With today's less than stellar consumer confidence number and continued path of missed expectations on key macro data over the past few weeks, it is perhaps wondrous that our brain-trust of analysts and economists continue to forecast higher expectations across the board. While this may not come as a surprise to readers used to comprehending the magic of the Birinyi ruler's extrapolation and the inevitable and clockwork 'miss' of turning points of any and every educated talking-heads model, this chart from Deutsche Bank's asset allocation group should contextualize where we are actually versus where LaVorgna and friends see us going. The sad truth is - we have seen this play out again and again and as the printing-press-pressure drives up asset prices (providing confirmation bias upon anchoring bias for any and every economist or long-only manager quoting the 'recovery' or decoupling), the truth is that as prices (and expectations) distend from value and actual reality, the central bank's efforts to 'maintain' the status quo simply create a larger and larger vacuum for asset prices to fall through when sad reality is finally peeked.
[4]