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Editor's Note: Keith prepared and submitted this story for publication Thursday afternoon a few hours prior to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling release.
When I started Total Wealth I promised you that we'd take a good hard look not only at the best investments, but also exceptional short-term trading opportunities when they arose.
Like the one I see developing as I type.
When Euphemisms Signal Big Profit Potential
You may have heard the term "animal spirits" on TV recently or popping up across the Internet on various financial websites.
Ostensibly an ode to economist John Maynard Keynes, who used the term in his 1936 tome "The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money" to describe the instincts and emotions guiding human behavior, the expression is really Wall Street code-speak.
I think it's more like they "have no idea what's going to happen next."
Blunt?
Yep.
If there's one thing I've learned over the past 35 years about global markets, it's that euphemisms like "animal spirits" usually enter the lexicon when there is a great trading opportunity in the works.
Sometimes those are long-term opportunities, but more often than not, they're great short-term trades.
For instance, by now most people have heard of derivatives. Those are billed as insurance by Wall Street, but they're really an excuse to burn your neighbor's house down if you understand how they work.
Underperforming assets are really low-quality loans that never should have been issued in the first place that are better characterized by a certain four-letter word.
Moving forward, an expression you hear a lot during earnings calls, usually means the company isn't, a la Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who uses the expression frequently.
You get my drift.
And that brings me to our trade.
I am very leery that the markets have rallied absent any final judicial decision on President Trump's immigration ban. I'm very suspicious of yesterday's trading, in particular, especially when the explanations for what's happening center on "animal spirits."
Volume was generally low and activity quiet despite the fact that the Dow rose 118.06 points, the S&P 500 tacked on 13.20 points, and the Nasdaq hit yet another all-time high adding 32.73 points to the tally.
Traders I'm talking to around the world just aren't putting a lot of money on the table even though President Trump is talking about a "big league" tax announcement.
In fact, the S&P 500 hasn't moved more than 1% in either direction – higher or lower – since Dec. 7. That's the longest, narrowest trading range on record since 1978, according to Bloomberg.
And if they're not putting money down… who is?
I think there's a very large, well capitalized trading shop out there looking to pull a fast one.
And I'm not alone.
Jeremy Klein, chief market strategist at FBN Securities, noted to CNBC that "there is a very persistent buyer out there pushing the market higher."
My guess -…
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About the Author
Keith Fitz-Gerald has been the Chief Investment Strategist for the Money Morning team since 2007. He's a seasoned market analyst with decades of experience, and a highly accurate track record. Keith regularly travels the world in search of investment opportunities others don't yet see or understand. In addition to heading The Money Map Report, Keith runs High Velocity Profits, which aims to get in, target gains, and get out clean, and he's also the founding editor of Straight Line Profits, a service devoted to revealing the "dark side" of Wall Street... In his weekly Total Wealth, Keith has broken down his 30-plus years of success into three parts: Trends, Risk Assessment, and Tactics – meaning the exact techniques for making money. Sign up is free at totalwealthresearch.com.