Jim Cramer

We are sure that tomorrow's ADP report will be taken as either, a) proof positive that December's miss in NFP was a weather-related artifice hiding the true awesomeness of the US recovery (and this no un-taper); or b) the most recent macro data is indeed weak and job creation have peaked for this cycle (despite a few trillion in balance sheet expansion by the Fed). However, as the following chart shows, any surprise beat (or miss) in ADP is entirely useless as a predictor of payroll surprises...

XKCD published this cartoon in reference to ESPN and the like, but it’s even more applicable to CNBC and its ilk. Just to be clear, I’m not slamming these hosts and traders. I’m sure that they are overwhelmingly smart, honest people who believe that what they say are useful truths from their own perspectives. They are not hypocrites. But they are performers. And like any performer, there is a larger game being played with their words. The larger meaning of the statements made on CNBC has absolutely nothing to do with specific investment advice or news. CNBC really could not care less about the actual content of what is being said. The purpose of CNBC’s game is not to tell you WHAT to think, but HOW to think, that thinking about investing in terms of some sell-side analyst’s anodyne story about fundamentals or some trader’s breathless story about open option interest is smart or wise or what all the cool kids are doing. Why? Because CNBC can create inexpensive content essentially at will to fill this demand, allowing them to sell advertisements and take cable carriage fees. 

With the world's focus on emerging markets and anxiously trying to bring the narrative back domestically as a reason to buy US stocks, we thought this simple chart would help clarify just how 'great' the US economy (70% of GDP is consumption we are constantly reminded) is doing...

Citi's Tobias Levkovich sums up the hope... "we have received a fair amount of questions from clients over the last couple of weeks about the effect of share buybacks supporting earnings in the coming year, almost as if they are stretching to find reasons not to cut their numbers." The following charts suggest we are stretched indeed... Quantitative easing has distorted not only financial markets, but financial memory. The awakening is not likely to be gentle.

Since his appointment, the balance sheet of Ben Bernanke's Fed has exploded, stock prices have resurged to newerer highs, and home prices are breaking (bad) records once again. However, the following chart of sentiment towards the money-printer-in-chief by income bracket sums it all up... (despite Bernanke's "belief" that "Fed policy is a Main Street policy") Greenspan will be happy though, as Bernanke's disapproval rating is almost double that of his when he left office in 2006 (and approval rating considerably lower).

This morning's utter collapse in pending home sales - a 6-sigma miss by 'economists' unaware that it was cold in December - has been ushered away on the back of "weather" reasoning. However, a glance at the chart below confirms this is total bullshit. As Goldman Sachs admits "broad-based declines by region suggest that colder-than-average weather was likely not the primary driver."

Asset-gatherers and talking-heads are in full panic mode. Stocks tumbled ince again today and there was very little "off the lows" talk. The "turmoil" panic in the hearts and minds of every Wall Street strategist palpable as the Fed failed to save us from another down day. Trannies, Russell, and the Dow are down around 5.5% from their highs; the S&P down around 4%; and the Nasdaq around 4.5% from its multi-year highs last week. Today's plunge of over 35 points the S&P futures from the "where are all the sellers, EM is fixed" post-Turkey highs at 1801 is a very sizable outside range day. Of course it was all about the ongoing unwind of levered JPY carry trades as 102 becomes crucial to any bounce in stocks. VIX rose 1.7 vols to 17.5%; credit spreads popped notably wider post FOMC; EM FX turmoiled considerably lower and while the USD was stable (there was plenty of puking in AUD and JPY). Treasury yields tumbled to fresh 10 week lows (10Y -8bps at 2.66% at the lows). Gold and silver rallied post-FOMC and recovered yesterday's monkey-hammering losses.

Today's short squeeze, EM-is-fixed, Fed-hope-fueled relief rally (in the face of compounding errors in earnings expectations and outlooks) we thought reminiscing on what happened the last time stocks were this high and over-levered and debt-bloated entities were rapidly revealed for what they were would be useful. While the 'just three charts' we showed two weeks ago provide plenty of concern, when the NYSE Composite, which accounts for 1,900 companies representing 61% of the world's publicly traded stock market capitalization, shows eery similarities to the tipping point in 2007 as NewEdge's Brad Wishack pointed out earlier, we thought it worth sharing.

As all eyes are focused on US earnings and asset-gatherers cherry-pick beats and ignore the bellwether misses, we thought a gentle reminder of the other seemingly unbreakable 'meme' of the moment - that of Europe's recovery - was in order. The following chart, presented with little comment of schadenfreude, should clear up any doubts about whether Europe's economy is on the up... or down...

The Dow Transports has outperformed the Industrials by over 3% year-to-date (+1.9% vs -1.1%) as both the Trannies and Russell pressed new record highs today (as the Dow and S&P lagged on bigger-cap earnings disappointments). Treasuries lost ground with the front-end worst (5Y +6bps) but 30Y was unch leading to a significant further flattening in the curve to its 2nd flattest close in 17 months. The USD ended the day (and week so far) unchanged as a big drop in CAD was offset by a rally in AUD and GBP. Gold & silver dribbled lower all day and were smacked into the close; with copper flat to slightly lower on the day as WTI surged towards $97 (narrowing the spread to Brent to 1-month lows). It was recent business-as-usual in VIX as it leaked higher testing 13% once again and credit markets remain divergent from stocks (though the relative safety of investment grade credit was bid this afternoon). For those keeping track, today's market was brought to you by the letters USDJPY and the number 17.62.

No matter how centrally-planned and meticulously managed the US economy/market has become, the policy-setting powers-that-be have yet to be able to control one thing... mother nature...

Today the ante was just upped once more, as the 4 Week Bill Bid to Cover rose yet again, from 6.4x to 6.6x. Logically, this print is now the latest and greatest highest Bid to Cover since December 2011, and the question remains: why the scramble for safety?

With a government intent on growing its entitlements, welfare state, and implicitly it's debt load... what could be more terrifying than the future debt-serfs refusing to be born into existence. As the birth rate in the US tumbles to yet another multi-decade low, one has to ask how confident the young adult of today is and how, again, the Japanization of America continues to indicate a dark future ahead...

"It's dangerous to be short still, but we might be building toward a moment where the market becomes quite vulnerable," warns Bill Fleckenstein who is finishing up the documentation on a new short fund he is about to start marketing. With the slowing growth of the Fed balance sheet, over 70% of the S&P's gains since 2011 from hope-driven multiple-expansion alone, bond and equity market sentiment at extremes, and (as Goldman warned) valuations anything cheap; it is hardly a surprise that, as Reuters reports, after years of hiding under their desks, short sellers are re-emerging - slowly. Whether outright short or long/short funds, the market-share of this corner of the business bottomed at approximately 25% in 2013, but in the last weeks, several S&P 500 companies have seen large increases in shares borrowed for short bets; and the "tide might be turning."

Jeff Gundlach recently warned that the trade that could inflict the most pain to the most people is a significant move down in yields (and potential bull flattening to the yield curve). Citi's FX Technicals group laid out numerous reasons why this is entirely possible (technically and fundamentally) but despite this, investors remain entirely enamored with stocks and, as the following chart shows, Treasury Bond sentiment now stands at 20-year extremes of bearishness.