THE BREAKING POINT

A Black Swan nuclear event. What's not to like? Gamblers can finally say "No one saw it coming". And Wall Street now has  their excuse to bury clueless gamblers deep in end of cycle trades...

We are late in the crack up BOOM AND BUST. The only thing that can stop Fed-precipitated meltdown, is meltdown. Bulls are optimistic...

On the topic of the war between Russia and Ukraine, the only thing that's clear is that both countries are turning into failed states. Russia has become the new North Korea. We can pray that it doesn't turn nuclear but Putin is desperate and he may deploy a tactical nuke to keep NATO at bay.  

In the meantime, the nuclear economic option has now been deployed - a ban on Russian oil and gas. Today the White House announced the U.S. ban and Europe announced they will seek to ban a majority of Russia natural gas over the course of 2022.

In retaliation, Russia is threatening to cut-off ALL oil and gas to the West.

This is now officially the largest global Energy shock since 1973 when OPEC embargoed oil shipments to the West due to U.S. support for Israel during the Yom Kippur war. That event led to U.S. and global recession and the 1974 bear market. 

Going into this fiasco, the global economy was already facing tremendous end of cycle risk. So it's highly likely this event has pushed the global economy over the cliff.

Talk of recession is now circulating Wall Street desks, but so far that scenario has remained well out of the purview of Main Street investors who are now trapped in end of cycle trades. Wall Street is now free to say whatever they want to clients, because they can blame this "Black Swan" event for what comes next. 

Which is where this all gets interesting. 

For the moment, oil is the wrecking ball creating "demand destruction" across the entire economy. However, this event has teed up the U.S. to become the only safe haven on the planet.

Before this war started, China was already imploding due to their real estate meltdown and COVID zero tolerance policy. The PBOC has been in easing mode for several months.

Hong Kong stocks are now well below the COVID lows and totally bidless as one China policy has destroyed their status as a global financial center.

The European Central Bank which meets Thursday this week will likely return to a neutral stance as their Energy markets are massively exposed to this Russian oil embargo. European recession is now getting priced into markets as European stocks go bidless:

EM currencies, EM bonds, and EM stocks are all imploding due to the various meltdown factors and the rising $USD which I will discuss in a moment:

Next comes Japan. Normally, in a crisis scenario the Yen catches a massive bid due to the global carry trade unwind. However, this time the Yen remains weak due to the commodity shock and the record trade deficit. Which is why there is now a massive policy divergence between the U.S. and Japan. 

Shock Commodities Spike Threatens to Push Yen to Six-Year Low - Bloomberg

"No chance monetary easing will be reduced"

Normally in a commodity super cycle Canada and Australia would be massively outperforming. So far their stock markets are holding up better than most. However, currency wise we now see a massive disconnect between the C$ and oil. This is further indication that oil is totally disconnected from global economic growth. This is the largest divergence we've seen since 2008 and we see how that worked out for oil:

All of which means that the U.S. is the ONLY safe haven left in the world. Which is why the dollar is rising in lockstep with this parabolic ascent in oil. 

Whereas oil is currently the global wrecking ball, soon the $USD will become the REAL global wrecking ball. Oil has boxed the Fed into tightening. So either something breaks THIS week due to oil. Or something is going to break NEXT week due to the Fed. The only thing that will stop meltdown is meltdown. 

Dollar funding stress is already showing up in global markets this week:

Funding Stress Indicator Surges to Widest Levels Since May 2020 - Bloomberg

"The fear that the impact of the war will create a dollar shortage is rippling through the system"

What would a dollar super spike do to all of the above markets? 

In particular it will implode oil, gold, and Emerging Markets post haste. Followed by massive global deflation. 

This Thursday we get another CPI report which is expected to run hot. 

At least bulls can honestly claim no one saw it coming.

Again.

 

The MAXIMUM MELTDOWN Hypothesis

The COVID pandemic was the excuse for inflating human history's largest asset bubble, which is now imploding. Now the war in Ukraine is concealing the end of the cycle as commodities go late stage parabolic. Rampant fools are incapable of making the connection between today's risks. Which is why we face a 1970s oil shock, a 1998 Russian debt default, a Y2K Tech meltdown, a 2015 Emerging Market implosion, AND a 2008-era Fed more concerned about inflation than risk. Putin's economic warfare strategy is M.A.D.: Mutual Assured Destruction...

Every economist knows that inflation peaks at the end of the cycle. That's Econ 101. Bottlenecks accumulate during the expansion and reach their peak late in the cycle. The COVID pandemic exacerbated these bottlenecks due to the global supply chain disruption which cleared out store inventories. During the lockdown consumers switched from buying services to buying durable goods. The inventory logjam caused corporations to move away from the "just in time" inventory model back to stock-piling inventories which has kept the ports backlogged with shipments due to double ordering. 

On the labor side, three million Boomers left the workforce amid 20 million layoffs. Per tradition, the U.S. laid off far more workers during the pandemic than any other developed nation. TWENTY years of employment was lost in early 2020.

"It's much harder for workers in their 50s and 60s — or older — to re-enter the workforce after a period of unemployment, due to persistent ageism in corporate America"

So it's likely that many of those who left jobs got discouraged and chose to retire instead"

Now employers are crying that they can't find enough workers. Does anyone remember the paycheck protection program? It PAID payroll costs for employees so they wouldn't have to lay off workers. Free money. And yet, they still laid everyone off. 

Every investor should know that commodities peak at the end of the cycle. They are a late cycle trade. If you see commodities leading, you can be sure that the Fed is raising rates and recession risk is rising. 

And yet, Wall Street is currently pushing their clients into all of these end of cycle dead end trades.

Case in point mining stocks, which exhibit a perfect corrective wave form vis-a-vis the 2008 high:

Same with wheat. It's corrective. NOT a new bull market.

Oil is three decade overbought and the most volatile since 2008, because the West is now moving towards a potential FULL embargo on Russian oil. The net effect would cause a super spike in oil prices with risk assets heading in the opposite direction. Such a disastrous move would accelerate financial meltdown beyond its current widely ignored pace. 

"Oil from Russia will be foreclosed from the global market here at some point and we are already seeing commercial activity reduced, particularly as it relates to Russia exports via maritime assets and that is already hitting the market...“These are barrels that we cannot make up, so that’s why this market is on tenterhooks”

Optimists are calling the net result of this total disaster "stagflation", meaning slow global growth and high inflation. It's their way of locating the pony in the horse shit.

However, these limp dick cassandras can't bring themselves to look into the abyss staring back at them. They too are ignoring the risk of outright deflationary collapse. No one uses the word recession anymore, much less depression which is where this is all VERY obviously heading. 

For a while, bullish pundits got away with ignoring all of the growing risk, but this week risks crossed into the red zone. In addition, to all of the above risks, Russian default is now on the table.

"The Russian state is set to fail to pay foreign bondholders a coupon due on a bond for the first time since 1998"

“They clearly see this as an economic war, and this is their way of striking out at foreigners”

Indeed. 

Putin's goal was to lure the hubristic West into an economic war they have no chance of winning. So far his plan is working great. His timing could not have been better. The dominoes were already falling and his war has accelerated the collapse.

This week, Nasdaq lows (8 week average) highest since...

1998:

Now all we need is a TOTALLY clueless Federal Reserve. Which we got during two Congressional testimonies this week as J. Powell confirmed the Fed will be raising rates in March. In addition, balance sheet reduction is on the table when tapering ends this month. 

For gamblers who are now trapped in end of cycle inflation trades, this is for YOU:

Living Large In Artificial Paradise

This society strives for artificial happiness, and wonders why no one is happy...

Globalization is on the ropes. First came 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis. What followed was a decade of continual monetary bailouts for the ultra-wealthy. That gambit led directly to Trump and Brexit at the forefront of the new Anti-Globalization movement. Then came the pandemic. At each stage, political acrimony has increased and the "system" has grown weaker. What we learn from democracy is that it works great until you need leadership. Two opposing forces in a political civil war are anything but leadership. At the State of the Union, half the audience were giving a standing ovation, while the other half were fuming. None of our larger problems will get addressed at the ballot box. Which is why the competing political news stations have turned into a Roman spectacle.

The main problem is that this ad-sponsored society can't tell good change from bad change anymore. For that we can thank corporate CEOs whose sole job is to inform us that ALL change is "good". Unfortunately, that is far from the truth. Most change is highly profitable but far from good for society. Case in point this Tech oligarchy which has given us artificial intelligence in exchange for the real one, rendering society as dumb as a brick. Or the boxes of frankenfood on sale while the cost of real food goes up 5x. Opioids to euthanize a lifetime of bad health choices. 

And yet despite being the prime beneficiaries of their global monopoly, the CEOs and their corporations get a free pass under this current model. Until that monopoly is broken, nothing will get better whether on the economy or the environment. It's far too easy for corporations to move from one country to the next arbitraging differentials in employee wages, taxes, and environmental/trade laws. Demolishing small businesses and employees as they go.

All of which results in increasing stagnation at the zero bound. 

Structural DEFLATION.

What we are witnessing at the moment is end of cycle inflation cleverly disguising secular Global deflation. A collapsed middle class leveraged to the maximum struggling with a post-pandemic supply chain bottleneck. It's only sustainable if one believes that wages will continue rising. If not, then it will all turn back into a pumpkin at the zero bound deja vu of 2008.

The conservative business news can take FULL credit for spreading inflation hysteria far and wide. As Biden said last night, we want higher wages not higher costs. Unfortunately, for CEOs, wages ARE higher costs. We cannot continue to increase corporate profit margins to record levels if we're paying higher wages. Hence, J. Powell is tasked right now to solely focus on inflation while ignoring the record risks accumulating in the background.

The Fed is making the EXACT same mistake they made in September 2008 when they ignored the burgeoning banking meltdown and instead focused solely on inflation.

Oil volatility in this rally is now the highest since September 2008.

 

To up the ante even more, there are now home bidding wars in my neighbourhood for the first time since 2007. Far too long ago for people to remember how that ended. Once the sheeple heard that interest rates are rising, they were told they better buy a house NOW before rates go up. And that set off another epic home buying spree. I could throw up some charts on the topic, but the National Association of Realtors locked down their historical database. You can't get data further back than 2020 because they don't want us to see how far today's hockey stick in home sales is above the historical trendline. 

No discussion of Globalization would be complete without mention of the nascent WWIII taking place in Ukraine. Russia has now been effectively cut off from the global financial system. Which means that the dollar-based global trading system just took another step lower in terms of its long-term viability. What country that might in the future run afoul of the U.S. and its vassal allies would now trust the dollar reserve system? No one. 

Not to say I support this invasion of Ukraine by any means. However, if the standard for financial cut-off was based solely upon illegal invasions, the U.S. would have been cut-off decades ago.

Be that as it may, I am not predicting the dollar is at risk of imminent demise, however the global trading system backing the dollar IS at danger of imminent dislocation. And when that happens there will be a long-term re-evaluation as to the value of printed money as foreign exchange reserves. 

Needless to say, those who have grown comfortable with the current paradigm will find this to be a "jarring" event, to say the least.

Their wellspring of artificial happiness is set to explode. 

We have now entered the no bailout zone. And contrary to ubiquitous belief in the Fed and Congress and Faux News, it's not 1979 anymore.

SYSTEM TEST PENDING

You don't have to be a genius to predict what comes next, but you do need to be able to fog a mirror. Which these days is far from certain. In an article just published on BusinessInsider, they call this entire pandemic rally "Peak Stupid". I couldn't agree more:

The chart of the month for February is this one showing the Ark ETF making a two year round-trip to nowhere having pumped and dumped legions of gullible speculators along the way. The Ark "Innovation" ETF is the largest single holder of recent Wall Street IPOs. It's a conduit of dumb money straight to the Cayman Islands.

It's a stark reminder that there is no human tragedy this society won't exploit for maximum profit.

The main difference between me and other financial commentators is that I don't feel the need to explain away every daily close with a correlated headline. My predictions are not marked to market in the Jim Cramer style. Which is why I don't dilute my commentary with a daily dose of contradictory bullshit. No crash happens in a straight line. At least at the beginning. The end is another matter. This market has been stair stepping into the abyss for months now, always pulled back from the brink by the weekly opex-driven algo rally. Ironically bears buying weekly put options are the major reason this market always catches a Friday bid. When those options are sold or expired, the market makers buy stock to offset their short hedge. And then Monday comes along and the market implodes again. 

Be that as it may, Goldman put out a note this past weekend saying that the U.S. is now the sole beneficiary of global inflows,  however U.S. stock market liquidity is at a 15 year low. 

"Money is still flowing into U.S. stocks at a prolific pace, but it’s arriving into a market where liquidity is evaporating"

"Equity liquidity -- as measured by orders from market makers ready to transact on American exchanges -- has slumped to levels seen only three times in the last 15 years"

In each episode, the S&P 500 dropped more than 20%"

Now, picture what happens when inflows to the U.S. suddenly stop and investors want to sell. 

Hotel Californication.

But for now, we are to presume that the U.S. is a safe haven from global dislocation. The entire rest of the world can implode, but not the U.S. Where have we heard this fairy tale before? It was back in 1998 when the Russian Financial Crisis caused a single massively leveraged hedge fund (LTCM) to implode. Which almost brought down global markets. In the event Greenspan cut rats .5% and organized a bailout. This time, a rate cut of that size is not even possible. 

In addition, given the weakness of global markets and the magnitude of sanctions levied against Russia it's not hard to believe the collateral damage could be far greater.

However, today's bulls have total confidence in the just-in-time bailout hypothesis.

Unfortunately, the just-in-time bailout hypothesis is about to get system tested in real-time. What I call J. Powell juggling ten pies while falling down stairs. 

The reflation trade has made Powell's task quite impossible, because any sign that the Fed is backing off on rate hikes will implode the massively crowded reflation trade. As a first order of business.

We are already starting to see hints of that implosion taking place as these past few days Tech and T-bonds have been bid while reflation trades have been imploding. A clear sign that hedge funds are unwinding their consensus trade:  long cyclicals short Tech. Don't assume this Tech bid is anything other than short covering. 

Meanwhile, just as Russia is being intentionally imploded by the "Great powers", China is going into late stage meltdown.

One commentator on Twitter blamed negative commentary for bringing down markets. It seems that everyone wants to make their contribution to peak stupid. 

In summary, this Disney "market" has now become human history's largest liability. It has achieved a level of overvaluation at the end of the cycle that no longer fits the categorization of an "asset". It's now a thermonuclear weapon of financial mass destruction. Lethal to those who own it.  

Those camped right now in the S&P 500 are of the belief that only Ark ETFs are overvalued.

Why? Because there is no human tragedy they won't exploit for personal gain, AND there is no risk they won't ignore.

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.