Via ConvergEx's Nick Colas,
Today we offer up five market counterfactuals – “What ifs” – to both illustrate why large cap U.S. equities just closed near their highest levels of 2016 and consider the conventional wisdom about whether the current rally is sustainable.
Our home base: where asset prices and other trends started the year.
Submitted by MN Gordon of Economic Prism (annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum),
Seven Year Achievement
“Read the directions and directly you will be directed in the right direction.” — Lewis Carroll
See? It’s easy Janet! Just read the directions!
U.S. consumers are at it again. After a seven year hiatus they’re once again doing what they do best. They’re buying stuff.
On January 29th, 2016, Vancouver went crazy.
The story of a humble 86-year-old home in Vancouver’s Point Grey neighbourhood was widely circulated by national media outlets and became a lightning rod for local frustration with skyrocketing property values.
The “knockdown”, with its rotting walls and $2.4 million asking price, perfectly underscored how crazy the region’s overheated housing market had gotten.
A month later, the house was sold for $80,000 above its asking price, rekindling public outrage.
Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
Another week of going nowhere, really.
The good news is that this sideways pattern of market action over the last year will come to an end and likely very soon.
The only question investors have to get right is whether that resolution will be a continuation of the bull market that began in 2009 OR will it be the beginning of a more protracted bear market decline.
Who could have seen that coming?
closing above 2,100 > worst jobs report since 2010
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 3, 2016
Worst jobs print in 6 years and tumbling PMI, ISM, and Factory Orders - Did The Fed just lose it completely?