Sometimes you just have to laugh...
Minneapolis Fed's Neel Kashkari said earlier...
"we are keeping our eyes open for asset prices to try to look for signs of bubbles” but admitted that it is "very hard to see asset bubbles in advance."
Indeed it must be... if your salary depends on it.
The S&P 500 has now gone a stunning 50 days without a 1% swing...
The S&P 500 Tech Sector has gone a record 14 days without a single loss...
Considering that in the past 3 months the only daily topic of relevance for the media has been "Donald Trump" both in the US and abroad, one would assume that when it comes to global policy uncertainty the primary source would be, record S&P 500 paradoxically notwithstanding, the United States.
Submitted by Brean Capital's Peter Tchir via Forbes.com,
There was a lot of discussion last week about how the $ 3.5 billion Catalyst Hedged Futures Strategy Fund (ticker: HFXAX) was running the entire stock market.
To be frank it is disturbing to me that a fund of this size could be viewed as the key market driver for even a few days, but the chatter was so prevalent that I felt the need to explore it a bit further.
Despite US markets being closed in observance of Washington's birthday, S&P futures spiked during overnight trading, reaching new all time highs before fading some of the gains. Both Asian and European markets traded modestly higher after paring early gains. The U.S. dollar traded in a tight range ahead of a busy week for Federal Reserve events, while the pound rallied the most in more than two weeks ahead of a House of Lords Brexit debate, while South Africa’s rand fell on political turmoil. Oil advanced for a third day and spot gold rose for the fourth session in five.
Carbon-based traders of a certain vintage - which excludes today's 20-year-old hedge fund managers - may recall a time when a 15x P/E was considered "fair." Not any more. In fact, according to a new analysis by Barclays' equity strategist Keith Parker, which tries to factor in so-called "animal spirits" as a driver of valuation has found that 20x P/E is perfectly normal and fair for the current market, further demonstrating just how deep into the goalseeking rabbit hole US capital markets have fallen.