Meaningless Monday Markets – 3 Day Week Begins

November 22, 2021 at 08:32 AM EST

What's the point? I already can't get people to pay attention to projects this week. We ended last wek on a high note but it was the same high note (S&P 4,708) that we hit on November 5th and Friday was the 22nd so 11 trading days with no net progress and, suddenly, we're closing out Novemer already. The last day that SPY had 100M contracts traded was Ocober 6th and there has only been 2 days above 69M since Ocober 15th. So volume is dying and we're making no progress. As I've mentioned before, low-volume rallies are caused by the default buy-ins of " Dumb Money ", which is a combination of IRA, 401K, Fed and other Central Banks and individual investors who put thier money into index funds, which buy the bad stocks along with the good – at full market prices. That's what causes the usual end-of-day surges but the Fed is withdrawing some of their Monetary Easing and now Pension Funds are seeing their cash allocations dropping to 7-year lows. According to the WSJ : " Bigger private-market bets, inflation fears and a surge of retirees are putting public retirement funds at risk of a cash crunch that would force them to sell assets at losses to pay pension checks. Public pension funds have hundreds of billions of dollars less on hand than the amount they will need to cover promised benefits after two decades of underfunding, unrealistic demands from public-employee unions, and losses during the 2007-2009 financial crisis ." Keep in mind it is the WSJ so curse those Unions for forcing employers to keep the promises they made to their workers, right? Public pension funds have historically been able to access cash when equity markets faltered by selling bonds. But over the past two decades, fixed income portfolios shrank to 24% of assets from 33%, according to the Boston College data, as falling rates turned bonds into a drag on returns. Now inflation threatens to further erode the value of fixed-income investments. Meanwhile, with Thanksgiving just days away, Federal medical teams have been dispatched to Minnesota to help with Covid-19 cases at overwhelmed hospitals. Michigan is enduring its worst case surge yet, with daily caseloads doubling since the start of November. Even New England,…

What's the point?

I already can't get people to pay attention to projects this week. We ended last wek on a high note but it was the same high note (S&P 4,708) that we hit on November 5th and Friday was the 22nd so 11 trading days with no net progress and, suddenly, we're closing out Novemer already. The last day that SPY had 100M contracts traded was Ocober 6th and there has only been 2 days above 69M since Ocober 15th. So volume is dying and we're making no progress.

As I've mentioned before, low-volume rallies are caused by the default buy-ins of "Dumb Money", which is a combination of IRA, 401K, Fed and other Central Banks and individual investors who put thier money into index funds, which buy the bad stocks along with the good – at full market prices. That's what causes the usual end-of-day surges but the Fed is withdrawing some of their Monetary Easing and now Pension Funds are seeing their cash allocations dropping to 7-year lows.

According to the WSJ: "Bigger private-market bets, inflation fears and a surge of retirees are putting public retirement funds at risk of a cash crunch that would force them to sell assets at losses to pay pension checks. Public pension funds have hundreds of billions of dollars less on hand than the amount they will need to cover promised benefits after two decades of underfunding, unrealistic demands from public-employee unions, and losses during the 2007-2009 financial crisis." Keep in mind it is the WSJ so curse those Unions for forcing employers to keep the promises they made to their workers, right?

Public pension funds have historically been able to access cash when equity markets faltered by selling bonds. But over the past two decades, fixed income portfolios shrank to 24% of assets from 33%, according to the Boston College data, as falling rates turned bonds into a drag on returns. Now inflation threatens to further erode the value of fixed-income investments.

Meanwhile, with Thanksgiving just days away, Federal medical teams have been dispatched to Minnesota to help with Covid-19 cases at overwhelmed hospitals. Michigan is enduring its worst case surge yet, with daily caseloads doubling since the start of November. Even New England,…