Will We Hold It Wednesday – The Lies We Tell Ourselves

S&P 1,886 – a new record!  

Sure only 86M shares were traded on SPY (see Dave Fry’s chart), which is about what’s usually traded on a holiday but why should we let that bother us. As Dave noted in his post last night:

[Chart by Dave Fry]

Predicting market movements is a waste of time even for the best strategists. This is a period when following technical systems pays off, especially remaining disciplined and systematic. This includes having cash available to move as conditions change. It’s fun to predict the future marked by witty and amusing comments. That’s just entertainment.

Following trends is no different than following the money. Over the past 5 years this has led to following gifts of liquidity from the Fed and other central banks. A more dangerous method is to guess central banks next move. Janet Yellen has already laid her marker down the Fed will continue to be accommodative for a long period ahead. Bulls interpret this as bullish for equities and being nobody’s fool, they’re just going with the 5-year historical trend. The ECB is expected to provide more stimulus at its next meeting Thursday. The PBOC is expected to do so as well soon even as the finance minister has said they wouldn’t. Bulls don’t believe him for now.

With bulls believing the “all clear” has been sounded by Yellen, bulls can return to a “bad news is good” modus operandi enjoying or ignoring bad news.

[Chart by Dave Fry]

As pointed out by Zero Hedge, “While QE may have tapered to a “measly” 55 billion per month, on just the first day of April risk assets experienced the additional benefit of over two full months of QE injected into the stock market in one single day!”  And now you know where yesterday’s buying deluge came from.”  

That’s right, I showed you the chart yesterday that highlighted the $250Bn worth of “reverse repo” handed out to the banks on the last day of the month to goose the markets and, unlike Jan 1, they didn’t drop it back to $50Bn the next day. Instead the Fed fed another $113Bn to the Banksters yesterday and, despite the fact that it was a slow day, they jacked the indexes right back to record highs again.