Elliott Wave

JPMorgan's 2016 Outlook for the S&P 500 Index favored a continuation of a broad and volatile range into the first half of the year, below 2,100 and above 1,820-1,870 longer-term range support. While the unexpected early-January weakness has not violated the Oct 2014 and Aug 2015 lows and other support parameters near that area, the nature of the current decline raises some concern for what has been a constructive longer-term view.

“It feels like someone just flipped the switch to ‘off’ without any concrete reasoning,” one of the executives commented.

Yellen's Last Hurrah: at this point, Janet "the antichrist" Yellen will have license to do Whatever The Hell She Wants to "fix" things. This will be her last free pass to do so.

We're beginning to believe the nation will not be unified behind a common cause when the coming financial eruption unleashes molten lava of chaos, punishing economic distress, civil strife, class warfare, race wars, and ultimately global war. As Strauss and Howe foretold, the establishment (aka corporate fascist military industrial surveillance state) has seen a sequential loss of popular trust as their blatant corruption, sociopathic stranglehold on the levers of power, and unrelenting greed have angered the critical thinking aware citizens of this country. The next leg down in this Greater Depression will sever the remaining trust, disintegrating any remaining support for the existing civic order. What comes next will be heavily dependent upon whether the 5% to 10% of liberty minded believers in the Constitution are able to gain the trust of the masses.

Five Chinese navy ships are currently operating in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, marking the first time the U.S. military has seen them in the area. Why the sudden interest? Because the Chinese have been studying the cycles. From generational theorists William Strauss and Neil Howe, they have learned that political/cultural cycles last only 65 years, and then they collapse, cycles first observed by Taoist monks and Roman philosophers. And China is exactly 66 years advanced since the Chinese Communist Revolution of 1949. In terms of generational cycles, China is on the eve of destruction. (In terms of the Strauss/Howe theory, so are we.)

Betting on the end of what is a 30-year interest rate cycle may not a productive use of our time. However, the first thing you need to know about central banks is that they are the worst traders in the world. The worst.

Define irony: after earlier in the week speculators went massively short the 2Y and 5Y, pushing the repo rate "super special" and deep in negative territory on hopes of disappointing auctions, it was the 2 and 5 Year auctions earlier this week which were surprisingly strong forcing yet another round of mistimed short covers. And as fate would have it, it was today's 7 Year "belly" auction that was ignored by most. It was also the 7 Year that just priced in a surprisingly weak auction, coming to life with a yield of 1.834%, stopping well through the 1.826% When Issued. Confirming the weakness was also the Bid to Cover, which at 2.369 was the lowest since November of 2013.

"Gold is consolidating before its larger bull trend resumes," notes BofAML's MacNeil Curry looking for a move to $1345 and beyond. But it is today's modest bounce in EURUSD that they believe should be sold, and "seen as temporary and corrective of the larger bear trend."

The five remaining equity bears on Earth are all saying the same thing: "We'll get 'em in 2015." To which I ask: why? What's going to change?

Our world, our life, has been built on debt and propaganda for many years. They have kept us from noticing how poorly we are doing. But now a third element has entered the foundation of our societies, and it’s set to eat away at everything that has – barely – kept the entire edifice from crumbling apart. Deflation.

Does the economy move in predictable waves, cycles or patterns?  There are many economists that believe that it does, and if their projections are correct, the rest of this decade is going to be pure hell for the United States.  Many mainstream economists want nothing to do with economic cycle theorists, but it should be noted that economic cycle theories have enabled some analysts to correctly predict the timing of recessions, stock market peaks and stock market crashes over the past couple of decades.  Of course none of the theories discussed below is perfect, but it is very interesting to note that all of them seem to indicate that the U.S. economy is about to enter a major downturn.  So will the period of 2015 to 2020 turn out to be pure hell for the United States?  We will just have to wait and see.

"USDJPY bulls must use caution going forward," is the ominous warning BofAML's MacNeil Curry sends as the firm closes its long position on reaching their upside objective of 104.60. A closer look at the uptrend from early October says that this is a maturing advance and is growing increasingly prone to a reversal. From an Elliott Wave perspective, Triangle breakouts represent the terminal move of a trend, meaning that the potential for a top and medium-term reversal lower is growing quickly; one that could ultimately take prices back to the 97/96 area. While this is likely a story for 2014, Curry warns - USDJPY bulls should beware.

There may come a day soon where the markets sell off if one of the whiskers in Big Ben's beard is out of place. Or perhaps if his tie is a bit crooked. Or maybe we end up with Janet Yellen as the next puppet in charge over at the local banking cabal and we fret about her hairdo. I don't know, but one thing that is for certain is that this central bank so wants to be loved and we are so under psychological attack with all of this QE nonsense that it isn't even funny. QE is the endgame. ZIRP was only the beginning. QE, or monetization (which they'll never call it because of the negative connotations), is the heroic measure applied to an already dead system. Our system, for all intent and purposes, died in 2008. It ceased to exist. The investing, economic, and business paradigm that has existed since is drastically different than its predecessor despite all the efforts being made to convince everyone, including Humpty Dumpty, that it is in fact 2005 all over again.

Are we running out of time?  For the last several years, we have been living in a false bubble of hope that has been fueled by massive amounts of debt and bailout money.  This illusion of economic stability has convinced most people that the great economic crisis of 2008 was just an "aberration" and that now things are back to normal.  Unfortunately, that is not the case at all.  The truth is that the financial crash of 2008 was just the first wave of our economic troubles.  We have not even come close to recovering from that wave, and the next wave of the economic collapse is rapidly approaching.  Our economy is like a giant sand castle that has been built on a foundation of debt and toilet paper currency.  As each wave of the crisis hits us, the solutions that our leaders will present to us will involve even more debt and even more money printing.  And each time, those "solutions" will only make our problems even worse.  Right now, events are unfolding in Europe and in the United States that are pushing us toward the next major crisis moment.  I sincerely hope that we have some more time before the next crisis overwhelms us, but as you will see, time is rapidly running out. The following are 12 things that just happened that show the next wave of the economic collapse is almost here...

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