It has been a long time, blog. It was just over one year ago, amidst the market chaos following the pandemic shut downs, that I first wrote. It was a scary, exciting and [insert an adjective much stronger than ‘strange’] time. It has been about eight months since I last voiced my thoughts into the internet void. There are a lot of reasons for that, but the main one is that I only had the same thing to shout each day: This is a stupid market. And to say so little, I could just shout that on Twitter each day at the market close.
During my blogging silence, the world has not, from my perspective, become less scary, exciting or [whatever word you used that is much, much stronger than ‘crazy’]. I, on the other hand, have had to adapt. I am now seeing things in a much more enlightened way. Now I can see that everything is fine. So, let’s have a look at the financial news then…
It is eight thirty in the morning on Thursday, and I am at the store. I have read a few paragraphs of financial news and so, am fired up to write about my indignation. Here is the object of my disgust:
Taking it from the top, here is where I have issues:
- Thursdays are big days for economic data, true. And equity markets were up strongly, true. Lower interest rates are not bullish. A bond rally and a stock rally are incompatible in the wild.
- A surge in consumer spending fueled by government direct payments is not really a positive. Depending on where one stands along the communist/capitalist continuum philosophically, one could even think government involvement will attenuate a bad situation.
- I will go and check to see, but my guess is a 10% climb, whether from the prior month or from the year earlier (which would be the first month of the lockdowns), might not be too strong of an actual, nominal increase.
- A decrease in weekly INITIAL jobless claims is a reason for optimism, yes. Not knowing if the improvement is due to economic activity in the real world or just government incompetence is not as hopeful a thought.
- And finally, INITIAL claims were still 576,000 NEW CLAIMS. DOWN FROM 769,000. THESE ARE NOT POSITIVE NUMBERS.
I’m sure this market is super smart, and everything is fine.