With no real positives to boost markets, important support levels had better hold... or it's over.
The lines I'm about to show you have to hold, or we'll test the Aug. 24, 2015, lows.
And if those lows don't hold, well, say hello to Mr. Big Bad Bear Market.
But don't worry. I'm going to show you how to protect yourself, too...
Central Banks' Failures Are Finally Catching Up with the Markets
Quantitative easing has turned out to be the failed monetary experiment we always knew it would be.
If you look at it this way, its fanciful stupidity becomes obvious...
Central banks spent trillions of dollars (and yen, and euros, and yuan) based on virtual equity in black-hole balance sheets to buy underwater securities from struggling banks to bail them out.
Then they bought their own government's debts to bail them out. Along the way, they raised asset prices to create a wealth effect and lowered interest rates enough to try and stimulate a trickle-down boost to consumer spending, which they then thought might resurrect Keynesian fake perpetual-motion fantasy factories.
Does that sound like a good idea to you? As if that was ever going work.
And of course, it hasn't. Here's the proof:
There's not a single economy in the world where central bank bond and asset purchases were exercised (or are being exercised) that's experiencing decent GDP growth.
Not a single one.
And worse, not only have QE programs not generated inflation (other than market-based financial asset inflation), deflationary pressures are mounting again.
Once-heralded central bank "bazookas" now appear to be smoking, empty pipe dreams.
And that failure is going to have serious consequences...
Then there are the more than $2 trillion worth of stock buybacks in the United States since 2007.
If, as an increasing number of analysts fear, earnings weaken into the fourth quarter and turn negative in 2016, and stocks break support lines, all that financial engineering to boost earnings per share metrics and stock prices will prove to be a total waste of cash and a weight on corporations that borrowed to play the game.
While that's a global and domestic snapshot, there are two other shoes we have to watch, which are dropping...
There Are Two "Canaries" Set to Choke to Death
I'm talking about China and the already down-in-the-heels emerging markets.
China's growth and the knock-on effects that growth had on emerging markets after the credit crisis and through the Great Recession kept the world from completely imploding.
Now China's GDP growth is slowing, perhaps significantly. Forget China's Ministry of Slick Statistics - the emerging markets taking it on the chin is proof positive that China's real growth rate may be doing a lot worse than just slowing.
China's stock market is just one canary in the coal mine.
You know that miners take a canary with them. If the canary dies, they know the air they're breathing is about to choke them next.
Well, the Shanghai Composite has been boosted higher by the Chinese plunge-protection team. If the Shanghai Composite falls back below the psychologically important 3,000 level, all hell is going to break loose in China.
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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.
Helpful
Good article.
The problem with going long the inverse ETFs into weakness is you get nailed with the inevitable roaring upside rips. There were a bunch in 2000-2002 and 2007-2008. One is likely coming within 2-3 days.
There are still buy the dippers out there and money managers trying to rescue a lousy year to date, not to mention those mysterious forces that ALWAYS seem to be right there to enter bids in size on S&P futures just as the markets are teetering on the edge of a break of support or have to weather really bad news.
It's not a fair fight. Maybe best to rope a dope, until they counterpunch themselves out
May be better to wait for a rip and fade it.
Or not. You can't know when the bottom will just drop out. But the shorts have been burned too many times to count.
Ah yes … it's the next morning and, lo and behold, as the market was getting to a breakdown point, just like that, there's a big rally in the futures overnight.
Funny how that happens time after time after time.
You can't short or buy inverse ETFs into weakness … at least not your whole position, because the manipulators will pick you off with one of their overnight ramps.
Best to sell into artificially created "strength."
Just understand that the Powerz That Be … the Fed, the Exchange Stabilization Fund, The PPT (President's Working Group on Financial Markets … ie. manipulators) and their Wall Street agents and co-conspirators can't allow the markets to meltdown. They will intervene aggressively … just like the Chinese did. They're just far more subtle.
That doesn't men they can stop a full fledged rout. But they can and will interrupt it with spiky rallies.