The market’s down! It’s up! It’s down again! It’s Trump! It’s terrorism! It’s Cohn! It’s Bannon! Markets pause August correction, confusing bulls and bears.
WASHINGTON, August 18,2017 – This week’s depressing action in U. S. stock markets has been due to hypersensitivity about practically everything. A tragic event in Charlottesville this weekend provided ample cannon fodder to smear and slander President Trump as a cretin and a racist for even daring to observe (correctly) that left-wing radicals are just as unacceptably extremist and violent as right-wing radicals.
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The MSM and its legion of blow-dried ignoramuses, aka, the MSM punditocracy, immediately launched into a frenzy of Trump vilification, forgetting that virtually all recent violent acts against ordinary U. S. citizens, ranging from the shooting of former U. S. Representative Gabby Giffords to the near-fatal gunning down of U. S. Representative Steve Scalise have been perpetrated by wild-eyed leftists. Ditto the endless physical attacks and assorted violence caused by Soros-paid mobs of #BlackLivesMatter thugs and black-hooded Stalinist “antifas.”
But oh, no! The violence was suddenly all Trump’s fault because he’s a Nazi-supporting racist screamed the media, something he is most certainly not and never has been. Nonetheless, if you shout a lie loudly enough and long enough, it somehow becomes the perceived truth.
That’s what happened earlier this week, inspiring virtue-signaling, lifelong Democrat CEOs populating Trump’s business advisory committees to start bailing en masse, bleating nonsensical “progressive” SJW pronouncements on their self-serving way out the door.
#NeverTrump Republicans joined in this disgusting chorus, effectively encouraging the left-wing radicals to attack, tear down and destroy countless Confederate Civil War monuments pretty much everywhere. It didn’ t seem to matter that every one of these Confederate patriots was a lifelong Democrat. That never came up. Neither did the defacing of at least two statues of President Abe Lincoln, probably because he was the very first hateful Republican president.
Once again, this largely fake political spectacle added to the market malaise throughout much of this week, as all the screaming and shouting, according to the media, was the sound and fury of the Trump Administration imploding – which, of course, is the kind of Washington chaos that the media, the Democrats and their friend George Soros want.
When traders see this kind of rolling chaos, they tend to bail en masse, which is pretty much what they’ ve been doing. The actual tragedy in Charlottesville itself certainly didn’ t help, once again underscoring the fears of average U. S. citizens that they could be slaughtered while mowing the lawn or catching a few rays at the beach.
The market attempted to recover for about five minutes after Friday’s opening bell before another massive wave of selling hit, this time attributed to an Islamofascist van driven at top speed into an international crowd enjoying itself on one of Barcelona’s favorite public promenades. The death and injury toll (still unfolding) is already horrific. Making matters worse, Spanish authorities appear to have thwarted one or two more nearly-complete attempts to assemble and drive car bombs into crowds.
This sort of thing clobbers markets badly as well, and sellers swarmed into America’s stock markets again armed with massive “Sell” tickets.
Ah, but politics again. We’ ve just learned that a major “progressive, ” Democrat and #NeverTrump goal has been accomplished at last, namely the departure of perpetually-maligned Presidential advisor Steve Bannon. Bannon, arguably the only genuine, fire-breathing conservative left on the Trump White House team.
The fact of the matter is that Bannon was essentially correct in the path he chose. But his personal abrasiveness didn’ t go over very well in Washington, D. C., where a fake surface courtliness is required to make friends and influence people.
At any rate, if the reports we’ re hearing now are actually true, Bannon really is gone. That’s allegedly the reason behind Friday afternoon’s attempt Wall Street to reverse its morning stock market swan dive and head in a positive direction. That plus the rumor that the Administration’s financial guru and potential next FedHead Gary Cohn was resigning. (Immediately denied, that one’s now residing in the growing Fake News Bin.)
The anti-Bannon meme worked for a time, with the Dow up close to 40 points at one time. But right now, at 1: 45 p.m. ET, the Dow is off 10 points, though the S&P 500 and the hard-hit NASDAQ remain up just a fraction of a percent.
Bannon’s exit may have been a brief positive for stocks. But more likely this brief surge was due to good news from the oil patch, as the U. S. continues to draw down its own supplies of black gold, even as it sinks more wells and extracts more oil and gas. That brightened any number of stocks in the oil sector, helping averages somewhat all around.
The surge – which may or may not be sustained in coming hours or days – although our favorite market direction indicator, the McClellan Oscillator, remains in extreme oversold territory, meaning a solid reversal in the market’s current bearishness is virtually at hand. Problem is, when this indicator appears, we know not the day nor the hour when the big rally will begin. Today? Maybe. Next week? More likely. But nobody really knows.
Meanwhile, if you read what’s left of America’s newspapers, watch TV’s monolithic MSM news hacks bloviate on current events, follow social media, you’ ll continue to get nothing but scare, anti-Trump rants, all of which will affect markets because the MSM says so.
So be prepared for another week of heavy, media-promoted political and market chaos: “The market’s down! It’s up! It’s down again! It’s Trump! It’s terrorism! It’s Cohn! It’s Bannon! It’s the ghost of Che Guevara risen from the grave!
It’s all nonsense. Pay attention to how stocks behave, keep an eye on key indicators, and ignore the political crap. That’s the best way to rescue our portfolios and make some money during this messy August downturn. Let’s try to ignore the nasty, rich children who rule Washington at the moment. At least we can act like the adults in the room.
