Saturday, December 9, 2017

Generation Madoff

The new "capitalism" consists of gamblers bidding up their own assets while lying constantly. This Sunday, the CBOE will begin offering futures on a Ponzi scheme. What else? Meanwhile, a combination of the tax cut rotation, higher interest rates, accelerating Fed rolloff, and the Bitcoin rotation have robbed the casino of liquidity, as mega cap tech goes bidless...

It appears that all post-2008 aspirations have been met:




This week's blowoff top in review:
Key reversal with potential first wave correction ending at same level as last week aka. head and shoulders top. We find out next week if BTFD'ers are one toke over the line...




One thing you always hear in a bubble is that no one knows for sure if it's actually a bubble...



"We've always felt that bitcoin, given its properties, is gold 2.0 — it disrupts gold. Gold is scarce, bitcoin is actually fixed. Bitcoin is way more portable and way more divisible. At a $300 billion market cap, it's certainly seen a lot of price appreciation, but gold is at $6 trillion and if bitcoin disrupting gold is true and it plays out ... then you can see 10 to 20 times appreciation because there is a significant delta still,"

There was a very painful and common scenario back in Y2K as the bubble burst, that many people seem to have forgotten - the momentarily wealthy millionaire and billionaire. People who saw their unrealized wealth go from hero to zero because their stratospheric stock never hit the megatard price they assumed it was going to hit. And they never sold on the way down to zero. Good times.


On another note as I've written lately, Big Cap Tech lost its bid this past week, as gamblers rotated out of the growth trade into the Trump tax cut trade. Since that rotation took place starting last Wednesday (Nov. 29th), market liquidity has fallen off a cliff. Culminating in the "Flynn flash crash" last Friday (12/1), when Mike Flynn pled guilty to lying to the FBI. 

So here is how the past two weeks look via the Nasdaq 100:

On Flynn flash crash day, I said the market was getting ready to crash, however the Senate tax vote stick saved the market on Monday. As we see yesterday tech limped  lower to around the same level as it did on Flynn Friday:



Further to that point, one of the rotations that has also been taking place is from growth back to "value". Value of course is a totally meaningless term in today's mega bubble - call it growth to dividend/recession stocks. Indicating a preference for earnings now versus earnings later, due to higher interest rates.

In August 2015 stocks crashed, recovered then crashed again in January. This year, tech rolled over in early August, and peaked again last week. Meaning it's the same pattern moved up by 3 weeks:




Lastly, this was the first week that oil gamblers could "absorb" last week's OPEC production cut extension. In the event they just increased their net futures exposure to a new record high. Of course, each time they've ratcheted up their exposure the wheels come off the bus. The Oil and gas stock sector itself finds a new lower high. Not something one wants to see from the sector contributing almost all of the "earnings" growth.

Compliments of futures gamblers bidding up their own assets. Ponzi-style: