Carry Trade

There is a $100 trillion bond market out there that has been priced by a handful of central bankers, not a planet teeming with exhuberant savers. The mad descent of the former into the whacky world of QE and ZIRP has caused a double whammy distortion in the bond markets of the world. So, no, there isn’t a savings glut in the world; there is an outbreak of destructive central bank bond buying and money market price pegging that is virtually destroying the world’s bond market. What we have is a fraud wrapped in a bogus theory. Only none dare call it that. At least, not on bubblevision.

As usual, US stocks are the last to “get it.” But this won’t last for long. The S&P 500 is sitting on the ledge of a massive cliff. And when it finally tumbles, the move will be both fast and violent.

Massive misallocations of capital stare at us like wild caged animals through the bars of a cage in the zoo!

Janet Yellen noted that everything was awesome and that stocks were now slightly "on the high side" of their historical range. It appears no one showed her the Russell 2000 which has a valuation multiple of just about 90x LTM earnings (as reported by the 2000 companies which comprise the index, and which were certified as accurate by 4,000 CEOs and CFOs on penalty of jail time). The mystery of how the Fed remains so stubbornly bubble blind - just like it did during the dotcom and housing bubbles - is thus revealed. The self-evident reason is that the purported geniuses who comprise our monetary politburo drink the Wall Street Cool-Aid about forward ex-items EPS. The Fed is driving a two-ton bubble machine, but has no clue that it has become a financial death trap.

The US Dollar took down Oil, commodities, even emerging market currencies. Stocks will be next. The first REAL sign that the 2008 Crash was coming occurred when the US Dollar began to skyrocket in the summer of 2008.

If the Fed indeed raises rates in June, we're likely to begin to see periphery sovereign debt defaults

The Fed and other Central Banks are trying to maintain the illusion that they have everything in control by talking about interest rates, but the reality is that the US Dollar carry trade is ABOVE $9 trillion in size. That is almost as large as ALL of the money printing that occurred between 2009 and 2013.

The transparent truthlessness of the Fed’s basic premises go far to explain the chasm between official policy and reality - though it does not explain the appetite for plain lying of the supposedly informed minority cohort of the public, the deciders among us in business, politics, and media. Within th enext few months (between "patient" removal, token rate hikes, and reversals to QE4), the Fed will be completely out of cred. This will be the biggest disaster of all, since the loss of faith in august institutions will rage through every polity in the advanced economies. Nobody will believe any longer in anything they say or do, and especially the value of the papers (or digits) they denominate as money.

Why understanding of market cycles is crucial for investment success

There was a point in 2010 when American capitalism might have had an opportunity to heal itself and commence on a long march toward sustainable growth and real wealth gains. But the monetary politburo would have none of it - keeping the pedal to the metal until this very moment... and the rest is history. The Fed and the other central banks around the world have fomented a new and even more virulent and dangerous financial bubble.

Yellen has created a narrative about the US economy, especially the (un)employment rate, and with the narrative is now firmly in place, Yellen and her stooges can claim they have no choice but to hike In short, Janet Yellen will go down into history as the person responsible for what may be the biggest economic crash ever, or at least delivering the final punch of the way into it, a crash that will make the rich banks even much richer. And there is not one iota of coincidence in there. Yellen works for those banks. The Fed only ever held investors’ hands because that worked out well for Wall Street. And now that’s over. Y’all are on the same side of the same trade, and there’s no profit for Wall Street that way.

Bubbles arise if the price far exceeds the asset’s fundamental value, to the point that no plausible future income scenario can justify the price

Once upon a time businesses borrowed long term money - if they borrowed at all - in order to fund plant, equipment and other long-lived productive assets. Today American businesses are borrowing like never before - to fund financial engineering maneuvers such as stock buybacks, M&A and LBOs, not the acquisition of productive assets that can actually fuel future output and productivity. 

Let’s see. The Eccles Building has grown its balance sheet by 9X since the turn of the century, but real net investment in the business sector has plunged by 33%!

The stock market is totally mispricing what's coming.

What in god’s name does Janet Yellen think she is doing? Just a few weeks ago she established the ridiculous Fedspeak convention that “patient” means money market rates will not rise from the zero bound for at least two meetings. Now she has modified that message into “not exactly”.