Business

A wide range of stock market and sector indices appear to be forming large and menacing topping-patterns.

To quote Jason Zweig’s “The Devil's Financial Dictionary”, he reminds us that "technical analysis is a method of predicting the future price of a financial asset by looking at its past prices". So far so good, it is doubtful that anyone would disagree with this description. However, the entry goes on to say that technical analysis "is about as reliable as attempting to forecast tomorrow’s weather by studying yesterday’s".

I see a decline in inflation breakevens and the continuing flattening of the yield curve as being a very worrisome signal about the FOMC’s credibility.

There is distinct lack in the Fed’s ability and/or willingness to achieve its mandated objectives.

Well that escalated quickly...

US equity markets have given up all their "bad news is good news" - "moar stimulus please" hope gains...

as even AAPL is plunging despite Goldman's exuberance...

Back in July I posted an article regrding the potential problems in China and now it would seem a fairly good time for an update.....The question being is the China effect merely 'transient contagion' as some would have us believe? Should we buy the argument that the Chinese stock market is unrepresentative of the real state of the country's economy, that it is totally detached and the plaything of ill-informed, mischievous speculators? The answer is simply.….NO! 

"The market is manic depressive and it swings from seeing only the positives to seeing only the negatives," notes the world’s biggest distressed-debt investor, Howard Marks, but for now, as Bloomberg reports, the extremes (in risk pricing and sentiment) that usually signal opportunity (or capitulation) are not present. As Guggenheim's Scott Minerd warns, "wholesale panic" is what's needed before the market turns, and as RBS notes, "1,800 might come pretty quick."