges, spreads, and management fees. This is horrible but the public doesn't see the adverse effects as the market is positive. You see it when the market turns down but by that time it's too late.

The weakness is expected as the economy slows and earnings got ratcheted down. That said, the effects are more subdued than expected and the market will do just fine during the summer. The big wildcard is what the Federal Reserve does. I disagree the closer to zero you go the more you should be willing to drop rates back to zirp for safety. If anything, they should delay raising rates for now and if the economy stabilizes raise again, especially in light of the fact the trade wars aren't over yet and MidEast tensions may raise oil prices. Inflation possibilities not presidential whimpering should influence them.

The weak market is caused more from trade tariffs than anything else, so Fed weakening just hides the effect of taxing the public without Congressional authorization which causes inflationary effects. This should discourage Fed easing, not encourage it.

The growth in hourly earnings is positive. As for unemployment, the drop off of total population employment is more a factor than a resurgence is jobs.

Interesting perspective. It certainly beats those thinking the end will come in a few months every few months. I agree rates should usually show a topping pattern before a market drop, and even if they don't the market holds up a while before the crash.

Nice article and an interesting take. What we should be watching what the banks do if interest rates jolt back hurting their income.