From the Trenches World Report
Enforce our Bill of Rights
We now know that the Retail Apocalypse took another trip downhill during the all-important holiday season. December reports show retail sales declined more in one month than they have since … the Great Recession. Notice what a common refrain that comparison has become. Continue reading “Retail Apocalypse and Carmageddon Continue to Pick up Speed as Predicted Here”
As happened with the first housing market crash that began in 2007 but didn’t become widely recognized until mid-2008, the present housing crisis began exploding one story at a time last summer, and this blog was perhaps the first to state that summer’s change was the turning point from decades of ascent into a collapse in housing sales and prices. I said the same thing back in 2007, and people didn’t believe me then either. Continue reading “Housing Market Crash 2.0: The Jury is in for 2018-2019”
Here is a single chart that proves how completely the Fed’s end-game for its recovery failed, which means the fake recovery, itself, is failing. It’s not hard to figure out what happened here.
Talk about a euphoric rise at the end of the Trump Rally heading into 2018, followed immediately by a massive blow-off top. When you compare the size of the blow-off to the total size of the S&P 500, it looks almost like Mount Saint Helens blew its top off. Continue reading “The Fed’s Failure is a Fait Accompli, Exactly as This Blog Said it Would be!”
I wrote months ago about the coming mini ice age. Recently the reality of this cooling trend became mainstream news because of a new scientific study affirming it, and even more recently, the midwest decided to remind us of what mini ice ages might feel like. The reason for all of this is told here: Continue reading “A Winter Tale of Snow to Remember and Sun Long Ago”
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell placed his put in stocks while saying there is none. When he doubled down today on a more dovish approach to the economy, Powell claimed the Fed is not designing interest rates to keep the market climbing. If that is true, recession must be near:
We are in the end time of an unprecedented era of financial expansion — the greatest expansion of the world’s money supply ever attempted, expansion of the Federal Reserve’s vast and unchecked powers far beyond what the Fed could do before the financial crisis, and super-sizing expansion of banks that were already way too big to fail.
I am calling this time in which we are now unwinding this monetary expansion the Great Recovery Rewind because I believe this attempt by the Federal Reserve and other central banks of the world to move us away from crisis banking is taking us right back into economic crisis. That is why this was the top peril listed in my Premier Post, “2019 Economic Headwinds Look Like Storm of the Century.” It is more potent in possible perils than all the trade tariffs in the world. Continue reading “The Great Recovery Rewind: How the Federal Reserve’s Balance-Sheet Unwind is Unwinding Recovery”
In a surprisingly candid admission, two former Federal Reserve chairs have stated that the Federal Reserve alone is responsible for creating all recessions in the United States.
First, former Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said that
Expansions don’t die of old age. They get murdered.
Continue reading “Federal Reserve Confesses Sole Responsibility for All Recessions”
The world is descending into intellectual chaos. Read El Erian in the following linked article, and then come and back tell me we have not moved into madness:
El-Erian: 1000-Point Swings In The Dow Are The “New Reality”
There is clearly a tooth missing in one of the gears in El-Erian’s brain. How do you make this statement … Continue reading “The Roar of Stupidity is Now Deafening”
The market’s last chaotic day closed in a way that befit the entire year. Up, down, up harder, down harder, and done!
It looked like the violence of the day may have come from the Plunge Protection Team attempting to push the market up in the middle of the afternoon, except that the middle of the afternoon doesn’t fit the PPT’s MO because the birthing-sized push didn’t come in the PPT’s usual obvious final-hour press. So, what was the push in the penultimate hours all about? Continue reading “It’s Up, It’s Down, It’s Done — a Day in a Year of the Dow.”
So, the bull market bounced back, right? Not so fast. When one appreciated reader suggested there would be a huge plunge the day after Christmas, given how badly the market plummeted the day before Christmas, I cautioned against that tempting thought. Herein are some warnings about bull traps in a bear market and how they work and how much they look exactly like what we just saw…. Continue reading “Beware the Bear’s Bull Traps!”
Until you got to this tax and spending deal a year ago, it was one of the most hated bull markets. The markets steadily climbed one wall of worry after another, and the problem was that the economic data did not confirm it.
That’s right. The market was not rising for the past ten years due to a healthy underlying economy. On the contrary, the market was rising due to the Federal Reserve pumping out stratospheric amounts of thin-air money, all of which needed somewhere to land. Continue reading “Fed Med is Dead: How We Went from Fake Recovery to Freefall”
Make no mistake about it, there’s real fear and panic out there as markets are dislocating to the downside…. But note that on many charts we are showing 2008/2009 like conditions, something that is entirely inconsistent with the earnings and economic data we’re still seeing: It’s almost as if markets are pricing in a financial crisis that has yet to occur.… I see slowing growth and concerns about a coming recession, all of which is true, but I’ve yet to see evidence of a financial crisis. ( Zero Hedge )
This ain’t no ballgame. This bear has shown up for blood, not sport. The Nasdaq intraday hit the 20% down mark that is widely regarded as qualifying for a change from a bull market to a bear market. A close at that level would have made it as official as a declaration of a bear market gets.
As can be expected, the major index whose stocks played the largest role in forming the bull market of the last decade doesn’t die easy, so the NASDAQ bounced off the bear barrier for today, but it rests an easy day trip from officially killing the longest-living bull in history. Continue reading “This Bear Ain’t Playin’ Games with the Bulls (The Stock Market Crash is in. Cash is in now, too!)”
Before Trump was even inaugurated, I said he was clearly draining the swamp directly into the White House. That was obvious as soon as he nominated a Goldman-Sachs roster to fill all the financial cabinet positions. Some wishfully said he was playing 4-D chess by keeping his enemies close. I called baloney. He was simply being Sached. One of those from the Goldman roster was Steven Mnuchin. Continue reading “Trump’s Mobsters in the White House Deflect Blame for Falling Market”
It’s downright wintry on Wall Street right now. Firmly establishing the worst start of a December for the US stock market in 38 years, all three major stock indices plumbed the greatest depths they have hit all year … and it’s been a bad year! The S&P 500 and the Nasdaq closed at 2,546 and 6,754 respectively. The Dow closed down 504 points to rest at 23,593. If it closes the tiniest nudge lower to a point it hit midday today, it will establish the worst start to a December since the Great Depression. Moreover, the market fell on swelling volume at a time of year (Santa-Claus-rally-time) when volume of trading is supposed to decrease. It would appear traders are holding vigil around their computer screens, rather than setting out on Christmas vacations. Continue reading “Stock Market Hangs on Edge of Very Big Cliff”
The Big Bear is back. Ursa Majoris in the house of the rising sun, and Taurus is in the house of the setting sun. Those are bad signs for investors who are now daily diving into their horoscopes. The market is pouring out of an inverted Big Dipper, otherwise known as the Big Bear (Ursa Major), and no one (not even the Fed chair) nor any positive event seems able to stop it. I can easily tell you why. Continue reading “Stock Market’s Stars are Crossed for an Ursa Major Upset”
As we pass from early summer into late summer today, stocks on all the major indices open the day on the slide. The “Tech Wreck,” as it is being called, has been noted by many, as I’ll detail here. That is in spite of the fact that the last of the great FAANGS just reported its most stellar quarter ever. (See below.) Continue reading “Icarus Flies, but FAANGs Fall from the Gaping Maw of US Stock Market – And My Blog is Still Here”
While glowing presidential proclamations about US GDP growth last week did nothing to prevent the stock market from rushing headlong over the cusps of a FAANG stock ledge, the market is taking a breather today. So, let’s take a breather and go back and look at why that GDP report had no bite.
Quite simply, I think stock investors looked at the surfacing of real problems in their favorite FAANG stocks and, so, failed this time to find any fun in the frivolous fiction of government factoids. GDP reportage has been fake for years, and it is no less fake under Trump than under any other president. Fake is where you find it. You can find it as much on Fox as on CNN. Continue reading “Fabulously Fake Facts – “G” in GDP Stands for “Gullibility””
Just ten days ago, your Lone Ranger here laid out why one should see the barely beginning downturn of the housing market in Seattle as the bellwether for a national housing market bust. Naturally a snowflake or two of criticism landed on my nose to say I knew nothing about real estate. That being the case, look at how the world has changed in so little time to catch up with me. An idea that you may have read here first is now mainstream news in every housing fact being reported across the nation and around the world. Continue reading “Housing Market Collapse 2.0 Accelerates Rapidly!”
Two of the original FAANG stocks that carried the US stock market higher throughout the Fed’s fake recovery from the Great Recession have revealed in the past week how quickly overpriced, bubblicious stocks can turn on investors and bring a rising index down.
Facebook, which put the “F” in FAANG, showed it knows the foulest meaning of an “F” when its second-quarter report card got graded. Overnight, Facebook lost $150 billion in value, which was a drop of over 20%, putting the stock, at opening, in its own bear market. By the end of the today’s actual trading (Thursday) the stock had settle at down $119 billion (-19%), which still set a record as the worst corporate crash in the history of the US stock market. Pronounced one analyst of Facebook like a referee, “Bears win this quarter.” Continue reading “Big Stocks Rock NASDAQ as Two FAANGs Bite the Dust”