An anti-Brexiteer poses with a cigar in Parliament Square in central London on January 31, 2020 on the day that the UK formally leaves the European Union.It seems no matter how huge the event — a debilitating virus ravaging China, the rise of Bernie Sanders — none of it matters. Stocks just go up, and in credit markets good debt trades close to junk.
This may sound like a welcome simplification, but what it is is a suspension of reality. This is not how the world should work. Guggenheim Investments CIO Scott Minerd likened this creepiness in the face of coronavirus to the calm that settled in Britain just before WWII, when Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain convinced himself and his peers that the world was entering a "peace for our time," and told everyone to ignore the red flags all around them.
Wall Street will play this game until it's over. Standing up for value might be the right thing if you're a moralist, but it won't win you clients on Wall Street. Ultimately that means everyone in this market is chasing the same ok-yielding credit and blue chip or growth stocks. That's what happens when no one trusts the market.
lopezlinette I think we may find something that matters - supply chains. The “nothing matters” crowd will get burned at some point and value/fundamentals will matter again.
lopezlinette Nicely done. The thing hmeisler said about most stocks doing nothing is true. Advance/decline has been a negative divergence.
lopezlinette That's a pretty compelling assessment of what's going wrong. Any thoughts about what we can do to make it right? (Short of waiting for the disaster that wakes everyone up?)
lopezlinette Good column, Linette.
lopezlinette We were warned by Guiliani that truth is not truth. Trump's Mad Hatter, Kellyanne Conway, told us that there are alternative facts. Up is down. Good is bad. Black is white. Reality doesn't matter in the era of Trump.
lopezlinette Expect the unexpected... & the higher things are, the greater the vulnerability...
lopezlinette Stop the money printing presses, and let's see if that matters Assholes, getting rich by time theft from future generations. They did it by capturing the federalreserve It was supposed to work for free markets, not snot faced bloated, crybaby Wall St financial monopolies