S&P 500

Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

Now that’s a screaming case of the pot calling the kettle black if there ever was one. Mitt Romney has lashed out at The Donald for being a “phony and  fraud”, but consider this. During his 16-years at Bain Capital, fully one-fourth or $600 million of the firms cumulative $2.5 billion of profits were scalped from companies which went bankrupt soon after Mitt and his partners got out of town with the loot.

There is an odd feeling of Deja QEu this morning, when with two hours to go until the February payrolls, global stocks are modestly higher, US equity futures are likewise slightly higher on the back of a weaker dollar (or perhaps stronger Euro following a Market News report according to which the ECB may disappoint, more on that shortly), but it is gold that is breaking out, and after entering a bull market yesterday when it rallied 20% from its December lows...

The S&P 500 is trading around 1950. It has traded at that level numerous times in the last 18 months.

During that time, consensus earnings expectations for the S&P 500 have plunged...

In fact - since the start of the year - when stocks were at exactly this level, earnings expectations have tumbled almost 3% non-stop??

It appears the mother's milk of markets is rapidly drying up.

One recurring question posed to finanial pundits in the financial media over the past two weeks has been "is this rally real" with the bullishness of the response usually directly proportional to how many assets any given pundit is trying to offload.

Submitted by C. Jay Engel via The Sullivan Group,