Drain, drain, drain…
“Master!”, cried the punters,
“we urgently need rain!
We can no longer bear
this unprecedented pain!”
“I’m sorry my dear children,
you beg for rain in vain.
It is I who is in charge now
and mine’s the put-less reign.
The bubble dragon shall be slain,
by me, the bubble bane.
That rustling sound? That’s me…
as I drain and drain and drain.”
[ed note: cue evil laughter with lots of giant cave reverb]
– a public service message by the Fed chieftain, rendered in rhyme by yours truly
Money from thin air going back whence it came from – circling the drain of a ‘no reinvestment’ black hole strategically placed in its way by the dollar-sucking vampire bat Ptenochirus Iagori Powelli.
Has a Bear Market in Stocks Begun?
The stock market correction into late December was of approximately the same size as the mid 2015/early 2016 twin downturns, so this is not an idle question. Moreover, many bears seem quite confident lately from an anecdotal perspective, which may invite a continuation of the recent upward correction. That said, there is not much confirmation of said confidence in data that can be quantified.
Our proposed bearish wave count for the S&P 500 Index, which could easily be completely wrong, so take with a big grain of salt. Let us just note here that this chart looks bearish regardless of the wave labels. The latter are mainly meant to serve as an orientation aid (i.e., if something very different from the expected fractal shape develops, we would know that this interpretation is wrong; on the other hand, if the expected shape does develop, we could be reasonably confident of where short term turning points are likely to occur and would have further confirmation that a large scale bear market has begun).
A Year of Turmoil
Dear Readers,
The team at Acting Man wishes you and your loved ones a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays and all the best for the new year!
Hopefully our missives helped you navigate the treacherous waters of the financial markets this year. As our low posting frequency attests to, we unfortunately continued to be incapacitated by our poor health. Nevertheless, we did our best to chronicle the growing cracks in the bubble edifice.
Evidently the Bad Santa got hold of the markets this year.
The Seasonal Trend Inversion Continues
By now it has been pretty well telegraphed that the Fed will likely announce that it is going to end its “automatic 25 bps rate hike every quarter” policy and replace it with some sort of “incoming data dependent” version. Normally one would expect this to constitute a “buy the news” event, especially in view of the recent sharp decline in the stock market. However, there are still a few problems with this idea – the chart below illustrates one of them.
The eerie, almost perfect inversion of the usual seasonal mid-term election pattern continues unabated – and even though we have pointed this out for quite some time, we are also a bit surprised by how persistent this phenomenon has been.
Worldwide Liquidity Drought – Money Supply Growth Slows Everywhere
This is a brief update on money supply growth trends in the most important currency areas outside the US (namely the euro area, Japan and China) as announced in in our recent update on US money supply growth (see “Federal Punch Bowl Removal Agency” for the details).
Nobody likes a drought. This collage illustrates why.
US Money Supply and Credit Growth Continue to Slow Down
Not to belabor the obvious too much, but in light of the recent sharp rebound, the stock market “panic window” is almost certainly closed for this year.* It was interesting that an admission by Mr. Powell that the central planners have not the foggiest idea about the future which their policy is aiming to influence was taken as an “excuse” to drive up stock prices. Powell’s speech was regarded as dovish. If it actually was, then it was a really bad idea to buy stocks because of it.
Jerome Powell: a new species of US central banker – a seemingly normal human being in public that transforms into the dollar-dissolving vampire bat Ptenochirus Iagori Powelli when it believes it is unobserved.
The Mighty Gartman
Investment newsletter writer Dennis Gartman (a.k.a. “the Commodities King”) has been a target of ridicule at Zerohedge for a long time. His pompous style of writing and his uncanny ability to frequently make perfectly mistimed short term market calls have made him an easy target.* It would be quite ironic if a so far quite good recommendation he made last week were to turn into the call of a lifetime (see ZH: “Gartman: ‘We Are Officially Recommending Shorting This Rally'”).
A little collage devoted to the Commodity King. It is easy to see how he ended up being made fun of. Actually, by now he has garnered a quite sizable fan community at Zerohedge and other web sites that report on his frequently ill-timed flip-flops (often announced with great conviction). However, a major call on the stock market he recently made seems to have been perfectly timed.
Crony Capitalism vs. Free Markets
Many of our readers are probably aware of the excellent work our friend Jonathan Tepper does for Variant Perception (VP)*****, a financial research boutique that really does bring a unique perspective to the table*. Jonathan (with co-author Denise Hearn) has just added a new book to his résumé, which is going to be released on 12 November: The Myth of Capitalism (MoC) – Monopolies and the Death of Competition** (a link to the official site is at the end of this post).
Jonathan Tepper and Denise Hearn: The Myth of Capitalism, an excellent plea for more competition and free markets.
Economic Man Threatens to Leave You Alone if Elected
This one is mainly for readers residing in that glorious water source for California commonly known as Colorado. In case you are not aware of it yet, Roger “Economic Man” Barris, an occasional contributor to this site, is running for Congress in Colorado on a Libertarian Party ticket. We will briefly explain why you should vote for Roger, but first two pictures:
Roger Barris, Libertarian Party candidate for the House of Representatives, 2nd district.
Just a Little Avalanche or an Implosion?
A few years ago, we briefly discussed the dynamics of sand piles in these pages, which are a special field of study in mathematics and physics (mathematically inclined readers can take a look at two papers on the subject here:”Driving Sandpiles to Criticality and Beyond “ (PDF) and ‘Games on Line Graphs and Sand Piles “(PDF) – unfortunately two other studies that used to be available have in the meantime disappeared from the inter-tubes).
Waiting to crumble: a giant sand dune in the Namib desert.
Smug Central Planners
Looking back at the past decade, it would be easy to conclude that central planners have good reason to be smug. After all, the Earth is still turning. The “GFC” did not sink us, instead we were promptly gifted the biggest bubble of all time – in everything, to boot. We like to refer to it as the GBEB (“Great Bernanke Echo Bubble”) in order to make sure its chief architect is not forgotten.
Naturally, we were premature in calling for the pompes funèbres and the grave diggers in order to inter the GBEB in late March, but the revival in US markets was a muted one and the funeral rites certainly continued in numerous emerging markets.
Image credit: Sharon Hatley
A Chirp from the Deep Level Mines
Back in late 2015 and early 2016, we wrote about a leading indicator for gold stocks, namely the sub-sector of marginal – and hence highly leveraged to the gold price – South African gold stocks. Our example du jour at the time was Harmony Gold (HMY) (see “Marginal Producer Takes Off” and “The Canary in the Gold Mine” for the details).
Mining engineer equipped with bio-sensor
Photo credit: Hulton Archive
Austrian Theory and Investment
Realtime Charts
Gold in USD:
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_usoz_2.gif)
Gold in EUR:
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/gold/t24_au_en_euoz_2.gif)
Silver in USD:
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/silver/t24_ag_en_usoz_2.gif)
Platinum in USD:
![[Most Recent Quotes from www.kitco.com]](http://www.kitconet.com/charts/metals/platinum/t24_pt_en_usoz_2.gif)
USD - Index:
![[Most Recent USD from www.kitco.com]](http://www.weblinks247.com/indexes/idx24_usd_en_2.gif)
