Have you seen the six-month price chart for the Dow Jones Industrial Average, the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, the NASDAQ Composite, the U.K. FTSE 100, the German Xetra (DAX), the Hong Kong Hang Seng Index, the French CAC 40, the Milan FTSE MIB, the Australian S&P ASX 200, or the Shanghai Composite Index?
I'll make it easy for you.
If you haven't seen any of them lately, check out one of them - any one.
It doesn't matter which one, because - really frighteningly - they all look remarkably alike.
Talk about dangerous liaisons!
Fitch Ratings warned Wednesday that contagion from Europe's debt hangover could seriously impact U.S. banks. That's amazing. How did they ever figure that out? And so quickly!
Of course, that's not new "news." So why did U.S. equity markets, which were enjoying a reasonably positive day, turn tail and sell off hard into the close?
Because the truth is, regardless of incipient talk of some U.S. decoupling from global equity markets (yeah... good luck with that), we are all in this dirty, messed-up bed together.
The bottom dirty sheet is the Eurozone (okay, it's really all of Europe). The top dirty sheet is the United States. And the contaminated "comforter" that's been keeping us all somewhat cozy since the markets hit their Great Recession lows back in March 2009 is, collectively, the emerging markets. (As an aside, I hate calling them "emerging." They have arrived.)
Let me explain.
I call Europe the bottom sheet because it's like a fitted sheet. You know, the kind where the corners come together and hug the mattress so it doesn't fall off. That's Europe. Its debt problems are intractable. The only way the European Union can get its dirty sheet to the laundry is by pulling the corners of the Union apart.
That can be done only one of two ways.
About the Author
Shah Gilani boasts a financial pedigree unlike any other. He ran his first hedge fund in 1982 from his seat on the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. When options on the Standard & Poor's 100 began trading on March 11, 1983, Shah worked in "the pit" as a market maker.
The work he did laid the foundation for what would later become the VIX - to this day one of the most widely used indicators worldwide. After leaving Chicago to run the futures and options division of the British banking giant Lloyd's TSB, Shah moved up to Roosevelt & Cross Inc., an old-line New York boutique firm. There he originated and ran a packaged fixed-income trading desk, and established that company's "listed" and OTC trading desks.
Shah founded a second hedge fund in 1999, which he ran until 2003.
Shah's vast network of contacts includes the biggest players on Wall Street and in international finance. These contacts give him the real story - when others only get what the investment banks want them to see.
Today, as editor of Hyperdrive Portfolio, Shah presents his legion of subscribers with massive profit opportunities that result from paradigm shifts in the way we work, play, and live.
Shah is a frequent guest on CNBC, Forbes, and MarketWatch, and you can catch him every week on Fox Business's Varney & Co.