We’ve watched this bizarre scene unfold where the Fed is gradually reducing QE, the Treasury keeps pounding the market with new supply and stock prices keep rising. Here’s how they did it, and what changes ahead will force a change in the outlook.
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Gold is due for a pullback, but what if it doesn’t? What should we expect?
The Fed is no longer pumping enough money into dealer accounts to sustain bull markets in both stocks and bonds, and it has tried to steer investors out of stocks and into Treasuries. It doesn’t matter. Rising markets create their own liquidity until they don’t. It’s called margin. Technical analysis shows us the effects of that, tells us what the trend is, and indicates when it might be reversing.
The trend is up, and there’s no sign of reversal yet. However, after reviewing my chart pick screens I came up with twice as many shorts as longs. Is that my bias, or are those individual charts trying to tell us something, the first canary singing?
Here’s what we’re watching.
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I’ve marveled at the ability of the players to keep stock prices rising despite the reduction of Fed QE, and the continued pounding of Treasury supply on the market. Even more amazing is the fact that the rally in stocks has NOT come at the expense of the Treasury market. The Treasury market has managed not to blow up.
“How are they doing it?” I have wondered. And WTF does it mean for the future?
I have some answers, but not all. Obviously, as much as I’d like to get there for your benefit, I have never come remotely close to finding all the answers. Fortunately, I just need enough of the right ones to get the direction of the market right. Right now is a particularly difficult time for that. The Fed is barely absorbing 20% of new Treasury issuance and bond prices stay high and stock prices keep going higher?
My thinking has been that, no, you’re not wrong, Lee, the market is overstretched and vulnerable.
How can this be happening? Simple. The dealers and other big market participants are again piling on more leverage. They’re making the same mistake they always make right before everything blows up. The shock is how quickly they forget the lessons of recent history. Short term memory loss I guess. It’s dementia. That’s it. The dealers have dementia.
So here we are. Yet again, those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. Here’s why, and what to do about it.
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The chart pattern may look like a top but cycle projections suggest something big is in store.
Bullish indications mean that we must assume that the bulls remain in control until proven otherwise, regardless of the bearish liquidity forces (See latest Liquidity Trader report) over the next three weeks. A bull move in stocks would raise the specter of a selloff in the bond market to support a stock rally, because there won’t be enough cash around to support rallies in both. But that’s not our problem. We just need to be on the right side of the move, whatever it is.
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Back in December I had no idea that a pandemic was coming. I had no idea that COVID19 would cause Treasury supply to increase 10x. Nor did I know that the Fed would buy all of it at first, and then that it would experiment with cutting back until “who knows what.”
But that’s what happened, and that’s what the Fed has done and is doing. I was concerned about supply demand back then, but I had no clue how understated my concern would be. Here’s what I wrote 6 months back.
12/18/19 Primary Dealers continue to carry all-time record inventories of fixed income securities, far above their historically normal bond positions. They are not well hedged. They are overwhelmingly net long and they are massively leveraged…
Furthermore, with more and more Treasury supply constantly on the way, the Fed must keep buying and/or lending the cash to buy to its straw men the Primary Dealers indefinitely. The dealers and the market at large is in no position to absorb $100 billion a month in new Treasury supply.
So the Fed is now trapped. It can’t simply end Not QE without risking a massive system wide crash. It must continue to add cash to the market indefinitely. But can it continue to print endlessly without horrific unintended consequences?
And what will those consequences be? Endless asset bubbles to the sky? Increasing consumer inflation that ultimately leads to hyperinflation?
When the pandemic hit, the Fed at first was flummoxed. It had been printing since September when the money markets blew up, but it wasn’t printing enough. And it was slow to react. So stocks crashed. That’s when the Fed went into panic mode and began printing money as if there would be no tomorrow.
Let’s be clear about one thing. The Fed did not swing into action to rescue the US economy from depression. The Fed’s first order of business when the SHTF was to rescue the Primary Dealers. Which it definitely did.
The dealers were leveraged to the hilt with record long positions in Treasuries. The Treasury was already issuing a trillion a year in new supply. That forced the dealers into the position of having to buy and own mass quantities of US Treasuries. The pandemic meant that they got well paid for that because yields collapsed and Treasury prices soared as the world’s investors dumped stocks and headed for the perceived safety of Treasuries.
But dealers took it on the chin when stocks and all other assets crashed. There’s no question in my mind that they were down and out at that point. We may never know how bad things were. The Fed papered over their problems by buying a couple trillion of their Treasuries and MBS at record high prices.
But we may still find out just how bad things are. Because the dealers remain leveraged to the hilt. And there’s one more thing.
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We knew this was coming. $265 billion in MBS settlements for May are almost done. Now we reap the whirlwind. Here’s what to expect and why it’s time to GTFO.
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The gold miner stock index has broken out and the metal looks poised to do the same. Here’s what to look for, including short term to long term price projections.
The market has now been rangebound for 5 weeks, leaving the cycle picture muddled. Wave amplitude remains relatively high, while frequency has increased. If the recent pattern holds, the market would top out on Thursday. But what if it doesn’t cooperate. Here’s what to look for to signal what comes next.
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Lee Adler