The stock market braced itself for most of this week, as Hurricane Florence made its way ashore late Thursday and early Friday as a Category 1 hurricane, already causing flooding in the Carolinas as the storm begins to weaken.
The financial markets weren't too concerned with the damage Florence might cause but instead focused on oil prices, trade talks, and the direction of the U.S. dollar.
Remember a few days ago we noted that short cycles had bottomed, with oil prices advancing into the arrival of Hurricane Florence. As we go into next week, short cycles will become overbought again. Meanwhile, intermediate cycles have turned downward, and that is likely to become more obvious next week as we get closer to the next FOMC meeting.
The stock market has already factored in a rate hike on September 26th. But globally, every interest rate hike is now putting enormous pressure on the financial markets as we begin to invert the yield curve.
While some might be fretting about these storms and trade tariffs, the real issue is the overall economy, which is turning downward. That is especially visible globally.
"Growth" has peaked in the first and second quarters. Be prepared to see a marked slowdown in the third quarter GDP, tracking to approximately 2.6% and then down to 1% in the fourth quarter. Remember, by then we will have an inverted yield curve, especially by the fourth quarter, and this will begin to manifest itself far more visibly after the midterm elections!
On Wednesday, Fed Governor Lael Brainard stated, "The Fed won't let the prospect of an inverted yield curve deter the central bank from continuing to lift short-term interest rates."
The reason it won't deter the central bank is because it is intent on creating a recession under President Trump's administration. Here is a chart of the Fed's projections for economic growth going forward:
Notice that the projections for the third quarter by the Fed itself are in the 2.8% area. In my opinion, this is still a deceptive chart.
Once the bubble begins to burst, the slope of deterioration plunges and is not a neat and slow slope-line of a mild decline above zero. When the 2000-2002 and the 2008 recessions began, contractions were severe, plunging well below zero growth.
Understand, the rest of the world is largely in contraction right now, especially in the third world. The OECD leading indicator has been down for eight straight months. The USA is down four months in a row for this indicator.
Forget 4% real growth. It's not in the cards, but a lot of people have been sucked in at the top on this con.
The truth is the rest of the world markets are in sharp divergence with the U.S.
The only reason we are not joining the rest of the world is because of billions of dollars being repatriated into a select list of big technology companies. That has skewed the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes, which are heavily weighed by market capitalization.
We are about to see the U.S. market realize an economic top has already been made.
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We learned on Wednesday that inflation has suddenly taken a significant miss! After a blistering jobs report a few days ago, producer prices (PPI) unexpectedly dropped for the first time in 18 months!
Then we learned on Thursday that the consumer price index (CPI) unexpectedly missed expectations as well. Core CPI fell from 0.2 from the previous month to 0.1 in August.
Suddenly, inflation is deteriorating on a year-over-year basis. This makes no difference to the Federal Reserve, which is determined to keep raising interest rates two more times in 2018 and more in 2019 - until the economy breaks.
With our national debt at $21.4 trillion and rapidly climbing, every rate hike is designed to slow down speculative borrowing.
More alarm bells are going off as well.
When investors are crowding into a few big-name stocks but are aggressively unloading stock positions, this causes market breadth to narrow. This in turn causes the Hindenburg Omen to fire off sell signals - no surprise, given the yield curve is about to invert.
Thirty-seven Hindenburg Omens have been triggered on the NYSE and the Nasdaq Composite over the last 12 months, the most since November of 2007, just before the stock market cycle topped and a bear market started. When they begin to cluster like this, it reflects subsurface selling occurring.
It is just another warning sign that beneath the surface, the technical underpinnings of the stock market are not healthy and that risk is substantial.
In any case, between now and November 6th, I figure the stock market is apt to get all sorts of curve balls given how big the stakes are now. Brace yourself. It should get interesting in the next few weeks.
To your wealth,
Dennis SlothowerEditor, Stealth Stocks Daily Alert and Wall Street's Underground Profits
Dennis Slothower has been leading a small but profitable group of investors to some extraordinary profits in both good markets and bad over the course of a 38+ year investment career, starting as a stock broker in 1979. In 2011 Dennis was named the top performer by Hulbert Financial Digest for avoiding the Crash of 2008. Now, he is bringing his extensive experience to the public through Outsider Club, Stealth Stocks Daily Alert, and Wall Street's Underground Profits. For more about Dennis, check out his editor page.