Hartnett: "Imagine The Social Disorder When Unemployment Hits 5%; That's Why Policy Panic Comes In Early 2024"

Two weeks ago, Wall Street's momentum-chasing echo chamber of so-called strategists looked at the slide in the S&P which had traded just above 4,200 (the lowest level since late May), looked at the record pile-up of hedge fund shorts (as discussed in "Goldman Prime Shocked By 12 Weeks Of Hedge Fund Shorting As 'Mag 7' Trade Implodes: "The Longest Streak On Our Record") and decided that the time has come to flip-flop once more, and so after turning bullish right around the time the market peaked on the day the Fed hiked rates for the last time, the penguin parade of cutting year-end forecasts after a market reversal came right on cue (just as expected).

And clockwork https://t.co/LiklFdc9GX pic.twitter.com/kqRCLobqp2

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 30, 2023

Yet not everyone jumped on the bearish bandwagon: a handful of analysts broke ranks from the crowd and amid the plunge in risk assets, stuck their neck out by making a risky, non-consensus bet: the reversal is over and a year-end rally is coming. Among them were UBS' Rebecca Cheong (see UBS Calls The Bottom: "Treasury Selloff Hits Capitulation... Marks End Of Current Unwind"), Goldman's flow guru Scott Rubner, and of course, BofA's Michael Hartnett.