Sick Of It All
Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance
Every week, usually once or twice, I sit down to put onto paper my thoughts about the market. And every week, my disgust not only for the rigged system that encompasses our equity markets, but also for the sound of my own whining, grows exponentially.
When I sit down to perfunctorily prattle on about how nothing makes sense and how I constantly see things the polar opposite of 99% of everybody else in the world of finance every week, I usually wonder two things.
First, I wonder whether or not today will finally be the day that I capitulate, get bullish on the stock market, and start bowing religiously to a statue of Stephanie Kelton.
“I should know, I’ve followed a few!”
After all, the incessant price moves higher in Bitcoin are part of what triggered me to eventually reassess my thought process on the cryptocurrency. And even though I got bullish for reasons other than price, why couldn’t the same happen with equities?
Second, I try to conceptualize exactly how fast the universe can, and will, make a total ass out of me by crashing markets 50% in 15 minutes in the days, hours, minutes, or probably even seconds after I’d have such a shift in sentiment.
Which is why, like the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, I will continue to forge forward, exasperated, regardless of the inconvenient fact that I have no arms or legs left. But don’t let anybody ever tell you that my spirit was easy to break.
“The Black Knight always triumphs!”
I had my most recent bout of vomiting in my own mouth just thinking about how wrong I’ve been on macro analysis late on Wednesday, when, as if part of some ant-burning-under-a-magnifying-glass-type-cosmic-conspiracy to torture my psyche, the Fed's Chris Waller came out and assured the public that he was in no rush to cut interest rates. Here’s a look at some of the headlines that came out of Waller’s speech in New York:
"There is no rush to cut the policy rate,” Waller said in a speech in New York.
The recent data "tells me that it is prudent to hold this rate at its current restrictive stance perhaps for longer than previously thought to help keep inflation on a sustainable trajectory toward 2%."
Waller still expects to cut rates this year but isn’t ready to take that step without further evidence that inflation continues to drop.
Waller said analyzing three- and six-month measures of the Consumer Price Index, excluding volatile food and energy prices, tells him that progress on inflation has slowed and may have stalled.
"The risk of waiting a little longer to cut rates is significantly lower than acting too soon," said Waller. "Cutting the policy rate too soon and risking a sustained rebound in inflation is something I want to avoid."
Waller said that he is considering reducing the overall number of rate cuts this year or pushing them further into the future in response to the recent data if things don’t improve. But he also said he isn’t rushing to take that step yet.
While I’m not sure how the market will receive this blindingly, exhaustively obvious negative news, my guess is by the time you read this at 4:45am EST on Thursday morning, futures will be raging higher and every index will be up in the pre-market session. After all, nothing says “bull case” like the Fed not being able to meet objectives in bringing down inflation and then...(READ THIS FULL PIECE HERE).
