The Crime Of The Century

Never in history have so many people been conned at the same time...

Today's bulls have now bought the war in Ukraine, extreme Fed tightening, China Implosion, Tech Wreck, and cycle high inflation with both hands. Which makes them fully complicit in what will soon be revealed as the crime of the century.

Why the crime of the century? Because when this hot air bubble explodes, there will be NOTHING left to show for it. Corporations will be mass insolvent, households will be mass insolvent, state and local will be insolvent and many global governments will be insolvent. It will be a very hard landing back to the zero bound with non-existent monetary stimulus. The liabilities that attend this delusion will remain at all time highs while the assets collapse. Of course when Fed and Congress are trading stocks along with everyone else, then it's easy to overlook the level of chicanery accompanying this sugar bubble. Nevertheless, the level of widely accepted fraud and criminality in this era exceeds all other recent economic cycles combined. The pandemic spawned a late cycle blow-off top in speculative mania which unleashed unfettered greed, fraud, and corruption. The fullness of time will reveal this sugar rally to have been a fool's rally of epic proportion. One by one all of the global markets are collapsing back below the 2020 pre-pandemic high: Chinese/Hong Kong stocks, Biotech, Fintech, Global IPOs, Ark ETFs, now German stocks are flirting with breaking the 2020 support level.  

This week, the impending war in Ukraine caused a global selloff earlier in the week and then the actual start of the war got bought with both hands. Optimists could point to the 2003 analog when the war in Iraq ended a recession and sparked a massive global rally. On the other hand, the 1990 analog was a war and oil shock that exacerbated a nascent recession. Which story to believe?

We can see via consumer sentiment that this era bears greater resemblance to 1990 and 2008 than the Y2K recession-lite scenario. However, there are far more risk factors to consider - as listed in the graphic above. 

Why these people are still living in the 1970s is beyond all comprehension. It's as if they don't remember the sequence of events that took place during the 40 years since that time. Or they don't want to remember. In any case their inflation hysteria has now reached lethally binary proportions. 

Commodities are now FORTY years overbought. Today's pundits haven't the slightest clue how fast the inflation premium can disappear from this market. The fact that nominal commodity prices are lower than 2008 has somehow escaped the attention of ALL of today's complicit pundits.

I and a few others remain of the minority opinion that buying ALL of these risks only serves to amplify the final explosion. 

That said, my theory has yet to be detonated.

Up until 2022, bulls operated under the steadfast belief that only monetary policy matters. Now that monetary policy is working against them, they are under the belief that nothing matters. 

There are currently NO risks priced into this market:

S&P futures net speculative as % of open interest ended the week at CYCLE HIGH:

Clearly, today's stock bulls have zero clue how close we came to global meltdown this week:

"Equity positioning showed "zero signs of capitulation despite flows and price disconnect"

Among notable flows, investment grade, high yield and emerging market debt saw a seventh consecutive week of redemptions"

In summary, history will say the crime of the century took place  in broad daylight, because criminality was de-regulated. 

Go figure.

Global Margin Call

Let's see, here I am now refuting WWIII as a buying opportunity. 

Really, where to begin...

Geopolitical RISK:

We can all hope this current blunder in the Ukraine doesn't escalate to WWIII. The only way such a scenario is even possible is when one nuclear superpower intercedes in another superpower's backyard. The most likely escalation scenario would occur if one of the NATO allies bordering Ukraine was drawn into the conflict. As much as I like Ukrainians, I don't believe that one country is worth the entire planet. Unfortunately, the only things both the GOP and Democrats agree upon is the need to always go to war and the need to day trade stocks. 

Putting aside hopefully remote doomsday scenarios, in the meantime, economic sanctions and a threat of an energy (natural gas) pipeline war with Europe are now on the table. 

Economic Risk:

We are now informed that oil prices could further fuel "inflation" if the price of oil spikes to $120 as expected, which happens to be less than it was at in 2008 - far less in 2008 dollars. Be that as it may, this inflation hysteria serves to tie the Fed's hands with respect to an expected financial bailout. Which will be THE critical RISK factor in the days ahead. Something  today's bulls don't acknowledge because they are currently in unanimous agreement that inflation is the greatest risk. There is an enormous amount of pretzel logic taking place right now,  as today's bulls will believe anything, except the truth.

What today's inflationists are ignoring is that absent continued wage increases, higher oil prices merely shift consumption away from other areas of the economy. I would point out that record high oil prices in 2008 took place six months into recession and amid collapsing consumer sentiment. It's highly likely that today's "inflation" is masking a weak economy right now as well:

FOMC Risk:

Many of the trolls on my Twitter feed inform me that the Fed can bailout markets at any time, unfortunately, inflation hysteria guarantees that won't happen. Just yesterday amid rising tension in Ukraine, Fed member Bowman reiterated that she believes a half point rate HIKE should be on the table for the March meeting. If we go back two years to the pandemic meltdown, it was exactly next week when the Fed CUT half a point in interest rates. Current CME Fed futures indicate a 100% chance of rate hike in March. Which  apparently leaves today's bulls plenty of leeway to fantasize over non-existent rate cuts. Worse yet for bulls, the Fed is hellbent on tapering balance sheet expansion to ZERO by the end of March. 

So, from a positioning and mass complacency standpoint, we see that bulls are far more delusional than they were in December 2018 and February 2020:

Social Mood risk:

Few of today's market pundits ever discuss social mood even though everyone knows that greed and fear are the primary emotions that drive markets - especially at extreme turning points. These experts prefer to guess where S&P earnings will be one year from now while making simplifying assumptions for the several million variables that could affect that outcome. What they call "fundamental analysis". Of course if they're wrong, it's not their problem, so they are free to extrapolate last year's earnings at a metronomic 10% rate that would make Bernie Madoff proud.

Here we see the Bitcoin Trust is camped at key support. It has a very clear corrective wave count indicating that risk appetite peaked one year ago this same month. And made a lower high in November. Interactive Brokers trading activity confirms this interpretation. 

Which means that Global Margin Call is now on deck. 

Bullshit Risk

What today's market pundits all have in common is that they don't predict bear markets, they only predict bull markets. Just as us bears are derided as perma-bears, the same can be said of today's bulls. They have no RISK OFF switch, and they never say SELL. They didn't in 2000, 2008, 2018, or 2020.

It's not called bullshit for nothing. 

This time however, the stakes are much higher than any of those previous bear market non-calls. This combination of risks will lead to what I call "MAXIMUM GONG SHOW". Meaning central banks caught off guard by the severity of collapse, delaying their response, and then inevitably crushing the massively over-crowded reflation trade when they finally take action.

Picture commodities going bidless along with every other "reflation" sector: Energy, Miners, Transports, Financials, and Retail.

Because that's what the next Fed "bailout" will entail.

Believe it, or NOT.

In summary, I see strong similarities and strong divergent risks relative to two years ago. Which was the last time that no one was allowed to see it coming.

One thing bulls might want to take note of is the fact that the .5% rate cut in 2020 ACCELERATED the market decline.

Now THAT's what I'm talking about.

The End Of Disney Markets

Today's masses are in a consensus of insanity. Be careful trying to fit in...

The pandemic marked the apex of central bank managed Disney markets, not only in terms of record asset over-valuation, but also in terms of record financial fraud and record gullibility. The final consensus is that the global pandemic CREATED wealth at the fastest rate in modern history. You have to be brain dead to believe it, therefore it's largely unquestioned...

There's no question the pandemic created wealth for the ultra-wealthy - at the expense of everyone else, which is how all Ponzi schemes work. There is a period of time during which asset flows provide the illusion of wealth for everyone. Which keeps them drawing in new cash. For the all time record, 2021 drew over two decades' worth of new cash into the casino:

In this post-pandemic "new cycle", we are also to believe that the shortest bear market in history capped off the longest bull market in history. Looking back to WWII, if we measure the duration of every bull market relative to the duration of the bear market to follow, we would get this ratio for 2020:

The bull market was 132 times longer than the bear market:

In other words, this perpetual Disney cycle is the new Eldorado. The myth of an entirely new cycle WITHOUT the pain of corporate de-leveraging. 

Unfortunately, that is where the myth has now run into inconvenient reality in 2022. Because unlike in 2008 when the Fed used its emergency powers to resuscitate a de-leveraged economy, in this pandemic, the Fed used its emergency powers to inflate a MUCH larger asset bubble than what previously obtained prior to the pandemic. In addition, they used interest rate policy to run the economy hot when the goods producing sector was already running hot due to the pandemic lockdown which shifted demand from services to goods. 

The Fed's policy error was to believe that the pandemic was a 2008 scale financial emergency before it had manifested into one. They bailed out markets BEFORE they were in crisis instead of after. Which is why now, they are boxed in by the bond market which has been raising rates far ahead of Fed policy, putting the super asset bubble at extreme risk. History will say that over-stimulus in the absence of de-leveraging was the proximate policy-error. Markets became over-lubricated and when they exploded the Fed had no dry powder left for the REAL economic crisis. 

In the meantime, unfortunately the apex of post-2008 bailed out criminality is now FULLY arrayed against the public. What I call the de facto policy of buyer be unaware. 

Since 2008, today's market pundits have been fully captured by Wall Street and central bank Disney markets. Despite global central banks actively coordinating a global asset collapse, today's pundits are more than happy to monetize useful idiots. They've learned the hard way that an aging populace has no stomach for the truth. 

As we see below it took four years in the two prior bear markets for margin debt to reach a new all time high. In 2020, it took a mere eight months.

This is not a new cycle at all. This is merely the blow-off top from the post-2008 bailout rally. Capped off with a similar magnitude bailout at the end of the longest cycle in U.S. history. The depletion of all stimulus at the end of the cycle. How this Disneyfication of markets was always going to end.

i.e. WORST CASE SCENARIO

This past week Cathie Wood said that we are witnessing the largest misallocation of capital in history. She of all people should know, because she is the sum total of everything that's wrong with this era. She is a Wall Street insider who is pretending to be "democratizing" markets. Her funds are the largest bagholders of the 2021 record Wall Street IPO pump and dump. Twice as many profitless junk IPOs were dumped in 2021 than were dumped in Y2K. 

All of which widely ignored chicanery is why RISK OFF is no longer an option. 

The "black swan event" that awaits this end of cycle Disney market is ANY reason to sell.

Don't Look Down

The Netflix movie, "Don't Look Up", is a timely analog for the  monetary euthanasia that has a death grip on society. Fortunately, this impending reset won't be a world ending event. But for consumption addicts forced to go cold turkey, it will feel like it anyways...

I finally got around to watching "Don't Look Up", which is essentially a slightly more intelligent version of "Idiocracy" i.e. a society of idiots hellbent on self-destruction. A very timely movie clearly targeted at climate change, but equally relevant to all other aspects of society that are currently imploding in broad daylight amid mandatory denial. Since the pandemic collapsed the carbon level down to decade lows, I've started worrying more about this society's latent mental breakdown than the environment. Why? Because once this monetary illusion implodes, the overall carbon level will collapse like a cheap tent. 

Case in point, in the same week we learned that consumer confidence has collapsed, we learned that retail sales are skyrocketing. This only makes sense in a society of hoarders fretting about inflation while their overall sense of economic confidence implodes. These people are hoarding merchandise going into a deflationary depression. Something we never saw in 2008. It goes without saying that the hangover will be brutal.

But really, who could warn them?

This hoarding/asset bubble scenario has created the perfect set-up for a bidless market and the fastest demand collapse in modern history. There is no way this could be more cataclysmic than this unique combination of idiotic events.

As we see below, the inflation hypothesis is now universal consensus. Even though at this latent juncture neither gold, nor oil, nor Treasury bonds are confirming it.

On the subject of timing, we have now entered the ninth consecutive week of short-term treasury bond yield rise. The last time we saw that was back in February of 2000. Which made me realize that the set-up now is eerily reminiscent to that one. Back then, the Fed kept the spigots open through the Y2K date change because they were worried the world was going to end, computers offline, planes falling out of the sky etc. When all of that turned out to be a non-event, the stock market bolted higher. At that point, the Fed realized they were way behind the curve on tightening policy. So what did they do, they started hiking rates as fast as possible. And then by March 2000 the Tech bubble exploded. Which when you think about it is very similar to the current scenario. The Fed has been preoccupied with the pandemic and the various mutations. Which left them way behind the curve as supply bottlenecks grew and pent-up demand exploded. So now, in this new year they're making up for lost time.

The main difference is of course that now yields are far lower than in 2000 because that was the strongest economy in decades. Whereas this is the weakest economy in U.S. history. In Y2K, GDP growth was at 7% and the U.S. budget was in surplus. Now, GDP growth is at 2% and the deficit is 6%. In any other era that would have been considered a 4% recession. 

Putting it altogether and we now have end of cycle inflation hysteria worse than 2000 and 2008, attending a 100 year asset bubble. Which means double policy error. However, the populace is far more concerned about the price of eggs than sky high asset prices. One is expensive short-term. The other costs everything long-term.

Once the global margin call reaches its crescendo, there will be no possibility for central banks to stop it. The Fed is now boxed in by the lethal inflation narrative. In 2008, it took four months and -40% for the Fed to arrest the decline of the stock market. Albeit there were some massive short-term rallies along the way.

Today’s pundits are 100% convinced the Fed can save every market despite the fact that the collapse is already well underway.

In summary, the consumption-addicted masses are now hoarding insolvency heading into a depressionary asset collapse. On the other side of which there will be a glut of EVERYTHING. Which is apropos for a society that trusts opinion over fact every single time without the slightest question. A society of dedicated denialists placing ALL faith in their overwhelming strength of numbers. 

On the topic of the casino, this week the Nasdaq has round-tripped back to the high of last February, while breadth has collapsed for a YEAR straight:

Since the top on January 5th (yes my birthday), the Dow is declining faster than it did in 1987. Today's Dow has already tested the 200 dma three times. Back then, a solid break of the 200 dma is when the crash got out of control.

Rally volume as we see has been abysmal:

The broad based Wilshire has the clearest wave form. It peaked back in November and it's now exhibiting nested "1s" and "2s". This is my interpretation and it implies the most bearish of outcomes.

Suffice to say, bulls can't afford for this to be accurate, because it implies the end of mass delusion.

Don't look down.

Goodbye To All That

The pandemic marked the end of the consumption oriented lifestyle. So what did the masses do? They doubled down on collapse...

Here is something you won't hear any prognosticators predict - which is that the consumption lifestyle is about to explode along with markets. The magnitude of this three sigma asset bubble is of a scale and duration that precludes bailout. Whereas in 2008, the Fed and Congress found a way to bail out Wall Street from the impacts of their subprime financial WMD, this time their bailout efforts will fall far short. Which means that the "system" is now at risk. 

Am I predicting the end of the world? No. I am predicting the end of a failed way of life that has become toxic and lethal to those who embrace it. This is the side of the story that market pundits don't want to tell. That the modern lifestyle is lethal both physically, mentally, and financially to those who embrace it. And of course to the planet itself. Somehow we are dealing with an obesity crisis, a mental health crisis, and a retirement crisis yet no one makes any connection back to the corporate system that makes record profit from Frankenfood, Narcopharma, and rampant financial fraud. 

Very few people we know question the system. In their minds, it's always been this way. They see zero differentiation from a past when farm to table was the standard way of life, to now where it's the rarified privilege of yuppies while everyone else consumes GMO-manufactured factory food on an industrial scale. Most people are too busy self-medicating themselves into oblivion to question the system itself. 

Of course, when any bubble explodes, people say there was no warning. Last week, Jeff Bezos couldn't get his mega yacht out of dry dock because it didn't fit under a bridge. Looking back, history will say this was a seminal moment that captured the  peak zeitgeist of the supernova asset bubble driven by ULTIMATE greed.

"According to a study released last March by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies, the collective wealth of 657 billionaires in the US grew by 44.6% — that's $1.3 trillion — during the pandemic"

Social mood is now coming down off of the pandemic-induced monetary crack high. We see it in growth stocks, the collapsed IPO market, China's real estate implosion, the Crypto market, and of course in consumer sentiment.

ALL of today's pundits are blaming "inflation" as the cause for collapsed consumer sentiment, because they have no clue that their own social mood is what drives markets and the economy.  They themselves are caught up in the bubble zeitgeist and are therefore completely unaware of their latent crack high. By the time they figure it out it will be WAY too late. 

When inflation morphs to extreme deflation amid record asset collapse, the universal desire to "bring down prices" will be filed under careful what you wish for.

Late last week, Goldman Sachs put out a note saying that after the CPI release they now expect seven rate hikes in 2022 - one at every remaining Fed meeting:

However, on Saturday they put out a note saying they now predict recession:

Got that? Seven consecutive rate hikes or recession. Whichever comes first.

What a recession would do first and foremost, is cause a stampede out of cyclicals stocks which have been leading the 2022 rally. In addition, it would cause a commodity collapse deja vu of 2008. And yet the same people who say that recession is now a major risk ALSO say that the case for commodities has never been stronger. 

The case for commodities was only stronger in 2011 and 2008, right before they collapsed:

In other words, going into a recession believing that inflation is the biggest problem, is by far the worst case scenario for investors. 

Why? 

Because it means they are holding record LOW cash. FAR lower than in 2008:

In a happy turn of events our middle son has also come to realize that the modern lifestyle is fraught with existential "risk". He  recently introduced my wife and I to Taoism which is a philosophy uniquely suited to helping people navigate troubled times such as these. For that, we are very grateful. While he and I still disagree on some topics, there is starting to be much more Zen overlap.

Therefore, he wrote a poetic essay which he hopes will help his generation navigate this continuing crisis. 

These are his words:

"I wonder about the silent screams

Those who while awake have terrible dreams

I wonder why I can’t bring myself to speak

When I open my mouth no one hears a creak

It seems that this world has gone mad

Chain reactions all around us, yet caring is a mere fad

As time went on we lost our villages

Seeking solitary confinement while we allow them to pillage us

We see the division as red versus blue

But in reality we know that isn’t true

Fear has run amok and we have become hasty

Sliding down a slippery slope cleverly guised as safety

Looking to the people you see a mass of the feeble

I am no different, in actions I am equal

We must not despair at the beliefs of our neighbor

All of us want the same just wishing for the stable

The path ahead appears to many as dim

And I assure you this is not on a whim

But a deliberate act of the few against the many

They’ve succeeded in making us believe our neighbor is the enemy

The path ahead with danger is fraught

A path few of us would have actively sought

While the time will surely come for action

All I want to do now is inspire passion

Led astray bruised and battered

Our communities have become tattered

But if we can see past our illusory divisions

We can forge a bright future ending this cultural fission"

Global Coordinated Meltdown

"our wisdom, too, is a cheerful and a homely, not a noble and kingly wisdom; and this, observing the numerous misfortunes that attend all conditions, forbids us to grow insolent upon our present enjoyments"

Inflation hysteria has gone global. Having inflated a 3 sigma super bubble, global central banks are determined to "shock and awe" markets with liquidity tightening. Is this human history's dumbest gambit? Without question...

Denial is now the universal religion

A great interview this week with "perma-bear" Jeremy Grantham. He calmly and eloquently sums up this era's risks. The adjective "perma-bear" is intentionally used to ensure everyone knows ahead of time that his opinions should be ignored. Far better to trust financial industry psychopaths than someone who would tell us this fairy tale has no happy ending:

"About 25 years ago, we felt in order to talk about bubbles, we should define them statistically...A two-sigma event is the kind that should occur every 44 years in a perfectly random world...three-sigma, is the kind that you would expect every 100 years"

The S&P 500 trendline is about 2,500; two-sigma is about 3,500; and three-sigma is 4,500, 4,600. We got to 4,800 in December 2021"

"History has been pretty straightforward. Whatever you do, don't have gloriously overpriced housing markets at the same time as you have a stock market bubble. Japan tried it...the stock market isn't back to '89, but the land market isn't back to '89, either"

By the time the pandemic hit, the market was already above Y2K bubble valuation when measured by market cap to GDP. Fed tightening has ended every market bubble in the past 100 years. Now we are to believe that this 3 sigma super bubble will be the exception when the Fed is adamant they are going to stop inflation.

Sure.

  

The importance of market cap to GDP as a valuation measurement is that it's a far more objective metric than the  standard price/earnings ratio. Today's earnings per share have been massively inflated by record profit margins and record stock buybacks. In other words factors that are leveraged to the cycle itself. When the cycle ends, these inflated factors will revert to trend and then earnings will collapse. Nevertheless, almost all of today's pundits use P/E ratios to justify today's record valuations. History will not be kind to an industry using artificially inflated metrics to justify buying a three sigma asset bubble. Soon, only the lawyers will be making money on the long side. 

On the monetary policy side, there are many lethal mistakes today's policy-makers are making at this juncture, and they've been aided and abetted by mainstream inflation hysteria. The first mistake is measuring inflation on a year over year % basis coming out of a lockdown pandemic. Not one of today's inflationary factors will survive this market crash. The second mistake is ignoring credit risk late in the cycle. Ironically, China is the only country NOT tightening monetary policy because their stock market and real estate markets are already in meltdown. They will be at the epicenter of this global meltdown. The third factor central banks are ignoring is the amount of tightening that has already taken place in markets. And most importantly of course they are ignoring the three sigma asset bubble they inflated and the fact that breadth has been imploding for a year already.

Put it all together and they're driving off a cliff by looking in the rear view mirror. And there is NO ONE to stop them. Inflation hysteria has gone global and "Shock and awe" is the order of the day:

"A dramatic week of central-bank meetings and economic data has changed the game for global rate-hike bets"

"Not only are money-market traders boosting wagers on the number of increases by major central banks, but also the size of each potential move, reflecting the prospect that policy makers will front-load tightening cycles to combat inflation"

The last time of course we saw this movie was September 2008 when the two year was similarly priced ahead of spot rates AND  market breadth had collapsed (lower pane).

For the past three weeks since the January low we've been seeing a massive short-covering rally ahead of central bank meetings, the jobs report, and now the monthly CPI report which came in today.

Now, almost all asset markets have the same corrective wave form. 

Small caps:

Consumer Discretionary

Semiconductors

Cyclicals

Meanwhile, despite all of this inflation concern and central bank promise of shock and awe, there is no hedging taking place compared to 2018 and 2020.

Ironically, this is the first time a Fed put doesn't exist, and an option put doesn't exist either. 

In summary, I predict there won't be even ONE rate hike in this cycle. And the ten year yield is heading to...

ZERO %. You know, like Japan.

There's No Bailout From Idiocracy

This society has a lethal addiction to cheap money. One that comes with an exorbitant price tag: Super asset crash at the zero bound, sans bailout. The Fed is following the exact course of action that will ensure they have neither interest rates to cut to save the economy, NOR QE to deploy to save the imploded asset bubble. History will say that the Fed and Congress were too busy front-running retail bagholders in the stock market to notice the bubble was out of control...

Many people don't like my writing style, because I am biased towards the bearish point of view. I leave nothing to the imagination. More importantly, I don't pander to idiots. The predominant writing style on the other hand, spews multiple opinions across the full spectrum of IQ and leaves the reader to get buried by the ball of confusion. Monetizing useful idiots is by no means limited to Wall Street in this era.

More importantly, I personally would never pass up this once in a lifetime opportunity to point out how fucking stupid this species has become. Looking back from an historical standpoint, this era will be the new 1929 - whereas that era stood for almost 100 years as the apex of insanity, per legendary investor Jeremy Grantham, the insanity of this bubble far exceeds that one. Did anyone alive twenty years ago believe they would see a Dotcom bubble bigger than the original one? Or a housing bubble bigger than 2007? Of course not, but here we are with both at the same time. The pandemic arrived at an unfortunate time because the cycle was already in its late stages. Many companies that had borrowed excessive amounts of cheap money were already starting to implode. However, the pandemic and its "special lending programs" threw them a lifeline to double down on balance sheet impairment. 

On the topic of the Tech bubble, the delusion that abides this bubble is that overvaluation is limited to the Ark ETFs and the profitless junk issued by Wall Street at double the rate of Y2K. That junk bubble has been collapsing since LAST February. Since that time there has been a massive rotation to "quality Tech". A rotation that has only amplified the overvaluation of this era's Tech behemoths, which as of December reached the same extreme as Y2K:

"The dramatic fall in some of the "flaky" parts of the stock market so far this year has followed the paths of previous implosions, including the bursting of the dotcom bubble in 2000"

These mega caps: Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook are also at the happy intersection of the LARGEST stock market bubble, which is the passive indexing bubble. What some of us call the "Dumb money bubble". Michael Burry warned that passive indexing was creating a bubble of monumental magnitude which would lead to MOAC: Mother Of All Crashes. But then he capitulated, because this madness went on too long. The very protagonist of The Big Short couldn't fight the Fed any longer. 2008 was a mere micro-subset of this current bubble.

It's no secret that the Tech sector has driven the majority of gains since the 2009 low. When the pandemic hit, investors rotated out of cyclical reflation trades into Tech stocks which were deemed "safe havens" from lockdown. That set off a decade high blowoff top in the spirit of the Y2K date change melt-up which capped off the 1990s internet bubble. 

We can surmise that we've seen peak Amazon as the pandemic drove massive online sales at the expense of small service businesses. However, now sentiment towards durable goods is at a record low:

I don't know much about NFTs, I just know they're worthless. I was in the IT industry long enough to remember the "hype cycle" which was the cycle of hype that every new technology went through - the highs and the lows. Right now the Crypto space is coming off its all time crack high. This bubble will explode and then from the ashes we will find out if Crypto has any value beyond paying porn stars and child traffickers, off the books. Because right now that's it's only "utility" aside from bankrupting latecomer speculators.

Which gets us to this era's housing bubble. For the past decade HGTV has been on in the background in our household, as every home in the U.S. seemingly got remodeled to all white interiors and stainless steel appliances. The modern style being a replica of an institutional insane asylum. 

To say that we've mass overbuilt and commodified the housing stock is a ludicrous understatement. We've basically created a formula for mass bankruptcy on an industrial scale.

Last year, Zillow made news because they were EXITING the home buying business. That news should have been a massive warning as to what is wrong with this current housing market: Robo buying. Flipping houses on an industrial scale. 

"Wall Street and Silicon Valley have already transformed U.S. housing markets since the 2008 financial crisis, which had its roots in real estate"

The millions of foreclosures in the housing collapse created new opportunities for global investment firms to buy homes at scale, becoming corporate landlords controlling tens of thousands of homes"

The sheer irony is unbelievable. Wall Street creates a financial crisis that explodes the housing market at all time highs. Then, they come in at the bottom and buy up all the houses using cheap money leveraged 100x. All of which is leading to an even BIGGER housing crisis this time. In 2008, most of the leverage was in subprime, now the entire market is over-leveraged.

Which makes today's headline that much more dire:

Contrary to popular belief, there will be no bailout from Idiocracy this time.