The Bull Is Broken

Over the last five to seven years, I consistently have seen articles talking about the end of the bull stock market.  My favorite Permabull is Tim Knight of Slope of Hope.  The stock market has continuously hit new highs.  The Federal Reserve’s easy money policy has really propelled it.

Over the course of years since 2009 when quantitative easing forever started happening, the market has rallied.  It took awhile, but risk preferences changed.  People abandoned “safe” assets for riskier ones.  One anecdotal piece of evidence is the percentage change in startup valuations.  They are up by large percentages as new money has filtered into all stages of the space seeking returns.

I have watched it and tried to keep my confirmation bias out of it.

In April of 2020, my wife woke up nervous and wanted to sell.  We sold some stock.  I reinvested after the market kept going up.

However, today is the first day I ever took a look around, put my finger in the air and thought, the bull is broken.

Why?  More importantly, why don’t I think there is anything the Fed can do about it?  Permabears have hated the Federal Reserve since at least 1997 when the Fed seemingly propped up the tech sector.  The “Greenspan Put” is not a colloquialism for nothing.

1.  Ramp up of Federal Spending.  We always spent way too much, but what they are doing and have done since Covid is unprecedented and stupid.  It’s irresponsible.
2.  Covid policy.  It’s not based in science at all and is just based in politics.  The US and worldwide economy cannot absorb the shock of stupid policy forever.

Both of those things could be corrected in theory.  They won’t be but they could be.

The straw that broke the camel’s back for me was the Biden speech on the Afghanistan withdrawal.  I knew Biden was a buffoon.  I had met him in person years ago and came away unimpressed.  America can survive bad Presidents.  But, it can’t survive bad Presidents with all the other stuff that is going on.

As an out of the closet Republican, I also knew I had some bias over the past election.  So, I have tried to keep that bias in check as much as I can.  I lost some money in 2009 due to that bias.  I still have deep scars from it.  I am not going to repeat that.

The talking heads will begin sifting through all kinds of data to confirm why the market took a turnaround this week.  They only need to look at the speech and its aftermath.  Biden was actively shielded by the mainstream media, social media, his handlers and enablers.  Most of America didn’t see the true Biden and were fed a consistent diet of fake Biden.  However, that changed this week.

It took people falling off the wheels of a USAF jet in Afghanistan unfortunately, but eyes are opening.

The real reason for the bust up of the stock market is that American’s are no longer confident.  It is a crisis of confidence.  When you have things like CRT, males masquerading as females in athletic competition, defund the police, criminals being set free by willing district attorneys, cities boarded up, prices screaming higher, and all the rest of the drek that we have seen over the past year and a half with Covid, confidence gets sapped and can’t overcome it.

Time stamp it. We are in a bear market now.

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