Into Thin Air

These weekly commentaries have struggled to make sense of a world in geopolitical chaos but which is nonetheless transfixed by a financial melt-up that cannot end other than disastrously. Still more challenging is predicting the day-to-day effects on a stock market whose behavior is a perfect analog for acute, mass mental illness. By ascending without pause into celestial heights, the market is saying it doesn’t give a fuck about the Strait of Hormuz, war with Iran, the AI bubble, Trump’s falling poll numbers, Europe’s decline into economic darkness, rising oil prices that threaten to implode the global economy, bloated earnings multiples, stubbornly firm interest rates, a big victory for Democrats in November, or a next round of inflation that will make what has occurred so far seem like just a warm-up.

Bloomberg’s Dart Board

Concerning the price of crude oil, let me cut to the chase so that you don’t have to waste precious time listening to some amateur on Bloomberg choke out dart-board guesses: NYMEX June Crude, which settled on Friday at 102.50, down 2.57 a barrel, is about to rise to 128.19. Furthermore, if it relapses to 91.28 in the interim, don’t mistake this for a sign of respite; for in fact, crude would become a fetching “buy” there, predicated on an implied 40% run-up to 128.19.  While that might be enough to wipe the idiotic grin from Wall Street’s face, don’t be surprised if the broad averages seem to hold their own.  Whatever it takes to end the 17-year-old bull market is probably too terrifying to imagine. But the catalyst will necessarily be deflationary, since the bull market has been built on an expansionary mindset that has multiplied and rotated OPM into stocks that have faced little resistance. Insiders have finally begun to sell, and so should you.