Blind Fed Leading Blind Investors over a Financial Cliff – Ep. 434

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Everything up on the Week Except Treasury Bonds and the Dollar

The stock market ended a positive week on a little bit of a down note; all of the major averages had small losses today – well off the lows of the day.  The market tried a couple of times to sell off but the dips were bought on each occasion and we ended up closing near the highs of the day, even though we were down on the day. Pretty much everything was up on the week except treasury bonds and the dollar. The dollar fell, long-term interest rates rose.  Gold was up.  Oil was the big winner, even though it was down close to a dollar a barrel today, we closed right around $52; up better than 8% on the week.

All Fed – No Change in Fundamentals

But what has been driving the rally has all been the Fed. There’s nothing fundamental that has changed about the U.S. economy or about the U.S. stock market other than the “Powell Put” is now back in play.  In fact, it’s not just Powell putting that out there, he has been joined by a chorus of central bankers who came out today, yesterday, all throughout the week – they’re all now reading from the same dovish playbook.  They’ve got their marching orders and they are talking up the market.  Now talking how the Fed has to listen to the market, be careful and take its cues from the market. It used to be that the market didn’t matter.  The Fed was going to do its thing and the markets are going to do what they are going to do. And it didn’t take long for that to change.

The Fed Can Not Allow the House of Cards to Fall

Of course, I’ve been saying that all along; that the Fed was not going to allow this house of cards that they deliberately inflated to just fall apart. Now they had to pretend that they didn’t care about the markets but, of course the whole time, they were hoping the markets actually didn’t go down because they didn’t want to have to reverse policy.  They wanted to talk tough even though they didn’t have a stick.