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The Reality Check Of Sugarcane Economics Starting To Hit Home

A weekend topic starting with the Los Angeles Times in California. “You’d be forgiven for passing this utterly unimpressive 1,800-square-foot house without a second look, but for decades it was everything to a large family headed by two immigrants who bought it fresh off the boat from Norway (and yes, it was a boat) for $8,500 in 1954. Today, that house — the one that reeked of cigarette smoke and stiff coffee, with a linoleum kitchen floor, earth-toned walls (or maybe the lighting was just awful) and a shoebox-like addition that heated up to low-oven temperature in the summer — would sell for $1.4 million.”

“The absurdity of the situation should be clear: Two generations ago, a (white) immigrant couple could arrive in Los Angeles and soon after owned a single-family home in Glendale for about the price of two first-class airline tickets today. My grandparents, who came from Norway not long after my great-grandparents, would go on to raise their four children in that house on the earnings of a furniture mover.”

“Yes, I’ve heard of inflation. I know that $8,500 in 1954 equates to a lot more today, and the supply of housing in Southern California has not kept pace with demand. But adjusted for inflation, the 1954 sale price would be about $91,000 today, and good luck trying to find a house even costing five times that in L.A. County.”

The New Yorker. “As tens of millions of American households watch the values of their more conservatively invested 401(k)s and other retirement accounts decline month after month, many of them are asking what is causing this slow crash and when it will end. The second question is harder to answer; the first one can be answered in three words: the Federal Reserve.”

From Bloomberg. “A mass exodus of money, an $11 trillion wipeout, and the worst losing streak for global stocks since the 2008 financial crisis. The bad news is that it may not be over yet.”

The Guardian. “For years the tech industry has led the stock market with bust-out profits, fueled by a pandemic that moved much of the world online. Now all that has changed, with trillions in market value lost in recent weeks. Once-hot startups are being ditched by investors, and even the tech giants seen as stable investments have faltered. Rumors have been roiling that big cuts are on the horizon for smaller firms. ‘The next 6-8 weeks is going to be a bloodbath,’ said JD Ross, co-founder of the music investment platform Royal. ‘I’m hearing rumors about a ton of companies preparing to lay off 20-40% of their team.'”

From Summit Daily in Colorado. “In the summer months and fall months — the busy seasons for many agents — there could be a few hundred transactions within a 30-day timespan. But Land Title Guarantee Co.’s reports for January, February and March show a lot fewer than that. Anne Skinner, owner of The Skinner Team, said short-term rental regulations, particularly the county’s 135-day cap for its Type 2 licenses, don’t affect all buyers in the same way.”

“”For us, it was a pretty mixed bag to be honest,’ Skinner said. ‘I would say when it comes to short-term rentals, we certainly had some buyers that said, ‘If I can’t do what I’m planning to do, then this just isn’t going to be the market for me to buy in, and it makes more sense for me to just come out and rent when I want to rent.’ We definitely had a handful of those people.'”

“Rising interest rates don’t help local buyers either. Again, all three agents agreed that rising costs will edge out locals hoping to purchase a home in Summit County. ‘I would say half of the people who thought about borrowing money may not,’ said Ray Brueggemeier, owner of Cornerstone Real Estate. ‘Their buying power has just gone down so far that they can’t buy what they want any longer.'”

The Long Island Business News in New York. “Andrew Russell, owner of RCG Mortgage in Hauppauge, says the combination of bidding wars and rising rates is causing some prospective homebuyers to have second thoughts. ‘Rates in November were in the high twos and now they’re well into the fives,’ Russell said. ‘You know a $500,000 mortgage over the last few months has gotten $500 a month more expensive, with those things together a lot of people are just giving up and choosing to rent for a year or two instead.'”

“‘People who I approved five or six months ago, we now have to reevaluate everything because they might have been approved at a very low rate and we’re not there anymore, so it makes things much more difficult with some buyers,’ said Dan Jacoby, senior loan officer with Embrace Home Loans in Melville. ‘There are people who were qualified months ago, but they may not qualify for that level now. Sometimes we need to lower their expectations and lower the amount they’ll qualify for to make it work.'”

“Mark Walsh, a principal at Select Real Equity Advisors in Huntington Station, says the fast-rising rate environment is already having a chilling effect. ‘Sellers are going to have to get a little more realistic in the marketplace and buyers, while still aggressive, are definitely going to be more cautious, because their returns will be greatly impacted by the rising rates,’ Walsh said.”

“Jonathan Schwartz, senior managing director and co-head of New York Capital Markets for Manhattan-based Walker & Dunlop, said the new rising rate environment has yet to fully reverberate through the system. ‘There are certainly investors that have gone back on deals they’re under contract on and said, ‘I’m not paying the price that I agreed to before the Fed’s increase because the price has changed.'”

The Globe and Mail. “On paper, Canada’s housing market is still firmly in sellers’ territory. But in some areas of the country, slowing home-price growth and soaring mortgage rates are tilting the power balance toward buyers faster than the statistics would suggest. In some particularly overheated areas, like the Greater Toronto Area, even the moderate market slowdown seen so far has already caught out some sellers. These are often homeowners who bought a new property near the peak of the market and now can’t sell their old home for as much as they expected, said Daniel Foch, a broker and real estate analyst at Foch Family Real Estate.”

“Another source of stress for some who are closing purchase deals now: Appraisals commissioned by lenders are coming in far below the contract price buyers committed to earlier this year, according to Mr. Foch. Low appraisal values usually mean buyers won’t be able to borrow as much as they need from the bank they had lined up for the mortgage. The options, then, are to pony up a larger down payment, borrow from friends and family or line up a private mortgage to bridge the gap, Mr. Foch said. As the market cools, though, it’s getting harder to find lenders for such deals, he cautioned. Buyers who walk away from a purchase agreement typically forfeit their deposit and may face a lawsuit, he added.”

“In Toronto, outlier bids helped propel home prices upward during the pandemic housing boom, said Ben Rabidoux, founder of North Cove Advisors, a market research firm. Buyers could put in firm offers above market price and count on home valuations catching up by the time an appraisal would be done several weeks later, he added. At the same time, that property’s closing price would become a benchmark for similar listings in the same area.”

“But now that the market has turned, those aggressive bids are accelerating the price adjustment downward, according to Mr. Rabidoux. That’s because low appraisal values can force sales at significantly lower prices, which will also weigh on the valuation of nearby comparable properties, he said.”

“‘You’re gonna get this this period of turbulence this spring as we work through these distressed sales and you’re not really going to get a sense of the real direction of the market until later in the summer,’ Mr. Rabidoux said, speaking about Toronto.”

From ABC News. “A week ago, barely anyone was talking about a pre-election interest rate hike. Now, there’s a tsunami of professional opinion pointing to a lift in the official target cash rate, following last week’s dramatic rise in inflation. During the past 30 years, the RBA — in association with the banking regulator, the Australian Prudential Regulatory Authority — has helped create one of the globe’s biggest asset price bubbles. And if it unravelled, it would wreak havoc with the financial system and the economy.”

“Australia now finally is captive to real estate. We aren’t the only country to have allowed this to happen. But we are one of the most egregious examples. Our banking system, which for decades has prospered on the back of soaring property prices, has become hostage to a $9 trillion monster. And while our politicians for years berated each other over relatively insignificant levels of government debt, they conveniently ignored Australia’s real economic Achilles heel: household debt.”

“That’s now hobbled our central bank. It can’t raise rates to anywhere near the level it may require without causing utter chaos. Perverse as it may seem, our perilous personal debt situation could be the saving grace for those who recently geared themselves up to the eyeballs. We simply can’t afford to have so many go broke!”

“All that easy cash fuelled extra demand which initially stabilised property markets before sparking a frenzy. Rather than hefty price falls, real estate prices surged to their strongest levels in history. It was a deliberate strategy. Given real estate is our biggest household asset, higher prices make home owners feel richer, which encourages them to spend more. That helps boost economic growth. It’s what’s known as the ‘wealth effect.’ But it works in reverse as well.”

From Stuff New Zealand. “Rising living costs, rising house prices and wages that are failing to keep up with other countries have left the young and even middle-aged members of the workforce vulnerable to the promise of an easier life overseas. Couple that with labour force shortages in specialist areas and falling immigration, and New Zealand is looking at a long road to recovery from the Covid hangover.”

“Economist Cameron Bagrie says there are two forces pulling at New Zealand right now. ‘One, we’ve got a very divided society. And a divided society is unhealthy, both socially and economically. How we mend society, on so many levels, is the million-dollar question. You’ve got the gap between the haves and the have-nots. The whole debate over Three Waters and ownership control etc. It is just a recipe for division. And decision-making that polarises.”

“The second force pulling at New Zealand was ‘the reality check of sugarcane economics’ starting to hit home. ‘And it’s hit home in the form of a cost of living crisis. You cannot spend and print money as a way to economic prosperity and wealth creation. You need to have some substance. And what we’re now starting to see is that more and more variables are starting to pop. And basically tell us, ‘we’re not on the right path.'”

“New Zealand was now in a period of ‘the three R’s,’ Bagrie said. ‘Reality is sinking in. we’re going through what’s called a reset, because we’re now starting to see asset prices have fallen, and we’ve got some real hard work ahead of us.’ That was going to require a big pivot away from seeing spending money as the answer to New Zealand’s problems, Bagrie warned – and that would cause pain for many.”

“Economist Anthony Byett, a former ASB Bank chief economist, says Covid gave us the chance for a breather, and a rethink about where New Zealand was headed, and where it wanted to go. ”It’s pushed the economy along and house prices along for the last couple of decades, in particular in the last couple of years but we need to wean ourselves off that drug, and get back to a situation where house prices and the volume of houses is more in line with the number of people and the incomes of people.'”

Related Posts

The Housing Market Appears To Have Officially Crashed

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tizB9-tggyI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fccD0gXHib0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTPHbPyXtpk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5H5NWzoZ68s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gVRNa3hNqvY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJWI9-v1BXA

This Post Has 133 Comments

  1. ‘I’m not paying the price that I agreed to before the Fed’s increase because the price has changed’

    That’s the spirit!

  2. ‘even the moderate market slowdown seen so far has already caught out some sellers. These are often homeowners who bought a new property near the peak of the market and now can’t sell their old home for as much as they expected’

    Well that’s a pickle.

    ‘now that the market has turned, those aggressive bids are accelerating the price adjustment downward’

    You mean skyrocketing shack prices has a downside? No!

    1. “Well that’s a pickle.”

      Like the pickles for sale at your local grocery store, it’s underwater.

  3. There’s yer bubble:

    “Yes, I’ve heard of inflation. I know that $8,500 in 1954 equates to a lot more today, and the supply of housing in Southern California has not kept pace with demand. But adjusted for inflation, the 1954 sale price would be about $91,000 today, and good luck trying to find a house even costing five times that in L.A. County.”

    Japan had similar real estate pricing issues circa 1989. I’m trying to recall how they were resolved, but…long covid.

    1. Well 1954 was the middle of the “baby boom,” so it’s not like demand was low. However, coins still contained silver in 1954 and foreign holdings of dollars were convertible to gold.

  4. ‘The second force pulling at New Zealand was ‘the reality check of sugarcane economics’ starting to hit home. ‘And it’s hit home in the form of a cost of living crisis. You cannot spend and print money as a way to economic prosperity and wealth creation. You need to have some substance. And what we’re now starting to see is that more and more variables are starting to pop’

    “A bridge that relies on wealth effects, you better hope that you got enough growth to justify the asset price increase which created the wealth effect in the first place.” — Raghuram Rajan

    https://www.marketwatch.com/story/in-interview-indias-rajan-says-monetary-policy-has-run-its-course-2016-04-15

    1. ‘You cannot spend and print money as a way to economic prosperity and wealth creation. You need to have some substance’

      You can, but you end up fooked. You may say, but Ben, are you suggesting the whole system, study, get a job, move up the salary ladder, all that is fer nothing?

      Pretty much. If we’re all sitting around waiting for the big cash out on some 70 year old shanty in Los Angeles to retire. Cuz that is supposedly paid for by the greater fool with a 30 year loan. You run out of those eventually.

      What kinda dam fool would devise such a system? A$$ hats like Jerry Powell.

      1. What kinda dam fool would devise such a system? A$$ hats like Jerry Powell.

        These central bankers are grifter scvm, and they keep devising little tricks to keep their skim going. I’m sure right now they are preparing their next ripoff scheme for the time when house prices are crashing massively. They will somehow benefit. We need to get rid of these people.

        I think somebody posted a quote here the other day from CONgresscritters from both sides of the aisle praising and blowing smoke up Jay Powell’s asz. They are all in on it. The US is actively controlled by traitors, and they are milking it dry.

      2. “Jerry Powell”

        I’d argue he’s the bagholder for polcies that date back to 1987, when Sir Alan Greenspan took the reins as Fed Chair.

        The downside effects of those policies have come to fruition, and it is not clear at this point how they will be resolved.

  5. “Yes, I’ve heard of inflation. I know that $8,500 in 1954 equates to a lot more today, and the supply of housing in Southern California has not kept pace with demand. But adjusted for inflation, the 1954 sale price would be about $91,000 today, and good luck trying to find a house even costing five times that in L.A. County.”

    Prior to 1971 we were on the gold standard, and the dollar was a sound currency. Ever since, the Fed has been printing us down the road to Weimar Republic 2.0.

    1. Prior to 1971 we were on the gold standard

      I don’t think you were around back then. I couldn’t turn my Greenbacks in for gold from the Treasury.

    2. People forget it was Milton Friedman that advised Nixon to end the gold standard for the dollar, the same guy that advised the IRS to withhold taxes from your paycheck.

    3. To put things into perspective, when I had emigrated to America in 1970 gas was at 25c, a typical full-size sedan at $3,000, a middle class house in Florida at $30,000 and the typical entry-level pay for a college graduate at $12,000/yr. Back then America was the industrial and economic powerhouse of the world and also the biggest creditor nation. An artificial interest rate suppression by the Congress was still going on which ultimately resulted in the S&L crash but that is another story.

      Then Nixon, scared by the sky-high 2% inflation (inflation was a dirty word in those days) caused by the Vietnam misadventure, slapped on his infamous wage-price control which backfired big time. In desperation he reneged on the Bretton Woods agreement in 1971 and overnight turned the USD into a piece of engraved paper with a meaningless number like the stock certificate of a defunct company (lucky me!). The Financial Media applauded this blatantly dishonest act as “closing the gold window” as if it was an accomplishment – the typical ploy of a crook which he claimed he was not.

      Since then the USD has lost over 90% of its purchasing power and counting, America has lost its industrial base except weapons of destruction, has become the biggest debtor nation and the biggest collection of goofballs the world has ever seen namely the Federal Reserve has even set a target for inflation, the craziest move.

      So, now that everything nominally costs over 10 times more than in 1970, the question is are Americans enjoying 10 times more prosperity as a result?

      1. We can judge something from paying 30c/gal for gas in 1970, a buck in 1979 and $4 more recently.

  6. Do you remember how much coverage the Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade killer got from Real Journalists, specifically that he was motivated by racial hatred and black supremacist ideology?

    No, you’re not supposed to remember that.

    The Buffalo, New York supermarket shooter is already being blamed on DJT. It’s going to dominate the news cycle for the next week, because Real Journalists.

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. The globalists and their Democrat-Bolshevik Quislings have created a situation where millions of young white males not only have no stake in the current system, but have legitimate reason to believe that system is implacably hostile to them and their interests. Whether by accident or design, that has created the conditions for extremism to flourish. Of course rather than looking at cause and effect, the Powers that Be will focus on distractions like DJT and “gun violence.”

  7. “As tens of millions of American households watch the values of their more conservatively invested 401(k)s and other retirement accounts decline month after month, many of them are asking what is causing this slow crash and when it will end.

    Fed-engineered boom/bust cycles are the most efficacious means of transferring the wealth and property of the increasingly pauperized middle class to the Fed’s private equity accomplices. We’re about due for another 2008-style Great Muppet Reaping from the Wall Street-Federal Reserve Looting Syndicate.

  8. ‘The next 6-8 weeks is going to be a bloodbath,’ said JD Ross, co-founder of the music investment platform Royal. ‘I’m hearing rumors about a ton of companies preparing to lay off 20-40% of their team.’”

    Who knew that debt-fueled “growth” was unsustainable? The financial reckoning day, when it can no longer be forestalled by the central banks’ deranged money printing, is going to vaporize trillions in fake “wealth” created by Yellen Bux funny money.

  9. ‘A mass exodus of money, an $11 trillion wipeout’

    Is that a lot? Turn those machines back on!

    Wait, they are turning them on tomorrow.

      1. Yeah, maybe they’ll change their minds and decide to live with double-digit inflation for a while in order to cheer up the reprobate gamblers recently heard complaining about how uncomfortable an experience it is to get your face ripped off.

          1. The Financial Times
            Hedge funds
            Hedge funds scale back bets on US stocks as losses surge
            Managers step away from risk-taking as Wall Street equities endure longest selling streak since 2011
            Long-short equity hedge funds lost 18.3% for the year up to and including Wednesday, Goldman Sachs estimates
            Eric Platt, Ortenca Aliaj and Nicholas Megaw in New York
            4 hours ago

            Hedge funds focused on US equities are pulling back sharply on their bets after the longest stretch of sustained selling in more than a decade left many managers nursing stiff losses.

            The S&P 500 index has fallen for six weeks in a row in a tumultuous stretch that on Thursday left Wall Street’s benchmark share barometer down by almost a fifth from the peak it reached at the start of 2022, before a dramatic swing higher on Friday.

            Long-short equity funds, which pitch themselves on the ability to protect client money in down markets, have lost 18.3 per cent for the year up to and including Wednesday, according to Goldman Sachs estimates.

            The declines have been staggering for funds invested heavily in riskier corners of the market, including lossmaking technology companies, with traders warning that there could be a spate of large redemptions that prompt fund closures.

            The sharp pullback has prompted funds that trade with Goldman, Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase, three of the largest prime brokers on Wall Street, to dial back their positions over the past week, according to client reports seen by the Financial Times.

            “When you’re seeing daily moves of 2.5 or 3.5 per cent in indexes, those are not just everyday moves being driven by trading volatility,” said Peter Giacchi, who leads Citadel Securities’ floor trading team at the New York Stock Exchange. “There’s obviously deleveraging going on — it’s not just noise, there are clearly people taking risk off.”
            …

      3. Are the Keynesian fraudsters at the Fed already restarting QE-to-Infinity?

        All of the reckless gamblers are counting on it, since that’s the moral hazard the FED created with their infamous pivot after the taper tantrum. “The FED’s got out back” is the altar at which they worship. But the FED isn’t going to be there for them this time. In fact, the FED is actively destroying those same people. As Ben has pointed out on many occasion – “they’re going to break it off in their as$.”

        1. The Fed exists for one purpose: to further enrich the already super-wealthy. To that end, I suspect they’re working hand-in-glove with the Wall Street investment banks to set up the next Great Muppet Reaping by deliberately tanking the markets after the “private equity” mob has taken out huge short positions against the Fed’s asset bubbles & Ponzi markets.

  10. ‘I would say when it comes to short-term rentals, we certainly had some buyers that said, ‘If I can’t do what I’m planning to do, then this just isn’t going to be the market for me to buy in, and it makes more sense for me to just come out and rent when I want to rent’

    As you might imagine, I’m often asked to explain a mania, or define it, etc. I can say I see something irrational. For the millionth time, if yer going to visit Sedona for example, it’s much cheaper to rent a hotel room or stay at a timeshare. The only reason one would buy one of those old crummy shacks is if you expect to get filthy rich!

    That’s irrational. But look at what’s happened the past two years.

  11. ‘That’s now hobbled our central bank. It can’t raise rates to anywhere near the level it may require without causing utter chaos. Perverse as it may seem, our perilous personal debt situation could be the saving grace for those who recently geared themselves up to the eyeballs. We simply can’t afford to have so many go broke!’

    I’m seeing a lot of variation along the same theme. Interest rates can’t go up cuz we’d be fooked! They are up and you are fooked. Now take off yer mouth hankey and soaked diaper and get some pitchforks.

    1. One of my favorite falsehoods is the ol’ “they won’t raise rates because then we couldn’t afford to pay the interest on the national debt.” Whoever made this up is a fool of the highest order. When you control the printing press, there is no amount of interest too high to pay.

      1. When you control the printing press, there is no amount of interest too high to pay.

        The FED in neither federal nor a reserve. As I understand it, We, The People, pay interest on the money that the FED prints.

          1. Notwithstanding, it’s up to you to decide whether to pay interest in dollars, receive interest in dollars, or neither.

            All three options are wide open.

          2. That’s a great video for the young who are freshly minted workers, but it’s likely preaching to the choir on the HBB.

        2. It’s up to you whether you pay interest or earn interest on your Federal Reserve Notes.

          “Them that understands interest gets it.

          Them that don’t understand pays it.”

        3. That’s irrelevant to my point, which is that when they can just keep printing money to cover any amount, then there is no limit – until the currency collapses, of course. But the premise that the actual interest rate is the limiter is false.

      2. Also their main problem for now is uncontrolled inflation. To my understanding, the primary tools in their toolkit to fight inflation are increasing interest rates and unwinding Quantitative Easing. Both measures result in higher interest rates.

        1. Like a Chinese construction company, we’ll just borrow what it takes to pay the interest.

  12. “”For us, it was a pretty mixed bag to be honest,’ Skinner said. ‘I would say when it comes to short-term rentals, we certainly had some buyers that said, ‘If I can’t do what I’m planning to do, then this just isn’t going to be the market for me to buy in, and it makes more sense for me to just come out and rent when I want to rent.’ We definitely had a handful of those people.’”

    Die, speculator scum.

  13. ‘I would say half of the people who thought about borrowing money may not…Their buying power has just gone down so far that they can’t buy what they want any longer’

    Is half a lot Ray? Fear not, all those local coffee pourers and waiters can hold up these mountain shacks, right?

  14. ‘It’s pushed the economy along and house prices along for the last couple of decades, in particular in the last couple of years but we need to wean ourselves off that drug, and get back to a situation where house prices and the volume of houses is more in line with the number of people and the incomes of people’

    Incomes?

    1. get back to a situation where house prices and the volume of houses is more in line with the number of people and the incomes of people’

      That means a haircut of 75% out west.

  15. The options, then, are to pony up a larger down payment, borrow from friends and family or line up a private mortgage to bridge the gap, Mr. Foch said.

    Call me Nostradamus, but I foresee the friends & family stupid enough to lend money to FBs so they can sign on Mr. Banker’s dotted line for their financial Waterloo are going to be ex-friends and estranged family in the not-too-distant future.

    1. Why lend to FBs at 3% when you can lend to Uncle Sam at 9%? Given the existence of a fiat printing press technology, my money is on Uncle Sam.

  16. People Who Pushed Idea of Universal Vaccination Are ‘Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity’: Former Pfizer VP

    ‘Former Pfizer VP Michael Yeadon maintains that since the infection fatality ratio of COVID-19 has not been high, the vaccines should not have been mandated.’

    ‘Moreover, he heavily blasted the corporate media mantras that designate these as safe, effective, and necessary to end the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.’

    ‘Yeadon is a big pharma veteran with 32 years in the industry. He worked as the head of allergy and respiratory research at Pfizer from 1995 to 2011 and is the former founder and CEO of Ziarco, a biotech company acquired by Novartis. Furthermore, he has a doctorate in respiratory pharmacology and holds a Double First Class Honors degree in biochemistry and toxicology.’

    ‘A shocking 1,223 deaths and 42,086 adverse events were reported to Pfizer from the first day of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine rollout on Dec. 1, 2020, to Feb. 28, 2021.’

    “The worst flu season over the last decade is worse than [the threat] posed by this new virus,” Yeadon told The Epoch Times via email. “And what do we do in response to seasonal influenza? Well, nothing really, beyond offering—and not mandating—vaccines which aren’t much use.”

    ‘Yeadon said that being sure the vaccines would cause no harm in the long run should have been imperative. “It was never appropriate to attempt to ‘end the pandemic’ with a novel technology vaccine. In a public health mass intervention, safety is the top priority, more so even than effectiveness, because so many people will receive it,” Yeadon states in a document he sent to The Epoch Times.’

    “It’s simply not possible to obtain data demonstrating adequate longitudinal safety in the time period any pandemic can last. Those who pushed this line of argument and enabled the gene-based agents to be injected needlessly into billions of innocent people are guilty of crimes against humanity.”

    ‘Yeadon feels that the novel vaccines should have not been given emergency use authorization (EUA) and that if he were directing the pandemic response, children, pregnant women, and people who already had contracted the virus would have been given a red light on the jabs.

    “I would have outright denied their use in children, in pregnancy, and in the infected/recovered. Point blank. I’d need years of safe use before contemplating an alteration of this stance.”

    He further argues that the vaccines were sure to be toxic and it was only a matter of degree of toxicity.

    “Having selected spike protein to be expressed, a protein which causes blood clotting to be initiated, a risk of thromboembolic adverse events was burned into the design. Nothing at all limits the amount of spike protein to be made in response to a given dose. Some individuals make a little and only briefly. The other end of a normal range results in synthesis of copious amounts of spike protein for a prolonged period. The locations in which this pathological event occurred, as well as where on the spectrum, in my view played a pivotal role in whether the victim experienced adverse events including death,” Yeadon said.’

    “There are many other pathologies flowing from the design of these agents, including for the mRNA ‘vaccines’ that lipid nanoparticle formulations leave the injection site and home to liver and ovaries, among other organs, but this evidence is enough to get started.”

    ‘Earlier this month, a physician said that he has been seeing an unusual amount of fetal death and miscarriages linked to the COVID-19 vaccines—according to his observations—and noted that mRNA products, contained in nanoparticles, accumulate in the ovaries.’

    “From data that we have, there appears to be a concentration of the lipid nanoparticles, which are very, very small particles, which are in the vaccine that are injected into the arm,” Dr. James Thorp told The Epoch Times, “and then the vast majority of those are dispersed throughout the entire body.”

    ‘A 2012 study says that after testing with different mouse species and Wistar rats, “a high local accumulation of nanoparticles, nanocapsules, and nanoemulsions in specific locations of the ovaries was found in all animals.”

    ‘Referring to the study, Yeadon told The Epoch Times that “the authors tell untruths. They say something like ‘there was no increase in anti-syncytin-1 antibodies.’” “No, that’s wrong. Their data is clearly 2.5X increased after vaccination and obviously statistically significant (functional significance is looking confirmed by the miscarriage rate),” Yeadon noted.’

    “What they’ve done is cute. They’ve chosen a completely arbitrary level they scribed on the figure below which they claim nothing matters. No evidence whatsoever for that claim. In fact, in the discussion, they confess we don’t know the relationship between antibodies and the impact on function.”

    ‘Yeadon believes that the pharmaceutical industry “definitely knew,” since 2012, that the lipid nanoparticles would accumulate in the ovaries of women that took the vaccines. “No one in the industry or in leading media could claim ‘they didn’t know about these risks to successful pregnancy.’”

    https://www.theepochtimes.com/people-who-pushed-idea-of-universal-vaccination-are-guilty-of-crimes-against-humanity-former-pfizer-vp_4462787.html

    Hanging is too extreme? I don’t think so.

    2. Hanging is too extreme? I don’t think so.

      Sure looks like murder for profit.

      …holds a Double First Class Honors degree

      Really? OK he has two degrees. I had a minor and probably could have gotten two degrees if it had occurred to me. I graduated with “High Honors” (nobody but my mother cared), but what the heck is “First Class Honors”?

    3. Another “unintended consequence” of lockdowns: online radicalization while millions of teenagers were stuck at home.

      Buffalo shooter Payton Gendron posted white supremacist manifesto

      Payton Gendron, who officials said traveled “several hours” claimed in a 180-page diatribe that he was “radicalized” on the internet while he was bored during the early days of the pandemic, not by any people he has met personally.

      https://nypost.com/2022/05/14/buffalo-shooter-payton-gendron-posted-white-supremacist-manifesto/

    4. Meanwhile, which vaccine was randomly “limited” in name only by the FDA a couple weeks ago? Oh right, that would be the one Yeadon said was the “safest” — not necessarily safe — J&J.

      1. randomly “limited”

        It’s suspected that the attenuated adenovirus vectors in the DNA vaccines may be deattenuating, i.e., recombining with other adenoviruses to become replication competent, and causing the recent spate of viral hepatitis. Yet another reason not to take an experimental gene therapy.

        https://twitter.com/Jikkyleaks/status/1521464200781991937 (longer thread in link):

        🚨🚨🚨🚨
        This may be the most important thread of the year.

        Has the ChAdOx1 “vaccine vector” deattenuated?

        It would absolutely explain why it is only affecting very young children who have never been exposed to less pathogenic adenoviruses.

        @UKHSA needs to pay attention.

        1. Is this the liver damage found in children in the US and UK?
          Minimum age for Astra-Zeneca vaccine (UK): 18
          Minimum age for J&J vaccine (US): 18
          So something isn’t matching here. Unless there’s evidence that this new adenovirus thingthing is contagious somehow? If so, why now? Most people got J&J a year ago, or a booster 7 months ago.

          IIUC, the “experimental gene therapy” moniker was reserved for the mRNA vaccines, not J&J?

          Anyway, I got my two shots, it’s done. So go scream at the sky if you want.

          1. So something isn’t matching here.

            I provided the link for a reason.

            IIUC, the “experimental gene therapy” moniker was reserved for the mRNA vaccines, not J&J?

            Your interpretation to justify your decision.

          2. The DNA vaccines may be less novel than mRNA vaccines but they’re still experimental and still gene therapy.

          3. I tried to read the link. Between the usual screeches of OMG 🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨🚨 THIS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT TWEET YOU’LL EVER READ IN THE HISTORY OF THE UNIVERSE and THEY DID THIS ON PURPOSE THEY WANT TO KILL US, I saw some speculation about a potential for adenovirus-vector vaccines to cause liver problems, along with some liver damage in children. But since no children were injected with an adenovirus-vector vaccine, where did the children’s liver problems come from? Not the vaccine directly, since they never had one. From a close relative somehow passing along this vector thing to the children? That should be easy enough to investigate.

            That’s why I’m asking. Of course, I expect the usual “Oh well, if you can’t figure it out, then you’re beyond all hope GFY” refusal to answer.

          4. Consider that I have more pressing things to deal with, like my son heading down the road of Lennie in Of Mice and Men, than what other people have allowed themselves to be injected with.

  17. A reader sent this in:

    ‘From Credit Suisse’s Zoltan:
    Powell’s Volcker Moment’

    ‘Bill Dudley, former president of NY Fed, the Fed’s market facing arm:
    “The Fed will have to shock markets to achieve the desired response”
    “It’ll have to inflict more losses on stocks and bond investors than it has so far”’

    https://mobile.twitter.com/AnilVohra1962/status/1525235494887358465

    You mean they’re gonna break it off in the gambles a$$e$? For years we were told the central bank would never allow that, and now you say they’re doing it on purpose?

    Sacré bleu!

    1. “It’ll have to inflict more losses on stocks and bond investors than it has so far”’

      The poor HODLers…the poor, poor HODLers…

  19. “You cannot spend and print money as a way to economic prosperity and wealth creation.”

    If any Modern Monetary Theorists are reading here, could you please offer comment?

      2. Those people seem to have retreated to the underside of the rock from which they crawled. It’s hard to find MMT proposals for handling an inflationary crisis.

  20. Lemmings, please form up in an orderly file and begin your move to the edge of the cliff. Time for your date with destiny.

    500,000 Aussies facing mortgage ‘cliff’ as ultra-low fixed-rate terms wind down

    https://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/interest-rates/500000-aussies-facing-mortgage-cliff-as-ultralow-fixedrate-terms-wind-down/news-story/c12c6a483498468ee017a48dba58d37d

    Hundreds of thousands of mortgage holders face a jarring surge in repayment costs in the coming months as their ultra-low fixed-term plans wind down.

    1. “Fixed rate mortgage”.

      I don’t think this term, as used in this article, is correct. “Adjustable rate mortgage” is a more better one. Or perhaps a “hybrid mortgage” – a mortgage whose interest rate is fixed for a while then becomes adjustable.

      Whatever the case, these people are (stupid?) screwed.

        1. Maybe they can issue one of those “teaser freezers” that Hillary was pushing back in the good ol’ days of 2007.

    2. BOA’s forecast for mortgage rates as of a few weeks ago is 9.825% for 15 year and 12% for 30 years into 2030.

    1. A lockdown by any other name is still a lockdown.

      From what I have heard, almost 400 million are in some form of lockdown in China, mostly in larger cities where industrial production is centered. This number is certain to expand. How will China not collapse?

      1. Don’t forget about Evergrande and the other collapsed Chinese real estate investment firms. It seems like they might have a hard enough time getting back on their feet without the added complication of an economic lockdown.

      2. Perhaps these lockdowns are a gift to the West.
        China’s demographic collapse was baked in the cake already, and in the next decade, their aging population may not be able to maintain their industrial activity. These lockdowns are forcing suppliers to re-shore or friend-shore China’s industry well before the demographic collapse.

        That said, in the next 5 years I anticipate that we will see much less selection in the retail stores. Yes you’ll still be able to buy a flowerpot, but you won’t have 50 to choose from.

      3. “where industrial production is centered”

        We can’t get lights delivered to jobsites.

        Every thing else can be completed, but we can’t get lights. They are always weeks away, a month away, two months away.

        1. I’m pretty sure most lightbulbs sold at Home Despot are made in China.

          It’s not just going to be the baby formula aisle that will be stripped bare. I’m sure a lot of auto parts will be made of unobtanium. Heck, there is concern that even keeping the power grid up will become a challenge due to the unavailability of parts.

          1. My father’s generation (a child in the GD) valued secure sources of important things. It was a strength. Globalism in this regard, as in all regards, is fragility, weakness.

            In the 1990s I did a lot of high vacuum projects with lamp producers, mostly GE. And then they were all gone from the US.

            I think Deplorable is talking about fixtures, but anyway.

        2. Are there any Made in USA fixtures available? Or it just a spec calling for less expensive off-shore brands?

  22. “…we need to wean ourselves off that drug, and get back to a situation where house prices and the volume of houses is more in line with the number of people and the incomes of people.”

    I guess New Zealand doesn’t have hordes of speculators snapping up every house that comes on the market like the US has?

      1. Coming soon to an oligarch-looted, Brandon-mismanaged economy near you. Sh*t gets real when breadwinners can’t put food on the table.

        Protests Triggered by Rising Food Prices Spread in Iran

        https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/13/world/iran-protests-food-prices.html

        “They have no hope, they have no trust in the government and they can’t tolerate the status quo any more,” one Iran expert said of the protesters in at least six provinces.

    2. There may be an occasional mother that can’t breast feed, but it can’t be that many. That’s what boobs are made for! Another media-concocted fake frenzy.

  25. Bagrie says there are two forces pulling at New Zealand right now. ‘One, we’ve got a very divided society. And a divided society is unhealthy, both socially and economically

    The solution is simple: everyone becomes a Leftist and everyone is poor. “divided society” problem solved!

    1. The 0.01% will *ALWAYS* have theirs. The cast of characters may change from time to time, but The Show must go on.

      Pharaohs, Emperors, Kings, Popes, Nobility, and more recently Billionaire Capitalists.

      Everybody else gets to be Lucky Ducky 🙂

    1. Is she incapable of reading from a teleprompter or a printout? She always sounds like she’s intoxicated.

  27. Gateway Pundit — Zelenzky Signs Law This Weekend Banning Opposition Parties and Seizing Their Property (5/15/2022):

    “Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law No. 7172-1 that will ban opposition parties and seize their property on Saturday. The law targets opposition parties if they deny the armed aggression against Ukraine. The law includes actions that support the Russian Federation and Republic of Belarus, the two invading countries.

    The legislation expands the list of grounds for banning a political party through the courts. Relevant grounds are justifying, recognizing as lawful or denying armed aggression against Ukraine, including by presenting armed aggression of the Russian Federation and/or the Republic of Belarus against Ukraine as an internal conflict, civil conflict, or civil war.

    It is expected that if a party is banned by the court, its property, funds and other assets become the property of the state.”

    https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/05/official-zelenzkyy-signs-law-weekend-banning-opposition-parties-seizing-property/

    I don’t spell this @sshole’s name with two letter Y’s, he’s not a rapper, he’s a CIA installed stooge.

    “They’re not sending their best”

    1. Anyone else experiencing cognitive dissonance with all these globalist Narrative contortions?

      Nazis Are Actually Fine Now, According to the Southern Poverty Law Center and Anti-Defamation League

      https://mtracey.substack.com/p/nazis-are-actually-fine-now-according?s=r

      If you happened to be alive during the years of 2016 to 2020, you can probably recall the routine issuance of frantic bulletins that “Nazis” were suddenly on the march in the US. Not just that some ludicrous, ragtag group of self-identified Nazis could be occasionally spotted in the wild — which had always been a somewhat regular, albeit freakish occurrence. Rather, the idea was that full-bore ideological “Nazism” had surged as a genuinely formidable political force, and everyone needed to be extremely terrified of this.

      Principally responsible for the alleged outbreak of pro-Nazi fervor, or so the prevailing theory went, was Donald Trump. He had either tacitly or deliberately fueled the Nazis’ rise, because associating himself with Nazis would definitely be a huge boon to his electoral fortunes. MSNBC anchor Joy Reid encapsulated this view when she warnedin 2017 that “resurgent Neo-Nazism” had gripped the US under Trump’s rule. Reams of academic articles were published on the subject, wondering whether Trump was the new “American Führer”; it was a commonly-held belief that “Literal Nazis” had taken power. (As opposed to figurative Nazis). Evidence for the theory ranged from the individual emotional turmoil experienced by journalists, to Twitter trolls with cartoon frogs as their profile pictures, to allusive suggestions — including by former apparatchiks of the National Security State — that the existence of immigrant detention centers was proof a Nazi regime had seized the reins of state.

    3. And it’s Kiev (with two syllables), not “Keeve” with one as CNN has been pronouncing it. And it’s “The Ukraine”, not “Ukraine.”

      1. You always have to change your words to show you are compliant. Not just let them use words redifined and pronunciations, you must adopt.

    2. “How did you get that dog up there?”

      But you did get that dog up there and he did indeed look joyful. I always enjoyed and looked forward to your awesome photos and although they continue to be impressive, something has been missing since our dear friend advanced in years too far to go along.

      Bon voyage Beau and thanks for the memories.

      You will be missed.

      2. They had the Pinto ranked number 9 worst out of 10.

        Personally I never liked the way they looked but they weren’t bad little cars, unless of course you were rear ended then you had a decent chance of burning to death. Based on that alone you ask a valid question.

  31. “A mass exodus of money, an $11 trillion wipeout, and the worst losing streak for global stocks since the 2008 financial crisis. The bad news is that it may not be over yet.”

    Wouldn’t a continuation of the losing streak make stocks more affordable for those sitting on the sidelines waiting for an attractive opportunity to buy? Why are financial journalists uniformly opposed to improvements in affordability?

    And why are they so filled with gloom and dread? You would almost think from their morose tone that they were trying to start GDIII.

    1. Don’t you miss AlbuquerqueDan’s reliable reassurances that China will grow at 8 percent forever?

    2. The Financial Times
      US economy
      Lloyd Blankfein warns of ‘very, very high risk’ of US recession
      Former Goldman Sachs chief says companies and consumers should ‘be prepared’
      Lloyd Blankfein, pictured in 2018
      Lloyd Blankfein says government stimulus measures, supply chain issues, lockdowns in China and the war in Ukraine have all contributed to high inflation
      Joshua Franklin in New York yesterday

      Former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein has warned corporate America and US consumers to be prepared for a recession as the Federal Reserve tightens policy to combat high inflation.

      Speaking to CBS News on Sunday, Blankfein, who stepped down as Goldman chief in October 2018 and remains the Wall Street bank’s senior chair, said there was a “very, very high risk” that the US economy was heading towards a recession.

      “If I were running a big company, I would be very prepared for it. If I was a consumer, I’d be prepared for it. But it’s not baked in the cake.”
      …

      2. “Former Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein has warned corporate America and US consumers to be prepared for a recession as the Federal Reserve tightens policy to combat high inflation.”

        Our “broke ash” rental neighbors across the street just bought two new cars in the past couple of weeks. There might be some truth to, “we never saw it coming.”

    3. The Financial Times
      EU economy
      Outlooks for EU growth and inflation worsen as energy crisis hits
      Commission forecasts underline economic gloom from effects of Ukraine invasion
      Sale signs fill the window displays of a store on a shopping street in Hamburg, Germany
      Sale signs fill the displays of a store on a shopping street in Hamburg. Confidence has faltered in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine
      Sam Fleming and Javier Espinoza in Brussels 39 minutes ago

      Brussels has cut its growth forecasts further and lifted its inflation outlook as the energy crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine exacts its toll on the EU economy.

      Both the EU and euro area are set to expand by 2.7 per cent this year, well shy of the previous expectation of 4 per cent, forecasts published by the European Commission on Monday showed. Growth is tipped to be 2.3 per cent in 2023.

      Inflation is expected to surge above 6 per cent in both the EU and euro area this year, with some central and eastern European countries likely to see double-digit price rises in 2022.
      …

    4. The gloom is so thick, you could almost cut it with a knife. If these real journalists aren’t careful, they are going to scare off all the dips buyers and knife catchers, not to mention the highly leveraged reprobate gamblers, at which point the stock market might begin seriously seeking its fundamental eauilibrium value in a rising rates environment.

    5. Uncle Warren seems neither gloomy nor broke. He’s like a kid in a candy store…and older than my parents. Amazing!

      1. The Wall Street Journal
        Markets
        Warren Buffett Spends Big as Stock Market Sells Off
        Berkshire Hathaway loads up on energy stocks as inflation soars
        Berkshire Hathaway CEO Warren Buffett has long advised that investors ‘be greedy when others are fearful.’
        By Akane Otani
        Updated May 16, 2022 5:33 am ET

        The stock market’s selloff has been bad news for most investors.

        Not for Warren Buffett and his team.

        Mr. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has used the slump as an opportunity to increase spending on stocks, deploying tens of billions of dollars the past couple of months after ending 2021 with a near-record cash pile.

        The Omaha-based company bought 901,768 shares of Occidental Petroleum Corp. last week, according to a regulatory filing. The move likely makes Occidental, in which Berkshire began buying shares in late February, one of its 10 biggest holdings.

        In the past few months, Berkshire has also boosted its stake in Chevron Corp., placed a merger-arbitrage bet on Activision Blizzard Inc., bought an 11% stake in HP Inc. and continued adding to its position in Apple Inc., its biggest stockholding.

        Investors will get a look at what else Berkshire has been buying—as well as what it has been selling—when it files what is known as Form 13F with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Monday. The SEC requires all institutional investors that manage more than $100 million to file the form within 45 days of the end of each quarter. Because institutions must disclose their equity holdings on the form, as well as the size and market value of each position, investors often use 13Fs to gauge how large money managers are playing the stock market.

        One takeaway from Berkshire’s filing is likely to be this: The market’s tumult has allowed the company to go on a spending spree.

        Mr. Buffett, a longtime practitioner of value investing, has long advised that investors “be greedy when others are fearful.” That philosophy was likely difficult to practice for much of the past two years, during which investors’ mood largely seemed anything but fearful. Now that the market is slumping, Berkshire is in a prime position to add to its mammoth stock portfolio, investors say.

        “Cash is dry powder, and he has a lot of it,” said Rupal Bhansali, chief investment officer for global equities at Ariel Investments, of Mr. Buffett. Ms. Bhansali manages Ariel’s global mutual fund, which owns Berkshire shares.
        …

  32. The Financial Times
    Chinese economy
    China’s economic activity plummets as Covid lockdowns hit growth
    Consumer and industrial output plunge as country counts cost of Xi Jinping’s coronavirus strategy
    A worker wearing a protective suit crosses an intersection while disinfecting the area outside a Covid-19 testing site in Beijing on Friday
    China has launched a mass testing and quarantine campaign across swaths of the country to combat its latest Covid-19 outbreak
    Thomas Hale and Jennifer Creery in Hong Kong an hour ago

    China’s economic activity contracted sharply in April as a wave of lockdowns across the country posed the most significant challenge to its growth prospects since Covid-19 emerged more than two years ago.

    Retail sales, the country’s main gauge of consumer activity, slumped 11.1 per cent year on year, compared with forecasts of a 6.6 per cent fall by economists polled by Bloomberg. Retail sales dropped in March, down 3.5 per cent year on year.

    Industrial production, which underpinned China’s rapid economic recovery from the initial Covid shock in early 2020 and was expected to rise slightly despite the recent restrictions, dropped 2.9 per cent.
    …

  33. The Financial Times
    Opinion
    Federal Reserve
    Let the Fed put money where it is really needed
    Inflation pressures and asset bubbles are a sign that the central bank has been distracted from its core mission
    Rana Foroohar
    Matt Kenyon Illustration showing the US Federal Reserve crumbling
    Rana Foroohar yesterday

    The US Federal Reserve is surely the most powerful and misunderstood institution in the world. It was designed just over 100 years ago for one discrete task — to ensure that the country has enough money to keep the economy growing to its full potential.

    But over that time it has come to backstop the global market system, and in recent years it has created a bubble in everything that is now, slowly but surely, starting to burst. As a consequence, the Fed is trying to walk an impossible line between managing the inflation it helped to set off and the recession that may follow as it tries to stabilise prices.

    How did we get to this strange and untenable place? Some would blame it on the massive quantitative easing programme launched in response to the 2008 financial crisis, followed by the propping up of any number of asset classes after the pandemic.

    Others would say the problems began after the 1970s, when the end of the Bretton Woods system allowed central bankers more freedom to extend economic cycles. US politicians of both parties abused this freedom, avoiding tough “guns or butter” policy choices and passing the buck for economic policymaking to the Fed.

    Lev Menand, a former senior adviser to the deputy secretary of the Treasury in 2015-2016 and an associate professor at Columbia Law School, would go back even further, all the way to the 1950s. In that era the Fed chair was William McChesney Martin.

    He broke with the New Deal banking system of the 1930s and allowed the New York Fed to start lending to a select group of non-bank broker dealers, creating the “repo” market. As Menand points out in his new book, The Fed Unbound: Central Banking in a Time of Crisis, this was the beginning of a dangerous cycle of mission creep.

    Even then, Congress complained that the Fed’s actions were illegal. Martin responded simply by asking them to amend the law. They never did, but shadow banking — in the form of everything from repos and eurodollars to commercial paper and money market funds — grew, and the Fed continued to support all these shadow entities. They in turn got bigger, and new types of shadow banking were created, contributing to a “financialisation” of the economy that has been linked to slower growth, higher inequality and more financial volatility.

    Today’s Fed is struggling to get ahead of inflation. But as Menand points out, inflation fighting wasn’t even part of the central bank’s official mandate until 1977. While former Fed chair Paul Volcker had to take away the “punch bowl” (a term first coined by Martin) in 1981 with punishingly large interest rate increases, his strength in some ways allowed for more congressional weakness.

    “There was a sense among inflation-exhausted politicians that ‘if he can fix it, let him’,” says Menand. Since then, both Congress and the executive branch have increasingly moved away from adopting a whole-of-government approach to financial stability, preferring to let the Fed take the heat for economic policymaking. And yet, all the central bank can do is bolster asset prices.
    …
    We may be heading for a downturn now. When markets emerge from whatever chaos ensues over the next few years, we will need to find a way for the Fed to better fulfil its original mission of managing the money supply and supporting the banking system, without underwriting ever more bubbles in a massive, speculative financial sector that serves mainly itself.
    …

    2. “…this was the beginning of a dangerous cycle of mission creep.”

      The thesis that today’s Fed is the culmination of mission creep dating back to the 1950s is important. For one thing, it suggests that Jerome Powell inherited an institution that had redefined its role to include creating and maintaining asset price bubbles. Talking heads can argue about whether this is a socially beneficial activity, but I humbly submit that it is economically destructive and socially detrimental.

      I’ll have to buy myself a copy of the book…

        1. Some people still haven’t gotten the MEMO: the Federal Reserve is neither federal nor a reserve.

    1. ‘So I am carrying my inflationary bag of groceries up the stairs on Sunday, trying to decompress for at least seven minutes, when I suddenly hear a neighbor call out: “Hey Sozzi, saw you on TV again. Has the stock market bottomed yet?”

      My first thought: “I just can’t escape this sh*t, even for seven minutes.”

      I’m used to getting questions like this from a core group of neighbors (and others). This is partially because this particular person noticed, while flipping through Verizon FIOS (where Yahoo Finance lives 24/7 on channel 604), that I was doing live TV out of my kitchen (which happens to be above his kitchen) during the COVID-19 pandemic.

      I concocted a quick reply in my head, then shouted back: “No idea bro, but I do know the stock market will open for business on Monday morning. Let me know when the co-op BBQ is happening.”

      After the exchange, I walked into my place, unpacked those inflationary groceries (you see the prices for deli meat, insane!) and began writing this lovely newsletter for the investing masses.

      My response to my neighbor was smart in that hucksters on the Street will be out in force trying to call a bottom for the bruised and battered stock market, even though folks have no clue either since they are the looking at the same market trends and data that you generally have access to.

      All this is to say that you want to be very, very careful with bottom calls, given that market conditions will remain treacherous likely until the Federal Reserve signals a pause in rate hikes.

      In any case, there are two opposing themes in the current market — and it’s up to you to figure out what fits with the analysis you are doing at this moment.

      Theme one: Valuations are beginning to look attractive

      The forward price-to-earnings multiple for the S&P 500 stands at 16.6 times. This is below the five-year average of 18.6 times and 10-year average of 16.9 times. At first blush, this would mark a good time to begin kicking the tires of stocks of well-run companies that are growing.

      But keep this in mind — those five and ten-year averages don’t incorporate a major rate-hiking cycle from the Federal Reserve as we are about to witness. Therefore, I would argue valuations are not yet at super attractive levels (hence we may not be at a market bottom) — but it’s moving in that direction.

      Although I do find it interesting that one-time growth juggernaut Netflix shares are trading at 15.2 times forward earnings, per Yahoo Finance Plus data. That is a below market multiple for a FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) stock, which is a rarity.

      Curious on what to do if you own a bag of battered tech stocks? Give this a watch.
      Theme two: Capitulation hasn’t happened yet

      As I like to think of it, capitulation in the markets is when a large down move in a market occurs — one that wipes out all speculators. It’s at that point where a bullish base could start to be rebuilt in a stock or market. While we have seen a few large down days in the markets (and individual stocks, notably in tech such as Rivian, Netflix, and Upstart), the pros I chat with still aren’t seeing capitulation.’
      …

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