by Rick Ackerman
RickAckerman.com
Thursday’s psychotic price action showed what’s on the tiny, fevered brains of traders as they continue to drive the broad averages to ridiculous heights. Supposedly, the wack-jobs wanted Powell to say more than he did in his keynote address Thursday morning at the Jackson Hole conference. Here’s the Fed chairman in his own words. Judge for yourself whether a more measured response on Wall Street might have been appropriate: “Our longer-run goal continues to be an inflation rate of 2 percent … Our new statement indicates that we will seek to achieve inflation that averages 2 percent over time. Therefore, following periods when inflation has been running below 2 percent, appropriate monetary policy will likely aim to achieve inflation moderately above 2 percent for some time.” This is about as dog-bites-man as Fed announcements get, and so we should probably factor out the highs and lows Powell’s words produced on the intraday charts when we calculate targets for the near-to-intermediate-term. They will be rally targets, to be sure, since there is no evidence that Fed policy, such as it is, has caused investors more than a few nanosecconds of concern.
A local resident claims many out-of-towners traveled to Kenosha for the purpose of rioting and burned down many black businesses as civil unrest continues following the police involved shooting of Jacob Blake, a black Kenosha resident, when they were called to a domestic disturbance.
Look at who said today’s takedown was almost all levered futures selling and gold bears may get their faces ripped off, plus all-time high and more.
The number of Americans who filed for unemployment benefits for the first time came in above 1 million for the 22nd time in 23 weeks as the economy struggles to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, the Labor Department said Thursday.
For so many months, it’s been nonstop bad news on business closures, arts trashed, museum shuttering, unemployment, missed surgeries and diagnostics, plus rising loneliness, drug overdoses, depression, and suicide. Every day has been as dark or darker than the previous one.
This year’s carefully staged, semi-virtual Republican National Convention (RNC) featured footage of President Donald Trump performing a naturalization ceremony in the White House, politicizing what is a sacred right of passage for immigrants. But even as he inducted five hand-picked immigrants into full citizenship and showered them with praise, he has gone out of his way to dismantle the citizenship program for hundreds of thousands of others.
In recent weeks, not only have we seen some very large holes punched in the narrative of what happened to George Floyd, but we’ve also seen the very thin veil come off, as the “peaceful protests” by Black Lives Matter and Antifa rapidly devolved into perhaps the worst string of violent riots the country has ever seen. As of this writing, the city of Portland, Oregon has been host to violent riots for 86 days straight — nearly three months of chaos.
Looters were at it again in Minneapolis Wednesday after a man wanted by the police in relation to a deadly shooting took his own life.
27 million people still on unemployment rolls, or 16.9% of Labor Force. Initial claims under state and federal PUA programs tick up to 1.43 million in the week (not seasonally adjusted).
I grew up in a small village in Lithuania, raised by a single mother. So you can probably imagine my childhood was not one of wealth and luxury.