E Janet Lays An Egg

Financial markets often behave like demanding, spoiled, and fickle children. If they don’t get what they want RIGHT NOW they throw a temper tantrum.

That is exactly what bourses are doing around the world.  The Dow Average rallied 500 points this week in the hope that my former Berkeley economics professor, Federal Reserve governor Janet Yellen, would suddenly turn into an ultra dove.

It was thought that she would totally cave on any interest rate increases for the rest of 2016 at her Wednesday Humphrey-Hawkins testimony in front of a hostile congress.

Instead, Janet laid an egg. Risk markets everywhere suffered cardiac arrest.  The 500-point rally quickly turned into a 700-point loss. Blink, and you lost your last chance to get out.

The Japanese yen rocketed as hedge funds rushed to cover their shorts, which they had been using to fund their rapidly fading “RISK ON” positions. Panic dumping long positions mean those yen shorts are no longer needed.

What is particularly gob smacking is to see a ten year Treasury yield crater to only 1.50%. As I outlined in last week’s Global Strategy Webinar, the (TLT) is clearly headed for its old all time high of $135, which equates to a parsimonious 1.36% yield.

If you refinanced your home last month to cash in on lower interest rates, better plan on doing it again next month!

Both the Treasury market and global bank shares are now discounting another Great Recession that is absolutely nowhere on the horizon.

It all vindicated my aggressive hedging of my trading book, which I put into place at the beginning of January.  Gotta love those (SPY) April $182 puts! They’re better than Ambien in helping me sleep at night.

February is shaping up to be a very big month for the Mad Hedge Fund Trader’s model trading portfolio.

In the meantime, more data came out this morning confirming the recession that isn’t.

The Thursday weekly jobless claims plunged by 16,000 to 261,000, within spitting distance of a new 14 year low.