I think the shorts are gonna get more screwed here, relative to the expiration. It is highly probable the Fed will trigger a(nother) sharp buying hissyfit between now and expiration, more than likely closer to it, approximately in about a week. Just too easy for them, and, it is part and parcel of their 'open market operations' they are oh so fond of. Bennie and the Jets. Same shit, different expiration.
Feds new mandate is to keep the market jacked up at all costs. How much of a formidable adversary they will be going forward is the question.
why would they manipulate it higher at current point? to prevent down move or create gentle upside probably - but do they really need stock market that goes 10% higher every month? why? to create another super duper bubble that will destroy everything in a few months?
Crisis is a driver of "Change". Looks like BB+TG+BHO may be loading the US economy into the atom smasher of systemic (hyper?) monetary inflation and crony capitalism.
I can't disagree with you. Even though I believe a correction of some sort is in order, I don't see it coming any time soon.
BB and his crack crew, on the eve (relatively-speaking) of the expiration of futures/options, etc, that according to their just-released whiz-bang nifty new-fangled sure-fire indicator, which the Fed has code-named for beta-testing, the 'Make-It-Up-As-We-Go-Along' recish-o-meter. Well, it just so happens, this-a-here handy dandy ole tried-n-true indicator is now pronouncing the recession is 'technically over'. And right on time, I might add! Well, using their logic, over the next couple days, it appears the next glad-tidings to be heard from on-high may well be, 'the recovery is well-underway!', and 'the picture is decidedly rosy!' (sans 6-8 million (non) working Americans, but hey, what's a few million, give or take) I hear BB will be opening a new restau-rant chain soon. Boiled frogs anyone?
Look guys -- diss Bernanke all you want, but without a stock market revival, there can't be an employment revival. Business owners need to see a return on their investments. Because, right now, they are friggin *broke*, and haven't seen a dime of return from their businesses for at least the past decade -- even longer, if you take inflation into account. I don't know how many of you have run businesses yourselves -- but if you're losing money, if you're not seeing personal gains through your ownership interest in the business -- you're not going to go run out and create more employment. You're not going to spend on new machinery. You're not going to engage in a lot of R&D. If the Dow goes to 40k, there will be a new crop of millionaires sprouted from that -- and those people will be in the position to take their winnings, and start businesses, create employment. Listed firms will be able to sell stock into the market and use that to grow their balance sheets. Just look at the past couple of decades -- most businesses were started by people HELOC'ing the sh*t out of their houses, and 'investing'. The paradigm is changing folks, now people will be margining the sh*t out of their stocks instead. And it will take far more dramatic moves in the stock market to re-flate the economy, than housing, because stock ownership is much less prevalent. How many Americans own stock? Very few. With the way the housing market is right now -- heck, over half of the adult population probably has negative net worth.
Remember this minor uptick in the economy and equities over the last few months has been done out of borrowing. How much damn borrowing can a country do to get out of a recession, the economy cannot carry on with debt reaching astronomical levels.
Sure...but as the housing sector is going into debt liquidation -- corporations and investors, who have been mostly debt-adverse over the past decade, now have the capacity to go heavily into debt to achieve reflation. I agree with you -- growing overall debt is impossible. But debt most certainly can shift to being used to prop up the housing, to being used to prop up the creation and capitalization of businesses. And unlike houses, businesses actually produce stuff of value, create employment, fulfill China's huge pent-up demand for US-produced goods, etc.