As we have pointed out before, the ongoing market tension is so palpable it can be cut with a knife. As a reminder, institutional investors are now about as "all in [3]" as they can be, spinning narratives about economic growth, housing bottom, and general improvement (despite all facts to the contrary), while waiting for one simple thing: to get retail investors buying again. Because unless the Fed or ECB pumps another trillion or so in new liquidity there is simply no new purchasing money. However, as we have shown time and again, retail investors have had it with stocks, and are dumping domestic equity funds [4] hand over fist despite the near vertical equity ramp fest, while money going into ETFs, that traditional straw man used by fund flow apologists, has been going almost exclusively into bond-related vehicles [5]. Yet one group of investors has not been waiting to find out which way this temporary stalemate will end (because either the buyers' money will end first, or retail will throw in the towel and after a 20% artificial, liquidity-driven move to the upside will capitulate and become the latest bagholder). That group is corporate insiders: the people who know the fundamental prospects of their companies better than anyone, and certainly better than the propaganda media or the always wrong Wall Street sell side analyst brigade. And as the chart below demonstrates, insiders are now out and selling in record quantities.
[6]
Chart: Bloomberg