This is about as messy of a market as you’re going to see. Headlining today’s Wall Street Journal are these notables:
Manufacturing Reports Reflect Slowdown
UBS to Cut 3,500 Jobs
Markets Remain Unkind to BofA
This, not to mention, that a small earthquake rattled the northeast today, possibly to be followed by a Hurricane named Irene. Everywhere you turn you bump into negative market news – and then you look up and see the DJIA up almost 3% and 322 points. How could that be?
So I search around looking for an answer and find an article written by Steven Russolillo, entitled, Stocks Jump on Hopes for Fed Action, also in today’s WSJ.
The article quotes a person named, Michael Church, president of Addison Capital, who had this to say about Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke, “There’s definitely a tint of optimism that he’ll pull a rabbit out of his hat… He did it last summer…”
Umm, excuse me.
Last year Ben Bernanke flooded the banks with cash by monetizing debt – that is, to print money and buy your own debt back. While most of us regular people would like to do that, it’s not sound monetary policy. It’s inflationary. Besides, more cash won’t make banks lend more money to you or me – and that’s the real problem. Banks have plenty of cash. They aren’t lending it.
Add that to the currency crisis going on in the world right now and it’s hard to imagine how markets could be kind to any bank – let alone Bank of America (which did lose almost $6 billion over the past two years.) Right now the financial industry is a high risk market. Keep that in mind when you’re building and managing your 15-51 portfolio.
That’s why I don’t think Bernanke will flinch on Friday. Another round of “quantitative easing” won’t help anything but inflation. Besides, the second round of “easing,” known as QE2, didn’t work.—But it did force a lot of cash through Wall Street coffers.
Maybe it was the smell of green that bid “the market” up today.
It certainly wasn’t Market fundamentals.
That’s the contradiction.