Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,
Talk about sheep being led to the slaughter. The S&P 500 is up 11% from its February 11th intra-day low (1812) because Wall Street still has inventory to unload. That much is par for the course.
One of the biggest false narratives pitched by the mainstream to mitigate concerns about a global recession, is that even as China's massively overlevered manufacturing sector is careening into a hard landing, China's "strong" consumer base will keep the country's economy afloat (a narrative shared with the U.S.), even though as reported over the past weekend retail sales soundly disappointed expectations, while the latest proxy of China's consumer strenth, namely "record" box office receipts, was recently uncovered to have been - like everything else in China - mostly fabricated.
Last September, in the aftermath of Sweden going full NIRP, we warned that "Sweden Goes Full Krugman, Gets Massive Housing Bubble", in which we showed the unprecedented surge in Swedish home prices, which have been the one asset class to "benefit" the from the Riksbank's ultra loose monetary policy hoping to stimulate inflation, even as overall inflation has failed to materialize.
Since then things have only gone more surreal, and the chart below shows what has happened to Swedish home prices in recent months.
Submitted by Nick Cunningham via OilPrice.com,
Oil prices have shown signs of life over the past few weeks, as production declines in the U.S. raise expectations that the market is starting to adjust. As a result, Brent crude recently surpassed $40 per barrel for the first time in months.
One would think that as we approach the most important event of the week, and perhaps the month, namely the latest FOMC announcement due in just over three hours and one which is expected to confirm that rate hikes are back on the table, something which a few months ago unleashed another round of teeth crushing volatility, that the VIX would be higher.
Not only is it not higher, but instead as the chart below shows, the VIX has just tumbled by 6%, to fresh 2016 low, and a level not seen since mid-December.