S&P

S&P futures are again modestly in the green as European shares hold steady ahead of a meeting of the Catalan regional parliament and a possible declaration of independence by Catalan leader Puigdemont, while Asian shares rise a the second day. The dollar declined for the 3rd day, its losses accelerating across the board amid growing concerns that Trump's tax reform is once again dead following the Corker spat and a rejection from Paul Ryan, with the move gaining traction after China set the yuan’s fixing stronger for the first time in seven days.

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

According to Hyman Minsky, economic stability is not only inevitably followed by instability, it inevitably creates it. Complacent humans being what they are. If he’s right, and would anyone dare doubt it, we’re in for that mushroom cloud on the financial horizon. We know that because market volatility, as measured for instance by the VIX, the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE)’s volatility index, is scraping the depths of the Mariana trench.

Authored by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Melt-Up Gains Traction

Back in November, just following the election of President Trump, I wrote about the market entering into potentially the final “melt-up” phase of the cyclical bull market.

How do you know stocks are a little overextended? A good indicator is when even the most bullish sellside analyst on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley's Michael Wilson, whose year-end price target of 2,700 is the highest of all his peers, warns that stocks may see "pullback or consolidation" and that the coming earnings season may be a "sell the news event."

Many gold bugs make an implicit assumption. Gold is good, therefore it will go up. This is tempting but wrong (ignoring that gold does not go anywhere, it’s the dollar that goes down). One error is in thinking that now you have discovered a truth, everyone else will see it quickly. And there is a subtler error. The error is to think good things must go up. Sometimes they do, but why?