Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
What no financial analyst dares confess is the corporate profits they cheer every quarter have come at a cost that many Americans will soon be unable to bear.
There appears to be two sure-fire ways to make money in these 'efficient' markets - Buy before The Fed speaks...
or trade 'em after midnight...
Source: @NanexLLC
To be clear, this means without the gains achieved between midnight ET and 3amET, the S&P 500 futures market since 2005 would have gone nowhere! - It seems the so-called "pajama traders" may be on to something after all?
This rally looks complete.
The S&P 500 has broken the rising wedge pattern that has sustained it throughout the bounce from the February lows.
This is hitting as new evidence suggests corporate profits are collapsing at a pace not seen since the 2008 meltdown.
This type of collapse does not occur outside of recessionary periods.
The US data has yet to show a recession hitting because:
1) Most of the initial data points are too high and will be revised down in the near future.
With European markets closed across the continent on Monday as the Easter holiday continues, overnight Asia was busy with the Shanghai Composite letting off some steam, and closing down 0.7% at session lows on concerns the Shanghai and Shenzhen home bubble have been popped prematurely by the politburo.
As TVIX, the double-levered long VIX ETF unleashed in Nov 2010, decays to record low prices...
An unusual (and almost unprecedented) event has occurred. Just as we saw in Gold ETFs, and Oil ETFs, TVIX Shares Outstanding have exploded by a stunning 225% in the last 4 weeks... [the last 3 times TVIX has undeergone such an epic surge in demand marked a major turning point and led a violent surge in VIX]
with the largest inflows (bearish bets) on record in the last week...