Two weeks ago, Goldman's clients were so worried about an imminent crash, the investment bank's chief equity strategist, David Kostin enumerated no less than 7 reasons why, as Goldman itself admitted, "the question every client asks: Is an equity correction imminent?” As a reminder, the reasons - summarized - were the following:
With VIX at its 2nd lowest level weekly close in history, amid storms, quakes, dismal data, oh yeah and nuclear armageddon looming, it is perhaps no surprise that speculators sold more VIX futures last week... to a new record level of shorts...
Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,
It’s Bullish…
On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve announced the latest decision by the Federal Open Market Committee with respect to monetary policy. That decision contained two primary components:
The Fed wants us to believe that it remains hawkish, that it will begin the process of unwinding its $4.5 trillion balance sheet next month and that it will hike rates again this year.
The markets aren’t buying it, even for a second.
The top performing asset class after the Fed concluded its announcement on Wednesday was… TREASURIES: the asset class that should DROP hard if the Fed intends to raise rates.
Ahead of the Trump administration's official disclosure of what its latest tax proposal would look like, overnight Axios leaked some of the more salient highlights, the first being that the tax rate for the wealthiest Americans would be cut to 35% and second, taxes on on big and small businesses would be reduced substantially, with plans to cut the top tax rate for “pass through" businesses from 39.6% to 25% - a move which would impact LLCs and sole-proprietorships.