The economic data keeps coming fast and furious, with Consumer Confidence just printing at a blistering 70.3 on expectations of 63.0, up from 61.5? Why? Because crude is approaching records and gas is $5? No - because the market is up of course on trillions in liquidity. So confidence is up because the market is higher, and the second the higher than expected confidence number prints, the market is higher on that alone. Catch 22 FTW, and it is not alone - every other confidence-based indicator in the past 3 months has beat! Because human beings, indoctrinated to only care about nominal gains, really are that dumb - something well known and appreciated by the central bankers. In other news, we joked before it printed that the Richmond Fed would come several standard deviations above the consensus. Sure enough, the actual print came at 20, naturally far higher than the average estimate of 14, and in fact above the highest estimate of 17. The good news: silver has just hit a 30% YTD return.
Richmond Fed distribution estimate and the actual print.
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And silver:
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