MARKETS
—–Futures are down another 500 Dow points tonight as the U.S. declared China a currency manipulator, intensifying and escalating the “trade war!”—–
—–If the market opens down 500, that will be almost 2,000 Dow points since the president changed his stance on tariffs. We doubt he expected this.—–
—–Lael Brainard, a fedhead who happens to chair the financial stability committee at the fed has already stated they are watching markets. The people that were one of the main causes of 08 and have enabled the massive debt and leverage we are seeing now have a committee on financial stability. Fill in the joke.—–
—–If we deem China a currency manipulator, what about the other 729 rate cuts in the past 10 years? What about our central bank taking rates down to 0% for 8 years and printing $4-5 trillion? China is indeed a currency manipulator. So is everyone else.—–
—–The market is in somewhat of meltdown mode. We worry about the massive leverage and the one-sided trade in the system that has been enabled by the easy money from our central bank. It is this leverage that magnify losses.—–
—–We expect a 1/2 point cut in rates at or before the next fed meeting. We would not be surprised if we get a leak of this in the next couple of days and we would not be surprised if Powell does the cut beforehand. We are not sure this will help but know it has helped for a long time.—–
—–We believed the president would roll back the proposed tariffs because the market dropped but we think China’s move just boxed the president in. Except for a market being very oversold and sentiment becoming decidedly bearish, we don’t have much in the way of good news. The big cap indices gapped through support and continued down like a hot knife through butter. Foreign markets are being crushed. Leading stocks are imploding. Rates continue to plunge as gold moves higher. We will know a lot more when we see what any bounce looks like and where any bounce comes from. Otherwise, you know the drill.—–