Financial topics

[Higgenbotham]

It's interesting that most Wall Street analysts have S&P price targets below the current level of the market. Just read that last week Citi raised their year end S&P price target from 2900 to 3300. Ed Yardeni is usually pretty bullish and his year end target was 3500 last I saw. Another person who's usually pretty bullish is Tony Dwyer and he's simply maintaining a target of 3300+ last I saw. That doesn't imply his target is close to 3300; he's just saying that in this environment it is too difficult to accurately set an upper target, if I understand correctly.

[Higgenbotham]

So I guess the next stop must be 3500.

Bingo!

Too bad the chart is no longer visible. 3500 plus a little should be very key now.

[John]

** 29-Aug-2020 World View: The Dance

> It's interesting that most Wall Street analysts have S&P price
> targets below the current level of the market. Just read that last
> week Citi raised their year end S&P price target from 2900 to
> 3300. Ed Yardeni is usually pretty bullish and his year end target
> was 3500 last I saw. Another person who's usually pretty bullish
> is Tony Dwyer and he's simply maintaining a target of 3300+ last I
> saw. That doesn't imply his target is close to 3300; he's just
> saying that in this environment it is too difficult to accurately
> set an upper target, if I understand correctly.

Higgy, I'm sure you're already aware of what I'm about to say, but
it's worth saying anyway. I listen to all these guys on CNBC and
other channels, and it's obvious that they're all completely full of
crap. I don't care if it's Yardeni, Dwyer, or any of the others. They
don't have the vaguest clue what's going on, and they'll say whatever
they have to say to get on TV.

Actually, there is one "expert" whose quote was accurate. This was in
2007, and Citigroup’s chief executive, Charles O. Prince, said he's
still going full steam ahead with credit and leveraged deals, because
"As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and
dance. We’re still dancing."

That was true then, and it's true today, even though the dance is
really "The Dance of the Musical Chairs."

[Higgenbotham]

** 29-Aug-2020 World View: The Dance

> It's interesting that most Wall Street analysts have S&P price
> targets below the current level of the market. Just read that last
> week Citi raised their year end S&P price target from 2900 to
> 3300. Ed Yardeni is usually pretty bullish and his year end target
> was 3500 last I saw. Another person who's usually pretty bullish
> is Tony Dwyer and he's simply maintaining a target of 3300+ last I
> saw. That doesn't imply his target is close to 3300; he's just
> saying that in this environment it is too difficult to accurately
> set an upper target, if I understand correctly.

Higgy, I'm sure you're already aware of what I'm about to say, but
it's worth saying anyway. I listen to all these guys on CNBC and
other channels, and it's obvious that they're all completely full of
crap. I don't care if it's Yardeni, Dwyer, or any of the others. They
don't have the vaguest clue what's going on, and they'll say whatever
they have to say to get on TV.

Actually, there is one "expert" whose quote was accurate. This was in
2007, and Citigroup’s chief executive, Charles O. Prince, said he's
still going full steam ahead with credit and leveraged deals, because
"As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and
dance. We’re still dancing."

That was true then, and it's true today, even though the dance is
really "The Dance of the Musical Chairs."

It's typical for every Wall Street analyst to have a price target on the S&P that is higher than the current level of the market, usually much higher, and today we have the opposite (the exception is Kostin at Goldman, who recently raised his target to 3600).

I don't really know what that means. It could mean that every current year end target will be higher than where the S&P ends up, as these folks are typically overly bullish. If that's the case, the S&P will have to move down a lot.

Along with that, many billionaires are either silent or saying they're skeptical of the stock market. Leon Cooperman and George Soros have recently indicated skepticism. Here are some bullet points from Cooperman's interview:

Wall Street legend Leon Cooperman told Bloomberg on Monday that the Fed has created a "real speculative bubble."

The hedge fund manager said he's "uncomfortable" at the moment because the market is not focused on the amount of debt being created in the nation. Cooperman emphasized that the US has piled up $21 trillion of debt in its 244 years, and said it will probably end 2020 with $27 trillion in debt.

"That is a growth rate in debt far in excess of what the economy is growing at and I think that's going to be a problem down the road," he said.

Cooperman also said that the US has had artificial support for the economy since 2008, and he sees this as a negative.

The Federal Reserve cut its benchmark interest rate to near zero in March to soften the economic fallout of the pandemic. Cooperman said low interest rates are indicative of a problematic economy, and that zero interest rates are creating a "very speculative tone to the market."

"What I've not fully appreciated is what a zero-interest rate environment does for stocks. I was focused on the fact that we've had zero interest rates in Japan and Europe and their stocks are five or six multiple points below the United States market," Cooperman said.

The investor also mentioned that he is not buying bank stocks soon even though he believes they're cheap at the moment. "I'm concerned about financial conditions generally so I'm not adding to my banks," Cooperman said.

https://markets.businessinsider.com/new ... 1029528783

Cooperman got out of the hedge fund business and now just focuses on managing his own money.

So on the one hand, while we are reading about billionaires having benefited from the bubble, financial billionaires (people who have made their billion in the markets, in other words) are generally indicating that they are not involved, or not getting more involved in stocks. Soros said last week that he isn't in stocks now:

Pivoting to his legendary approach to financial markets, Soros acknowledged that we’re caught up in a bubble fueled by Fed liquidity, which has created a situation that he now avoids. He explained that “two simple propositions” make up the framework that has historically given him an advantage, but since he shared it in his book, “Alchemy of Finance,” the advantage is gone.

“One is that in situations that have thinking participants the participants’ view of the world is always incomplete and distorted. That is fallibility,” said Soros, who made a killing shorting the British pound decades ago. “The other is that these distorted views can influence the situation to which they relate and distorted views lead to inappropriate actions. That is reflexivity.”

He went on to say the market, which he no longer participates in, is sustained by the expectation of more fiscal stimulus along with hopes Trump will announce a vaccine before November.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/georg ... 2020-08-12

Also interesting to go back 3 months and listen to what Tepper had to say:

https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/05/13/d ... ly-99.html

I haven't heard anything to the contrary from him since.

[Higgenbotham]

This one probably deserves a separate post.

Billionaires look to exit equities after turning quick profit

Reuters Last Updated: Jul 16, 2020, 04:27 PM IST

ZURICH/LONDON: Billionaires looked after by Swiss bank UBS are looking to move their cash out of equities after profiting from an unprecedented sell-off and rapid rebound from March to May, the world's largest wealth manager said on Thursday.

During the rout in stock markets across the globe in March, UBS' richest customers took out loans to place billions into crashing stock markets. They are now looking to pull that money from equities and put the profits in illiquid and private assets, UBS' head of global family offices told Reuters.

Their strategy has helped family offices which manage the financial affairs of the world's richest beat hedge funds and overall markets to outperform their target benchmarks through May, according to the bank's survey of 120 family offices, with an average family wealth of $1.6 billion, published on Thursday.

"We had record loans written during the middle of March and the middle of April, of significant family offices who asked us for balance sheet and then went into the market," Josef Stadler said in an interview. "They bought, for example, U.S. equities, but they didn't buy $50 million. They bought a billion-plus of those equities to rebalance. And they made a lot of money."

Known as the "fortress bank for billionaires", banking half the world's very richest, UBS said its wealthiest clients serviced by individual family offices were now looking to invest in residential real estate and private equity, or to make corporate and strategic deals.

Stadler said the trend had largely been seen in Asia and he expected it to accelerate in the last quarter of 2020 and into the early months of 2021. As a consequence, he expected equities markets to soften throughout the rest of this year.

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ma ... aign=cppst

[aeden]

Your correct H ---- Higgenbotham » Sun Mar 16, 2014 2:32 pm
Putting these 2 independent analyses side by side, things don't look too good. Hussman is saying that without dividends being taken into account the S&P 500 will return zero over the next 10 years assuming 6% nominal growth in GDP. Yet, the other analysis shows that based on demographics GDP can't really grow that fast, unless inflation is more than about 4% at the same time the working age population is employed to the same extent it was during the past 3 decades.

The gain of function collaborative cult seen to it. Enough circular logic to keep the sheep pens full.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65IU4jX1CA
Disaster capitalism of the Demsheviks cult.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sak ... ng-provoke
Conclusion
I don’t see a civil war happening in the US. But I do think that this country can, and probably will, break-up into different zones so to speak.

It already has. They are rabid eugenicist. They will be treated like they do the very young and very old.

Nahum 3:6
I will throw abominable filth on you, and make you vile, and will set you a spectacle.

[Higgenbotham]

Are Tech Companies Protecting You Know Who?

Posted Aug 24, 2020 by Martin Armstrong


COMMENT: Hello Martin,

Thanks for everything that you do. Just wanted to share an observation.

I am using a dell PC with Microsoft operating system. Over the past few days your mails that refer to Bill gates have magically ended up in my junk mail. I only noticed as I get your mails direct to my home PC and also my phone ( Samsung S.9.) The Phone is showing all your posts but the PC only some. for example today the mails that were hidden from view are ” Are Gates & Schwab Committing Crimes Against Humanity. Also the very Excellent video ” The Pandemic to Future Climate Change Agenda “. Less controversial posts are getting though on the PC and had it not been for the diffidence in the two platforms ( PC and Phone) I would have never checked.

You are certainly touching a nerve.

With Great Respect from the UK.

Best wishes

NW

REPLY: A number of people are reporting the same thing. If “GATES” is in the email, there may be some filter to send it off to JUNK. This is the problem when they are all supporting this Gates agenda because eliminating cash means they will get a piece of every transaction in the world.

https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/worl ... -know-who/

[aeden]

informal economy as we discussed
Nahum is correct
they can trend your vaccined corpse for over five years
nice cluster study followup when the catalyst is unleashed
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Z4uITELiqw

[Higgenbotham]

https://youtu.be/2LiyBP0TKgk?t=1488

Starting here and until 26:00.


https://www.foxbusiness.com/economy/wit ... cery-store

President Trump signed an executive order earlier this month that would provide recipients with an extra $400 a week, but the program has run into delays as it requires states to reconfigure their unemployment systems and chip in $100 per person. So far, three states are distributing funds.

[Higgenbotham]

https://youtu.be/ItAk0ghjX0Q?t=418

From former Fed official -

"We have to acknowledge the fact that the power of the Fed to stimulate the economy right now is pretty low."
"The stock market's already very high."