Party Like It's 1999: The Stock Market Is An Intervention Tool

Investment Research Dynamics

The degree and level of propaganda now flowing from the Establishment and the Establishment-controlled mainstream media is on par with that of the old Soviet Politburo or German Third Reich.   In fact, I’d confidently propose that this point is incontestable.

With modern technology and regulations which have made Fed operations and accountability tragically opaque, I have zero doubt that the Fed and the Government have managed to turn the stock market into another propaganda tool.  Studies have shown that, over the short term, the direction of the stock market and consumer sentiment measures are highly correlated.

Thus, pushing the stock market a lot higher is a mechanism that can be used to influence the public’s sentiment and willingness to spend.  This is critical after an election in which the political party controlling Capitol Hill changes and – more important – during the holiday shopping season.

Without question the U.S. economy is beginning to quickly crumble.  If you “peel away” the manipulative techniques applied to the economic reporting it reveals that every segment of the economy is now contracting.  Even the factory orders report for October released  yesterday – which showed a 2.7% gain over September – is still down 2.3% YTD vs the same YTD period in 2015.  Strip away the transportation component and it’s down 2.7%.

With interest rates on the long end up over 100 basis points in a very short period of time, the Fed’s balance sheet has taken a big hit. It currently owns over $4 trillion in Treasuries and mortgage securities. Assuming an average duration of 10 years on its holdings, the market value of the Fed’s balance sheet has dropped 8.4%, or approximately $320 billion. As of this past Thursday, the Fed’s balance sheet showed $46 billion in book equity. If the Fed were forced to mark-to-market its fixed income holdings, the Fed’s net worth would be significantly negative – close to $300 billion negative. Think about that: the only thing backing the value of the U.S. dollar right now is the U.S. military and a Central Bank with a massive negative net worth.  – excerpt from IRD’s latest Short Seller’s Journal

Market intervention in this manner is an attempt to convince the public that the economic system is healthy and will be even healthier in the future.  As such it’s another subtle propaganda tool – a perception management device.   If the Fed were step away from the market, the stock market would rapidly re-price to reflect the true underlying economic reality.  In short, stocks would crash and concomitantly gold and silver would soar.

The Fed injected billions into the system in late 1999 ahead of Greenspan’s Y2k scare. It led to the biggest stock market blow-off top of all-time.The current market is quite similar, only the economic and financial fundamentals underlying both the public and private sectors of the system are far worse than they were in 1999.

The ONLY thing that can explain the move in the stock market since around 2:00 a.m. EST after the election is massive Fed stimulus in some form – either direct cash injections done in a format that won’t show up on the Fed’s balance sheet or a massive spike up in the availability of short term credit lines made available to banks and extended to hedge funds. There is no other explanation.

Today for example, the stock market is spiking higher AND bond prices are higher/yields lower. This makes absolutely no sense and can only be explained by official intervention of some sort.

Gold and silver will “sniff” this out and at some point I expect to see gold begin to move a lot higher and the dollar sell-off precipitously. I also expect that the Chinese are going to send their response to Trump’s inimical overtures on Twitter by accelerating their sale of U.S. Treasuries.

lf the same GAAP accounting standards used in 1999 to measure corporate earnings – the standards having been relaxed more almost every year since 2000 to enable companies to report higher GAAP earnings – were applied to today’s earnings numbers, we would see that the current stock market is by far the most overvalued in history.

This will not end well.