Yes, it’s Cinco de Mayo, that, holiday, er, ginned up by American corporations to goose domestic alcohol consumption. Its pretext involves a commemoration of the impressive, but, on balance transient, victory of the Mexican Army in 1862, over the French Empire, in what is known as the Battle of Puebla. It was indeed a solid win, against the much larger and better fortified forces of Napoleon III. So impressive, in fact, that even 15-odd decades later, it catalyzes more single-day beer-drinking in the United States than any 24-hour period other than Halloween, and, of course, St. Patrick’s Day.

And just in case you doubt this, I’ve got the data to back it up:

A couple of points are worth mentioning here. First, I exclude March Madness because presumably they’re referring to the whole tourney, which unfolds over a 2-3-week period. If I’m correct about this, then NCAA hoops doesn’t even belong on the list! When expressed in daily equivalents, I’m not sure it would outrank Arbor Day.

One would also hope that the 5/5 malted hop consumption does not come at the expense of the more obvious beverage of choice: tequila; ideally Mezcal, and of course with the worm floating in the bottom. Shout outs to all of you worm consumers in my vast readership. All I can add is that you’re a better Mexican than I.

But this column is dedicated not to our southern neighbors, but rather to the French, the losers in the Battle of Puebla showdown. It is they, after all, who coined the term purloined for the title of this piece. They did so, as everyone knows, at a different time in history, nearly eighty years later: a point when they were not the victors, but rather the vanquished; the oppressed, not the oppressors. Despite all Allied efforts to duck the confrontation, the Nazis were, by early 1940, rolling their tanks through the Grand Republic with surprising ease. The surge through the Maginot Line (once thought impenetrable), turned out to be a milk run, and, by the Summer of that year, big old gnarly Swastikas banners were flying atop of the Eiffel Tower and the Hotel de Ville. Everybody assumed it was permanent, and started busting out their German language books, to settle in for a long stretch of Teutonic hegemony.

Well, not everyone. Shortly, a resistance of sorts began to form. It was a spontaneous uprising that turned into a formidable military force under the leadership one Charles de Gaulle. The French Resistance was of course instrumental in the ultimate liberation of their home turf, and helped restore a measure of dignity to that country, so steeped in failure in its efforts to reverse the tide of expansion, and evoke the ultimate collapse of perhaps history’s most famous military bad boys.

In its way, Le Resistance never died. It went underground for many periods, but occasionally it has popped up. About 25 years ago, for instance, I bore witness to a full-scale shutdown of the great city of Paris, as workers took to the streets to protest against the horrors of a workweek that had reached the inhuman duration of 38 hours, and the cruel extension of the retirement age to 60 years.

And of course, L’R has cropped up again in recent months, and in arguably more prominent fashion, in the form of le gilets jaunes – yellow vests – who, over the last half year, have made it a habit of busting out their torches to protest a range of grievances. It all started with rage over what is by any definition a counterproductive, regressive tax on fossil fuel products. But it expands out from there. Les Gilets Jaunes ne sont pas heureuses (they are not happy), and are hell bent on doing something about it. In a recent gesture that should shock everyone but surprise nobody, they came out in full force to express their disgust at the approximate 1 Billion that had been raised by philanthropic interests to restore what may be the best G_D church in all of Christendom.

And, naturally, Les Esprits Du Resistance have traversed the Mighty Atlantic, and have resounded their angry din on these here shores for the better part of the last 2 ½ years. Cries to “Resist” can be heard everywhere, even as those winter caps with the dainty earlike flaps at the top have more or less disappeared from the landscape. These folks are also very angry; maybe angrier than they have been in at least 50 years. They see the country falling apart, and want to fix it – before it’s too late. They see their freedoms disappearing before their eyes, and wonder why some of us don’t see the same. Many of them believe that, like their French forbears, the modern equivalent of Tiger Tanks are rolling down the streets of Washington, and Nazi flags are flying atop the Capitol Building. The irony embedded in the reality that they do so in complete freedom, without fear of retribution or even a loss of social standing, is, apparently, and entirely lost upon them.

Meanwhile, the wheels of the righteous engine of free enterprise roll along, untroubled by the above-mentioned hysteria, or, if troubled by it, not showing itself much worse for the wear and tear. For the most part, Resistance or no, everyone who wishes to do so is waking up each morning, making a show or go of doing their jobs, and even, in some cases, minding their own businesses while so doing. As the clearest case and point of the forgoing, consider the glad tidings of Friday’s Jobs Report. Something in there for nearly everyone’s taste – including the Resistors — who might quibble with the drop in the Labor Force Participation Rate/Average Hours Worked, and the continued tepid showing of any signs of Wage Inflation. Might quibble? Strike that. They already have.

This is perhaps particularly the case in the wake of Chair Pow’s Wednesday FOMC presser. Both stocks and bonds rallied upon release of the “no action” policy statement, but when Jay took to the podium, these asset classes started to bounce around, albeit in narrow ranges, like particle colliders, with each answer to every question. It does seem to me that the Fed is perhaps back in play, or may be so soon. If so, the Jobs Report, with all of its nits and nicks, would trend towards a central bank leerier of economic overheat.

I’ve mentioned this before and I’ll probably do so again: there’s every chance, particularly if the capital economy continues on its current magnificent trajectory, that the Fed itself will act in such a way as to create its own form of Resistance. If so, they’ll meet with some investor-based counter-resistance, and, while such a contingency might cause some pain to investment portfolios, it will nonetheless be entertaining to observe.

But in the meanwhile, equity investors applauded the jobs result, bidding up such indices as the NASDAQ to a record sequence of 18 weekly gains out of 19. The NDX continues to annualize at a greater than 90% return clip, but unfortunately, I think everyone would concede that triple digits for Naz ’19 is probably no longer on the cards. But I’ve some more encouraging news for everyone on this fifth day of the month of May. Specifically, annualized returns for the SOX, the Philadelphia (Philadelphia?) Semiconductor Index, are clocking in at a boffo 153%:

Now, one could argue that this action is positively surreal, and it certainly redounds to the bafflement of virtually anyone to whom I speak that follows these stocks. Most notable among many anomalies is the reality that virtually everyone in the actual industry (i.e. the guys and gals that actually produce the chips) is warning that Q2 is either going to produce a record sales slowdown, or at least close to a record.

Of course, as mentioned previously in these pages, the storyline here is one where Q2 will be a cycle of inventory clearance, after which the world will be buying chips at a rate equivalent to the selling of umbrellas on any NYC street corner this rainy April.

And who am I (or we?) to doubt this rhetoric? And the further good news regarding all of this is that in what is certain to be a 150% up year for the SOX, we’re only 35% of the way into this sequence of luscious returns. So there’s still time for you to get in on the action, but you’d better hurry. 2019 isn’t getting any younger, and neither, for that matter, are you.

For those with less intestinal fortitude, there’s always the Gallant 500, a few percentage points of which actually represents semiconductors, so you wouldn’t be missing out entirely if you chose this more beaten path. Here, though, we’re looking at projected index returns in the beggarly mid-sixties. Adjust your expectations accordingly, mes amis.

One other factor to consider about the Gallant 500 is that it appears at the moment to be at least nominally threatened by The Resistance. Thrice since last September, it has reached or modestly breached its own Maginot Line of 2940, and twice it’s been beaten back from this level. As of Friday’s close, it’s at 2945, and, if it somehow can resist The Resistance, who knows how high it can climb?

So next week shapes up as an interesting one. The data flows begin to decelerate, on both the macro and the earnings calendars, but published reports suggest that this China thing may reach a point of clarity over the next several business days. So there’s that.

However, I suspect that a good bit of next week’s action will be driven by the murky world of technicals. Our favorite indices are at very interesting thresholds, and, according to the history books and chartist manuals, should now either bust through them or beat something of a retreat. I’m not thinking they will foretell of a big upside blowout, but that seems more likely to me than, say, a late September redux, where, as will be recalled, after hitting 2940, the 500 managed to drop 600 excruciating handles over the subsequent ten weeks.

So, in conclusion, all that one can do is reiterate our main theme “Viva Le Resistance”, may it wax or wane. One way or another, we’d be well-advised to know it’s out there, and that it will certainly materialize at some point.

But that’s all I got for now. If I didn’t mention it before, it’s Cinco de Mayo, and I think it’s time for a beer. Anyone care to join me?

I thought so. After all, I’ve checked the data, and it appears that it’s “bottoms up” all around.

TIMSHEL

You Only Live Once, right? At least that’s what they tell us. And if it’s true, well, maybe a submarine is as good a place as any to reside. It may not be for everyone. But in the town… Where I was born…

I reckon you know the rest.

Besides, I’m on a roll with this Beatles stuff. I don’t mind telling you that last week’s The Egg Man piece was a cash cow for me, and one whose udders have yet to run dry. They will run its course eventually, and probably soon. But you don’t mess with a winning formula, as anyone who has accumulated enough years to remember New Coke will gladly tell you.

Beyond this, I got to pondering about the relationship between life’s transience and undersea dwellings as I scanned the lightly reported tidings that on Wednesday, the Russians (yes, them!) launched the world’s largest submarine. Stem to stern, it measures 600 feet, and displaces more water than a WWI battleship. The Ruskies named the vessel Belgorod, which translates into English as White City. It is designed to carry up to four Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, each of them capable, at minimum, of generating a tsunami of sufficient size to take out an entire coastal region (say the New York, San Francisco of Los Angeles metropolitan regions).

Published reports suggest that Putin watched the launch remotely, from his cozy, above-ground enclave in the Kremlin. And even now, rumors are afloat that that “you know who” was patched into the same feed from his palatial residence in Bedminster NJ (in keeping with his trademark good taste, he is said to have felt the White House to be an inappropriate setting for the viewing of this ceremony).

So if the Belgorod is our YOLO Submarine, it’s not yellow, but white. The sky is still blue and the sea remains green (sort of), but the vibe is certainly less uplifting. The villains of the original Yellow Submarine were the relatively harmless and entirely hapless Blue Meanies, who only wanted to remove music and color from Pepperland. Color schemes notwithstanding, it’s pretty clear to me that the Belgorod has more nefarious latent intent, and, if called into action, its objectives are not likely to be much impeded by four Liverpudlian hippies, no matter how musically gifted they may otherwise be.

With all of this in mind, I am forced to conclude that the jury is still out in terms of the advisability of making one’s home in a submarine (whether Yellow or YOLO), but for the time being, I reckon most of us are still stuck on dry land, with our eyes pointed to the skies. For market types, while there have been gratifying pushes to celestial elevations, it cannot unilaterally be stated that ALL markets are on an upward trajectory. For the most part, it would be well to assume that we’re all still rooted on the soil.

It is true, of course that global equity indices continue their improbably climb towards the heavens. I perhaps need not waste much space on reporting that, as prophesied in these pages, our Gallant 500 has now planted its flag on the new high ground of ~2940. It is flanked, of course, by its comrade: Captain NAZ, which, despite the huge force of the unleashing of its afterburners, remains 10 skinny index points (~0.13%) below its point of zenith – mostly because it took a bigger beat down in Q4 ’18, and had further to travel to eclipse its previous highs. However, in terms of one particular metric – annualized return — NAZ is blowing the 500 away. As of Friday’s close, the Good Captain is projecting out a 97% full-year gain for 2019, which embarrassingly blows away the beggarly-by-comparison SPX trajectory of 68.3%. Both, however, are wiping the floor with General Dow, which: a) is registering a laughably small ytd gain of < 15%, and b) is throwing off an embarrassingly infinitesimal annualized rate of approximately 50%.

On the other hand, we can perhaps cut the Old General some slack, seeing as how its main component (Boeing) is only barely emerging from dual incidents in which it inadvertently converted its signature flying machines into submarines.

And elsewhere across the global capital economy, there remains some palpable gravitational pull. German Bund yields, after a valiant attempt to traverse sea level, are again in modest negative territory. Rates last week were indeed under pressure across the globe, as were virtually all major currencies not painted in green and graced with the image of dead presidents. The Euro in particular is feeling the pinch, closing Friday at its lowest level against the USD in two years. This notwithstanding, published reports indicate that speculative interests are lining up against the EUR, and playing for further carnage.

Commodities are also at subterranean levels, particularly on a relative basis. The week ended badly in the Energy Complex, and if you haven’t looked at the Grains lately, well, trust me, you might not want to. But what is really pushing the buttons of the smart guys I know, is the shocking underperformance of commodities (again, the stuff we actually eat, wear, burn and build with) versus the stock market:

Now, admittedly, I’m running a risk here by presenting a graph that eerily resembles last week’s colorful-but-obtuse egg chart. For purposes of clarity, I’d draw your attentions to the “sea of green” lower half, which measures the spread between the SPX and the Bloomberg Commodity Index. It implies the following reality: as of now, a single unit of the SPX will purchase about twice the amount of foodstuffs, fossil fuels and metals as it did a mere five years ago. And one can only point to a single explanation here: again on a relative basis, we appear to be blessed with an abundance of resources that have designated purpose in the economy, and a shortage of assets the ownership of which is designated by and large to generate returns of the filthy lucre variety.

Investors don’t seem to want to want to own Commodities at any price, particularly on a speculative basis, and all I can do is wonder if, at that point when we decide — once and for all — to migrate to our YOLO Submarine, we might not want to load up on some wheat, corn, and maybe even cotton.

Specs are also lining up against the VIX, which is testing multi-quarter lows, even as short positions continue to amass at record levels:

One wonders what possibly go wrong here? Equity indices are flying high in miraculous recovery from a dismal end to 2018. Valuations are at record levels and volatility is deeply suppressed.

So what’s the easiest trade out there? Well, obviously it involves going short the most impaired risk factor across the entire capital markets. If the VIX goes to zero, these short players will certainly have reason to celebrate. Of course, the VIX may not actually go to zero, but why dwell on that unpleasant contingency?

Meanwhile, I think all of us land dwellers have cause to give thanks for the bounty of good news that has come our way across the first trimester of 2019 (which, by the way, was a very timely point for happy tidings to arrive). We’re now about half way through Q1 earnings, and, while they’ve not exactly been gangbusters, they have arguably given the lie to those who were projecting Armageddon in these realms. It’s another big week for reporting – in many ways the last big sequence of the cycle, with names such as Apple, Alphabet and McDonalds stepping up to the podium. Now, normally, I wouldn’t care about McD’s; I haven’t choked down a Big Mac in about two decades. But after Coca Cola’s surprising upside blowout, I’m not so sure. Anyway, in general, the massive downward profits boot has not yet materialized, and the longer that we can stave off this inevitable, the better we will feel about ourselves.

And then there’s the macro stuff. Everyone should be pleased about the better than expected New Home Sales number (‘tis the selling season after all), and then, of course, Q1 GDP was at least superficially a blowout. To be sure, there was some fluff in the 3.2% print. The American Yankees got a rare and perhaps unsustainable win against the world on trade, and there was a justifiably concerning buildup of inventories, which must be depleted lest they are kept gathering dust in warehouses, and threatening to vex us all. But again, any fair analysis must also contemplate the performance against some headwinds we encountered, particularly the partial government shutdown, which was supposed by many to foretell recession. In general, as compared to the dire prognostications that were all the rage around the holidays, I think we can all be understandably pleased with the continued vitality of the domestic economy.

So we end the trimester of ’19 with equities at or beyond previous record valuations, a docile financing environment that in future cycles will most certainly cause us to look back with wonder, commodities on deep offer, and the USD sustaining remarkable vigor. My friends, old as I am, I feel comfortable in conveying that I’ve seen worse conditions for risk-taking in my time. MUCH worse.

And I reckon that the party will continue for a bit longer – mostly because I don’t find anything on the visible horizon to stop it. By purely Newtonian logic, we could be poised for another material leg up. Moreover, if, absent some paradigm-shifting dynamic entering the equation, the market happened to sell off here, I am convinced that many investors would view it as a buying opportunity.

From my perspective, this here market looks like one of those environments where everyone is praying for a 4%-5% pullback so they can buy more. When this form of sentiment prevails, said 4%-5% pullback almost never transpires. Instead, valuations climb higher, until the inevitable happens, and the correction is 2x to 3x (or worse) what everyone wants. This is a pattern that repeats itself (or, to paraphrase Churchill, “rhymes” itself) over and over again. In fact, it kind of reminds me of the late summer of 2018, and I don’t need to remind you what happened after that.

Over a slightly longer time horizon, I suspect that we need look no further than the Fed to identify the source of the next round of carnage. They will meet this week, and announce nothing of import, but if the equity markets continue to soar like they have, at some point they’re gonna reverse course, among other reasons because they’re sneaky sumb!tches that none of us should trust. But I don’t reckon their treachery is imminent. And, given that we only live once, I suggest we enjoy the good times while they prevail.

But I’d do my celebrating on dry land if I were you. The Yellow Submarine is still out there, 50 years after its maiden voyage. But so too is the Belgorod, with friends soon to be living next door.

If I’m right about this, it might be fair to conclude that the concept of a YOLO Submarine, is, at least for the time being, little better than an oxymoron. Let’s thus try to make the best of our landlocked condition.

TIMSHEL

“Yellow matter custard, dripping from a dead dog’s eye”

— John Winston Ono Lennon

With my 59 ½ birthday now a scant two weeks away, it’s time to face up to the following, mixed-blessing reality: I am indeed the Egg Man. I suppose there’s nothing to be ashamed about in this regard. After all, there is more than one Egg Man out there, and though JL doesn’t specify the quantity, I suspect there are in fact a great number of us. Besides, it’s Easter, and therefore the point in the calendar when the Ova community rises highest in the esteem of Christendom. It also bears mention that All God’s ambulatory Creatures: mankind, other mammals, reptiles, birds, fish and even insects, began their existences as eggs.

So while I and other Egg Men can certainly come to terms with our own status, we must always remember that we fall at least one rung short on the ladder of magnificence. Everyone, of course, would prefer to be The Walrus, of which, by inference, there’s only one. And we don’t know who he (or she) is. We’ve had some hints now and then (including John’s “Glass Onion” deception that The Walrus is Paul. C’mon! How can The Walrus be Paul? George, Ringo or even Brian Epstein maybe, but not Paul), but the fact remains that identity of the large, flippered, tusked, denizen of the extreme North Atlantic has never been definitively determined.

So, from a practical perspective, the highest level of prominence any of us can hope to achieve is that of Egg Man, and it is my sad duty to report on this holiday weekend that the capital markets are throwing shade at us Eggies. According to the most recent USDA reports, the value of a dozen of our signal component parts has fallen to $0.69 per dozen (a beggarly 5 ¾ pennies for an individual yoke/white! At that price, Paul Newman’s entire Cool Hand Luke feat of heroism would’ve cost under $3!): the lowest level in at least three years:

Now, admittedly, this chart is rather confusing, placing, as it does, several contiguous time series within the same horizontal, er, horizon. But any Egg Man worth his shell ought to be able to read the sad tidings it conveys. The world now takes a very diminished view of our financial worth. And this during our busiest, highest profile season! Were this not a holiday, I might be tempted to stoop to the profane.

We have some company in the Grain Complex, where Corn and Wheat remain on offer, but can only look on in wrathful envy as investors bid up our bovine and porcine equivalents to multi-year highs.

But as this is the biblical season for law-giving, redemption and even resurrection (as will happen on rare and seemingly random occasions, Good Friday was the first night of Passover this year, which transpired on the Shabbat, to boot), I suggest we move on to more uplifting themes.

The overall market was quiet this week, eerily so, in part because the triple whammy holiday shortened it to four sessions. Of course, earnings season is revving up, and so far there are hits and misses in that realm. But with 15% of the precincts having reported, there’s very little clarity on the trajectory of Corporate America’s fortunes. A boat load of firms will report this week, and it will be an interesting cycle, with numbers dropping from such Walrus wannabes as Facebook, Microsoft and Amazon. My sense is that we’ll get a much better picture about condition of domestic commercial universe during this cycle, and, again, I’d pay particularly close attention to guidance for the back half of the year.

Macro data has been, as expected, a mixed basket, with some of those plastic egg shells containing cold hard cash, and others nothing better than a licorice jelly bean. But a couple of the numbers, most notably the blowout in Retail Sales (+1.6% vs. +1.0% estimate, and particular shout outs to autos, gasoline, furniture, consumer electronics and even restaurants – but sadly, not eggs) were a particular delight. And, in consequence, the Fed’s Q1 GDP estimates have transformed from a carpet bomb into a moonshot:

Now, I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with those computer models down in Atlanta, but I think it would be nothing more than a fair question to ask as to how, in the course of five weeks, their algorithms have managed to gin up an estimate that is approximately ten times its original print (0.3% to 2.8%).

It bears mention, in addition, that the Fed’s estimates are clocking in at 2x those of the Street (~1.5%). In any event, it all will be rendered moot come Friday morning, when the the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis drops its actual introductory results.

In the spirit of Peace on Earth/Goodwill towards (Egg) Men, a strong print would be nice, particularly insofar as it might serve to dial down the din of the rhetoric emanating from Washington. Readers may not be aware of this, but the Mueller Report, at long last, dropped this past Thursday. I interpret it, as perhaps fore-ordained by the Gods, as a somewhat Solomonesque outcome, which from an investigative perspective, was the equivalent of a suggestion to cut the baby in half. It’s clear that Smiling Bob looked high and low to find evidence of the always-implausible narrative that Trump called in his boy Vlad for help on an election he didn’t expect to win. And couldn’t find anything with which to tag him. It then turns into an inevitable, inexorable tome about bad behavior in the White House, some of which, if reviewed with a particularly jaundice eye, rises to the dignity of Obstruction of Justice.

That Mueller’s report would be chockful of vague innuendo and conjecture was always a matter of near-certainty, and the only surprise for me is that he had the discipline not to sling his arrows at an earlier date on the calendar. Yes, he held open the door to the Impeachment Posse, but didn’t give them much room to maneuver around. I kind of feel sorry for this crew, many of whom have promised their constituents that they would gut 45 like a fish in the wake of the conclusion of the investigation. Now, they have to gather the troops to attempt this coup – ill-equipped and under-prepared though they are. There’s no knowing whether they can collect themselves to vote for this in the House, but if they do, their hearts won’t be in it. They KNOW that they can’t convince 67 Senators to vote guilty, and they are terrified about a cross examination process that will reveal the underbelly of their efforts in this sordid affair. But the money people and the media will insist, so it may indeed be a case of “on with the show”.

But one thing that could stop them dead in their tracks right now would be for the dream estimates of the Atlanta Fed to be realized. If Q1 GDP comes in anywhere near 2.8, in a quarter that featured a partial government shutdown, episodic but particularly brutal winter weather conditions, and widely socialized fears of an abrupt slowdown in the global economy, it is likely to give them pause. Further, if Mr. Trump, who at least upon occasion has demonstrated impeccable political timing, announces a deal with China over, say, the next 2-4 weeks, all of the eggs in the impeachment basket might just be smashed into particles.

One way or another, and particularly with respect to market impacts, I expect the political fires to cool a bit – at least temporarily – over the next few days. We’ve got a VERY big week coming up, folks, and I suggest you gird your loins. If you are committing bandwidth to trying to unpack whether unconsummated, out of context statements by the President are act of Impeachable Obstruction, you run the risk of missing out on what might be some rather important market action and opportunity. Don’t do it.

And with that, this here Egg Man will give himself and his readers an early rest on this holiday weekend. For me, the course is clear, and anyone searching will find me sitting on a cornflake, waiting for the van to come.

Perhaps you can find more divine and uplifting ways to spend this time. If so, maybe YOU are the Walrus. Even if you are (also) an Egg Man. Because it’s plain that the two are not mutually exclusive. Remember, of course, that The Walrus himself, as a matter of biological certainty, began his journey as an egg in his mama’s womb. Thus, while there is only one Walrus, logic suggests that he too is an Egg Man, or, at minimum, was an Egg Man at the embryonic point of his existence.

And with that, there’s only one more thing to add. So please, if you will, join me in an enthusiastic:

Goo Goo Ga Joob

TIMSHEL

When all else fails, we’ve still got Willie Shake, right? For what it’s worth, our titular quote may be my favorite line in the whole Shakespearian Cannon (much of which I haven’t read), the fact that it derives from perhaps his most muddled mess of a play – “Measure for Measure” — notwithstanding. But I can only offer partial justifications for yet another round of thievery from the Bard. And these are as follows.

With little fanfare last week, and at the ripe old age of 93, Charles Van Doren gathered to the dust of his forebears. He is best known for that Quiz Show cheating scandal in the 1950s, captured brilliantly in the eponymous 1994 film, which happened to be produced and directed by Robert Redford. There’s a scene in there, where, in apparent longstanding family tradition, Charles’ father (Pulitzer Prize winner Mark) busts out the line, and, on cue, Charlie correctly identifies the play that contains it. Van Doren cheated on “Twenty One”, and had a brief, high-profile descent, but he didn’t fall far. He ran the Encyclopedic Britannica Corporation for a few decades, he had plenty of family money to spend, and again died a peaceful nonagenarian death at his family’s estate in Canaan CT. Apparently, though, his hubris stayed with him throughout, as, when he wasn’t editing Photosynthesis updates for the Encyclopedia, he was pumping out books with modest titles such as “A History of Knowledge”, “How to Read a Book”, and, of course, the whimsical “Great Treasury of Western Thought”.

So maybe we’ll move on. Wednesday night, it was my singular pleasure to have attended a Mott the Hoople reunion concert at the Beacon Theater. The lads broke up in ’74. I saw them then. At the time, they were, to my ears, the perfect rock band. But they couldn’t hold it together and yielded the spotlight that might have been rightfully theirs groups such as Queen and the E-Street Band. At present, the rhythm section is well into the dirt nap, and the lead guitarist is full on daft. But they put on a great show – particularly given that their leader: The Fabulous Ian Hunter, will turn 80 in June.

I mention this mostly because once Mott had packed its gear and departed the premises, the Beacon set about to prepare for its next act: (I kid you not) Bill and Hillary Clinton. Wednesday/Thursday holdovers thus had the opportunity on the second night to hear the dulcet tones of John Podesta lobbing softballs to the Once Bitten/Twice Shy former First-Couple. Average ticket prices were $200. I paid $150 for my Mott seat in the Orchestra, and am entirely at peace in the belief that I got the better bargain.

At any rate, the Clintons (who would fill an entire encyclopedia covering their sins and virtues, their rises and falls) press on, laying their own inimitable ethical stylings on us, and fattening their bank accounts along the way. I’m not sure they fit our theme any better than Charles Van Doren does, but there’s something Shakespearian about the whole Clintons-Follow-Mott-at-the-Beacon motif, no?

Finally, by way of rationalization, I wish everyone to remain aware that I’m still disturbed by this whole ESG scoring thing, and to remind my droogies that in the oft-forlorn realms of finance, and as discussed below, the sinful do sometimes rise, and the virtuous too-often fall. It would be wise for anyone wishing to actually generate meaningful investment returns to bear this in mind.

But at the end of the day, we must revert, as we always do, to both Washington and Wall Street to justify our use of that magical “Measure for Measure” line. Let’s start with last week’s spectacle of the leaders of our largest financial firms being summoned to Capitol Hill for their Star Chamber Inquisition. The purpose of this exercise, of course, was to score political points by embarrassing these dudes. My own judgment is that they did pink their swords, but failed to draw significant blood. One of the Inquisitors managed to get on the record the reality that all seven CEOs were white males. Perhaps more impactful were their statements about the truly astonishing fact that while, in the wake of the crash, our banks paid fines amounting to an astounding $243B, not a single individual was incarcerated or even indicted.

On the other side of the equation, House Finance Chair “Mad” Max Waters and her crew had a couple of slip ups – including an attempt to tag the bulge bracket for the truly gruesome student loan mess we currently have on our hands, the reality that it is the government, and not lending institutions, that provide all of these funds notwithstanding.

So the jury’s still out on the sins of the banking industry, but as to the other component of our Shakespearian equation: the early returns are encouraging. On Friday, Top Dog J.P. Morgan reported record earnings for Q1 ‘19, their stock is up >10% this month, and the banking sector has now essentially recaptured all of the valuation ground lost in that grizzly year-end selloff.

But they should remember the long game here, and know their enemies. While all of this was transpiring, Senator Elizabeth Warren introduced a bill that would automatically impose criminal sentences (i.e. jail time) on any financial executive found guilty in a civil proceeding. As has been pointed out, and by inference, if the bill sponsors are at all troubled by constitutional dilemmas (civil outcomes are based upon a standard of preponderance of evidence, a much lower bar than the criminal threshold of beyond reasonable doubt) they’re not letting it stop them from pursuing this path of righteousness. Moreover, these heroic efforts to fix a broken socioeconomic system are only part of a broader package of measures that would also include a wealth tax, the imposition of explicit federal chartering and regulation of publicly traded companies, some form of reparations for the sins of slavery and god knows what else.

Plainly Senator Warren is leading the virtue-signaling, and it only stands to reason that by doing so, she is showing herself to be among the most virtuous of the virtuous. But she’s running for President, is way behind in the polls, and falling fast. She’s behind a guy who hasn’t even announced (and may choose to sit it out), an elderly senator that is not even a member of her party, a skate-boarding/punk rocking one-term representative, and a first-term Senator, who, as mentioned in earlier installments, rose to the top of the California political heap in part by being Willie Brown’s side piece. She may, as early as this coming week, even fall behind the previously unknown mayor of America’s 299th largest city. So maybe for the moment, with JPM on the rise and Liz on the down, Shakespeare was right.

However, if there’s any sector of the global economy more hated than the banks, it’s the Energy Complex. That they sin against the environment and us poor, trod-upon consumers is a widely held tenet. And they had a pretty big week. In one of the most highly anticipated debt transactions of the decade, Saudi Arabia’s Aramco, by some measures the world’s largest company managed to place a cool $12B of paper into the market. Published reports indicate that the deal was oversubscribed by many orders of magnitude. But when the notes hit the secondary market, they sank like a stone, and one way of looking at this is to suggest that Aramco extracted the maximum value achievable for their newly assumed indebtedness. And none of this could’ve happened without the yeoman efforts of their underwriters, as led by the above-mentioned, transgression-rich JP Morgan. Way to rise by sin, Team Aramco.

The week ended with the announcement of Chevron’s purchase of energy exploration enterprise Anadarko, for a cool $33B – an approximate 35% premium to the latter’s pre-announcement valuation. That’s a lot of scratch to pay for assets deployed in an attempt to mine oil and gas resources, in a world which, due to the sins of the Industrial Age, has only 12 years left as a shelter to All God’s Creatures.

If that ain’t rising by sin, well, then, I reckon I’ll just have to renounce Shakespeare once and for all.

And, more broadly speaking, this here sinful rally continues unabated. By Friday’s close, not only had the Sinful 500 breached the treacherous terrain of a 29 handle, but managed to retain this high ground. It now resides a slender 20 index points (~0.7%) away from its highest previous point of transgressional elevation. And nobody, or very few among my acquaintance, are wasting much time looking down. Case and point the CBOE Volatility Index, in my judgment one of the truly virtuous members among the community of financial instruments, has fallen ignominiously to levels not witnessed since those days of relative innocence late last summer:

Now, the holy books of investment (with the notable exception of my own “Trading Risk”) are all clear on one point: the VIX is intended, at least in part, to offer a hedge against the caprices of the equity markets, and to the extent that this is an accurate representation of its virtues, and as illustrated in the left side graph above, it has indeed fallen in a manner entirely consistent with our titular formula.

But further investigation suggests that there may be more to the story (please refer to right side graph). As was the case last time underlying valuations entered these realms, short interest in the VIX is rising towards record levels. Hopefully, at least some of y’all remember what happened next, but in case you don’t, just take a look at the number the Virtuous VIX played on the shorts in December, just when the broader market was in the midst of a crippling, if unambiguously virtuous, fall.

Maybe this time will be different; after all, it always is. But it says here that the VIX will rise again some of these days, rewarding virtuous hedgers and punishing any sinful short sellers that happen to be in its path at the wrong time.

More likely than not, we’ll know a great more about this over the next couple of weeks, as the great engine of an earnings cycle revs to full throttle. In the meantime, and as suggested in last week’s epistle, I suspect that the Sinful 500 will seek to gather itself in a noble effort to breach into new heights, from which, by its very virtue, it is likely – subsequently and eventually — to fall.

It will all be interesting to monitor. My guess is that in terms of sins, virtues, rises and falls, our formula will work – except when it doesn’t. But Willie Shake’s whole point, I think, was to remind us that it is not for us to judge. So my risk management advice to you is another one of Shakespeare’s greatest hits. “To thine own self be true” said Polonius to Laertes. Both were ultimately dispatched by the Mad Dane’s sinfully virtuous sword, but I think that this was wise counsel from a loving father to his son nonetheless.

The rest, my friends, is out of our hands. So keep your eyes open, look before you leap, avoid bending, folding, spindling and (most of all) mutilating if you can. And, as always…

TIMSHEL

Must I do this? Must we? Well, if we must I reckon we must. I’ll tell you fairly that my heart ain’t in it. But I’m a market guy, and if one commits to the long-established protocols of markets, it is imperative that suppliers adhere to the prerogatives of those on the demand side of the equation, often energetically embracing its preferences – even when underlying premises evoke supplier doubt.

Consider the example of ESG, which the investment community is now enthusiastically and wholeheartedly embracing, while, in truth, the concept is being rammed down its throats. Now don’t get me wrong. Lord knows we’re probably be none the worse for embracing commercial activity that is sensitive to our environmental concerns, pays proper obeisance to social issues, and practices governance that meet the capricious standards of those who make it their life business to police the morality of others. But there’s a divine concept known as moderation, and it’s one we should all embrace.

But here I get ahead of myself. For the uninitiated, ESG is an investment concept that mandates the allocation of capital exclusively, or at minimum, disproportionately towards those companies which are deemed to be good actors with respect to virtues of Environmental Protection, Social Justice, and egalitarian Corporate Governance. ESG investing has now become something of a religious mantra among those heretofore tasked with simply chasing a decent return in the financial markets. In some sense, it fills the vacuum occupied a year or two ago by crypto, and more recently by cannabis. The first two have a kind of “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em sensibility”. So, for that matter, does ESG, but in its case, with a dash of something even dearer than filthy lucre, an opportunity for holy redemption.

So ESG investment is on the charts with a bullet, and it looks like more than a one-hit wonder. A very high profile former boss of mine is forming an entire investment platform around the concept, and he’s not alone. Last year, Larry Fink: Founder/Chairman of Blackrock (which happens to be the world’s largest investment platform) sounded formal warnings to global corporate leaders that from here-on-in, they would be judged in large part on their ESG footprint, and he’s been doubling down on it ever since.

I’ve no particular issue with any of the above. Presumably, and as I learned at the University of Chicago, companies that act as good global citizens should most certainly be rewarded for so acting, as by the same logic, firms who behave poorly should pay a penalty. However, you must forgive me for holding dear to the impression that all of this was already built into the investment equation, and wanted little additional institutionalization to work its infallible logic. But when have we ever stopped at a reasonable point on our tortured journey towards perfect systems of moral risk and reward?

So it has come as an embarrassing surprise (I should have known earlier) to me that over the last couple of weeks, nearly one third of my clients have found themselves in something of an ESG focus vortex. Here, they must allocate significant resources away from the galactic task of making investment selections on the basis of such quaint anachronisms as profit profiles, balance sheet strength and growth prospects, to ensure that the investments that breach these narrow portals have passed at least minimal muster with newly-implemented, acceleratingly deployed ESG scoring systems. Institutional investors are now demanding this, and my best advice to my clients wishing to work with these entities is that they do what they can to accommodate their wishes. If pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds and the like want to hold you to an ESG score, you are strongly advised to make it happen for them. It’s their capital we seek to manage after all, so in a very real sense, they call the shots.

However, and as I often inquire (rhetorically speaking) in these pages: what could go wrong?

Well, I’m just not convinced that this scoring system is going to be a particularly effective means of achieving the presumed objective of injecting stone-cold “wokeness” into Corporate America. A bunch of independent analysts are now running around and putting up ratings our publicly traded companies – all $50 Trillion of the market capitalization they represent, all I can say is good luck. These companies, it should be kept in mind, employ more than fifty million workers, operate in nearly all of the 195 countries around the world, produce and/or sell pretty much everything we buy, and, as a result and in aggregate, reflect the full measure of all human activity – divine and sinful – that transpires on this forlorn planet. I suspect that the ESG scoring systems will also, and equal proportion, reflect both our sins and redeeming thoughts and actions. Thus, if there is perceived benefit, sleight of hand will indeed ensue.

Yes, it strikes me that the whole scoring system is comprehensively gameable. If XYZ International wants to goose its Environmental rating, it can probably do so by the application of chicanery — at a lower all-in cost than actually burning lesser quantities of fossil fuels and removing pollutants. Consider, here, if you will, a couple of examples. Tesla is painting the automotive world in emerald hues, in part by consuming more electricity than namesake rival Thomas Alva Edison ever contemplated. The farm belt is all about ethanol, and the energy companies play along, but it still requires, on balance, more refined crude to produce the blended mix than are used when the grain-based middleman is eliminated and we just pour pure refined petrol in our tanks. How do the ESG scoring gods balance this in their equations?

To me, the same sort of thing applies to the S and G components of the formula. Put in some training and social awareness programs, but treat your employees and vendors like sh!t, and you’re probably OK. Throw a couple of mooks who fit the bill on your Board and forget to invite them to meetings, etc.

In fact, the whole thing starts to remind me of the College Admissions Scandal that was our biggest obsession this side of Jussie Smollett during the month of March. I imagine, even now, a handful of savvy CEOs paying specialists to game the ESG scoring system. A few dollars here, a couple of strategic hires there, and bam! ESG problem solved. The perp walks can wait for further discovery.

So the good news I have to share is that a new industry, which will require significant staffing, is on the rise. One of my clients told me that at a bulge bracket bank with which they work, the ESG scoring division is the largest hiring area on the whole enterprise. When we throw in the resources required for the ESG equivalent of enterprises run by this Bill Singer character (who has demonstrated, that for a nominal service charge, he can usher your lazy, empty-headed child into the hallowed halls of USC) , it’s no wonder that the March Jobs Report redounded to the delight of so many, and the consternation of so few. I won’t go into the details; suffice to state that it beat on every metric – except the over-watched hourly earnings estimate – by just enough to avoid concerns about overheating.

And it was not the only good news of the week. Domestic Manufacturing PMIs exceeded expectations, and even recently beleaguered domestic auto sales perked up to a robust 17.5M units. For these reasons and others, the Gallant 500 and its fellows put in their best week of what can only thus far be described as a boffo start to the year. And, improbably, published reports even suggest that hedge funds recorded their strongest quarter since the dark days of early ’09.

And now, somehow, the SPX is 48 skinny index points (1.63%) from its all-time highs registered in late September of last year. I. Am. Astonished. To. Even. Type. These. Words. I encourage my readers to mark the interval. Some of these days, and they might not be that far into the future, we’re all going to remember this period as one of wistful wonderment. I don’t want to keep singing the same note over and over again (even if does represent over half of my ~2-note vocal range), but if I review these tidings from the perspective of conditions around Christmas, I would have placed the probability of reaching this pass before the first blossom materialized on the Merritt Parkway at less than 2%. Maybe less than 1%.

There’s no particular reason, moreover, to think we’re done with this here rally. My experience suggests that when we get this close to a new high, investors feel duty bound to test it. I recall writing (and please don’t force me to prove it) early last year, as Apple and Amazon were approaching market caps of $1 Trillion, that their breaching of these thresholds was a near-certainty, because investors would not resist the temptation to see if such a thing was even possible. And it was. And they did. Both companies hit a tril. And both then retreated, along with the broader markets, in ignominious fashion. But they are each in range again, and who’s to say that investors won’t open the $1,000,000,000,000 door again with an open embrace? So, particularly in the small number of sessions between now and the bone fide commencement of the earnings season, there will be great temptation to see if the Gallant 500 can breach the 2940 level that represents its greatest point of penetration to date. Half a league, half a league, half a league onward, and we’re there. Whether our heroes can hold this ground, is, however, another matter.

Further potential upward catalysts largely derive from the meaningful possibility of a deal with China. I won’t go into too much detail here, but if these two big dogs do put paw to paper, I think that it’s probably worth another 500 index basis points to the good.

But mostly, as the month unfolds, all eyes will justifiably turn to earnings, and here’s where the problems begin to materialize. Everyone expects a weak quarter and tepid guidance. But everyone keeps buying anyway, and that, mis amigos, is a somewhat troubling paradigm. As may have been expected, much of the valuation frenzy resides in tech land, as illustrated below:

But it was ever thus, my loves. Our amorous eyes, once turned towards those bright shiny objects in the Silicon Valley, are always hard-pressed to ever look away.

It should, however and in closing, be noted that the darlings of tech use more electricity than any other sub-group in the economy, that many (AMZN, FB, GOOG) are in essence entirely controlled by their founders, that their global information flow monopoly is almost complete, and that the mitigants they have established for associated misuse are laughably and entirely optical. Moreover, inside those glittering corporate campuses, the free exchange, of, say political opinions is brutally suppressed. By way of example, and as covered in the WSJ, Google activists managed to toe tag an advisory committee on the ethical use of Artificial Intelligence one week after its formation, for having committed the sin of including a black woman who also happens to be the President of the conservative Heritage Foundation.

But Google’s stock is on the rise, and, like its peers down the road, it is also within shouting distance of a tril. The ESG cops apparently have either not caught on, or chosen not to act. Someday, perhaps, they will, though, so be forewarned. And while you’re at it, I wouldn’t throw away those financial models just yet either. Who knows, even in an ESG world, they may be of some use in the future.

TIMSHEL

As the introductory quarter of 2019 melts into Number Two, and given that it’s Sunday (the Lord’s Day across all of Christendom), I feel I must yet again bust out some of that Old Time Religion. After all, today marks roughly the midpoint of the Lenten season, an interval in the Julian Calendar when, by all rights, we should be working ourselves up into something of a holy frenzy.

So I base this week’s note on the elegant quote taken from the Gospel According to Saint Matthew (6:34). It derives directly from his the recounting of the Sermon on the Mount of one of the earliest homilies offered by Jesus (after his being baptized by, well, by John the Baptist), and certainly his longest, unfolding, as it does, across three long chapters in this book of the New Testament. It covers a wide range of topics: from the Beatitudes (which – let’s face it — would make a great name for an Alt Rock band), Lamp Under a Bushel, Light of the World, and a number of other matters pertinent to the day.

It’s a soaring piece, but, as the world knows, I’m much more of an Old Testament Guy, favoring in particular the Book of the Ecclesiastics, and especially that bit about there being a season to everything – a time for every purpose under heaven. I will admit to have wondering what was up with the part about the casting away and gathering of stones, which, to me seems like a rather pointless exercise. Why gather stones only to cast them away later? And you can hardly cast away stones before you’ve gathered them, so what gives? But whatever; it’s a fine book, Ecclesiastics that is, and to me it floats above Joshua, Judges, Ruth, Genesis, Exodus and even the elegantly-named Leviticus. However, I freely recognize that this is by and large a matter of taste.

The Old Testament also is the source of all of the psalms that grace our religious experience, including the divine 23rd, which wants no further elucidation. I will also give a shout out to King David’s old, reliable 32:1 “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him”.

Perhaps, in this interval of great strife and dissent, we can at least agree on the following. As we wend across these troubled times into an uncertain future, David 32:1 is likely to become increasingly handy.

But our theme here is the merciful stylings of the New Testament; not the judicious teachings of the Old. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof” reports Matthew on behalf of Jesus, and my observation is that he was onto something.

Meantime, Q1/19 is now in the books, and oh what a ride it was! Domestic equity indices put up their best showing in a decade – since those first tentative steps towards recovery from the Crash began to gather steam.. Now, as was the case then, the rocket ride came on the heels of some stone cold investment carnage, as, while the Spring of ’09 is nothing but a foggy memory for most of us, the last grueling weeks of ’18 should, by all accounts, remain fresh in our collective memories.

At the risk of regressive redundancy, allow me to reassert that the magnificent recent performance of the Gallant 500 and its fellows was in large part justified as I see it. For one thing, at a beggarly Christmas Eve level of 2335, the benchmark SPX was, in retrospect, deeply oversold. At the time, everybody was rationally concerned about a pant-load of difficulties, any combination of which, had they extended themselves, may have deepened the carnage well into the current year. Central banks were doing war dances, as were the key players on the global trade stage, and, for that matter, so too was a new Congressional class, hell-bent on removing the President, and believing that they had the means to do so.

But then, somehow, a series of minor miracles transpired. We’ve covered these ad nauseum, but they bear recounting (albeit as briefly as possible). The Fed turned from potential market combatant to staunch ally, proclaiming its valuation-supporting allegiances on multiple occasions in Q1. The ECB followed suit. The U.S and China signaled that, at minimum, some sort of détente was in their mutual interest. The 116th Congress emerged with smoke emanating from every orifice, and were organizing their forces for a full-on assault on 1600 Penn. Avenue. But their plans went awry. Their frontline troops, led by one General Mueller (whose mission it was to lob pre-invasion, terrain-softening, defense-weakening artillery at the principal target), bailed on them in ignominious retreat, leaving the main thrust of the offensive in disarmed disarray. They may seek to regroup, and perhaps can yet lay siege on their enemies, but their prospects for success have been reduced to little more than hopes and prayers.

All of which places the SPX more than 500 basis points to the good — relative to its pre-yuletide position of shocking retrenchment. But anyone who thinks that from this point on, the troops are looking at a milk run to previously unconquered territory is entitled, during this season of reflection and repentance, to another think.

One does not require the vision of the Creator to see obstacles on the horizon.

Though the ritual will not commence in earnest for another fortnight, let’s nonetheless begin with earnings. They’re supposed to be weak, in case you hadn’t heard – particularly against a backdrop of an P/E-turbo-charging) 15% (depending upon which index “up” quarter. Factset has cranked up its analytical engines in time-honored fashion, and the following graphs tells a story that promises little in the way of holy redemption:

In the days and weeks prior to CEO’s being next called to the pulpit, a consistent rhetorical theme has emerged – particularly in technology components and industrial manufacturing. Q1 was weak and Q2 is a bit impaired as well. It goes as follows: we’re clearing out our inventories, folks, and when we’re done this summer, the good times will roll yet again. While we won’t know for another couple of months, here’s hoping they’re proved to be correct. Because whereas I feel that the Lord won’t count against CEOs any sins of over-optimism, the latter are likely to feel the full wrath of investors on that score.

But hey, like I said, it’s a couple of months off, and, in case I haven’t mentioned it, sufficient to the day is the evil thereof.

We can thus turn our attentions to the bond market, which continues its yield-crushing, heavenward ascent. Rates on the U.S.10-year stabilized at the historically tepid level of ~2.41% last week. But at those thresholds, we’re talking about Uncle Sam paying 8 times the vig imposed upon the Government of the Grand Republic of France (0.314%), and over 100 times what the Dutch are offering up (0.022%) for their own paper of the same maturity. You can fuhgeddaboud Germany, Switzerland and Japan, as here, the practice of ratio calculation fails us, because all are at sub-zero levels.

Domestic macro numbers are mixed to negative, but most point to a slowing, sluggish cycle on the horizon. On Thursday, I took a peek at Atlanta’s GDP Now metric, and encourage everyone, just as I did, to freeze that moment in time. Though they got there by different paths, this was the first and only occasion in my long history of tracking this metric where the estimates of the Street and those of the Fed came together in precise harmony:

It didn’t last long; nothing, after all, does. By Friday, the two sets of estimates had passed one another like ships in the night:

In any event, it looks like we’re in for a slow patch, not only in these here realms but indeed across the globe. Particularly if the earnings paradigm is weaker than even expected (and especially in terms of forward guidance), April might be as good a time as any to pause on our climb to the mountaintop of Olympian valuations. But if the Central Banks stay true to their rhetoric, one way or another, the world will remain awash in idle cash and cheap financing, which should be accretive to risk assets.

At some point it will all have to end. Lenders committing capital for multiple years need, ultimately, to be better compensated for tying their money up and assuming default risk than what is now built into the equation. I don’t know when this reckoning will come, nor how deep a price we will pay upon its arrival.

However, as Jesus purportedly told Matthew and the other disciples on that hot afternoon in the Israeli desert approximately 20 centuries ago “sufficient to the day is the evil thereof”. And while this sort of thing runs contrary to the rhetoric upon which we risk management types rely, I think the point is a valid one. In fact, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Just do me one solid here. This is a tricky tape, so watch yourself a bit, OK? And, as always…

TIMSHEL

Engaged readers will recall that last week I used a few of the 1,500 odd words that I allot to these ramblings, to pine in mournful, nostalgic fashion, for the year 1985. In that note, my ode to days gone by was triggered by a mob hit that reminded me of the takedown of Big Paulie, boss of the mighty Gambino Family. But now, according to published reports, it appears likely that the Frankie Boy hit may not have been a mob hit at all, but rather an ill-advised act of violence perpetrated by a local loser with a touch of reckless gallantry in his soul, but clearly a deficiency in the cognitive processing department.

Upon learning this I thought: OK, so maybe it’s not 1985 after all. But then I thought again. This past week, the Walt Disney Corporation completed its acquisition of 20th Century Fox, leading to inevitable mash up headlines about the Fox in the Mouse House, and uniting, under a single corporate umbrella, the stylings of the studios which, in the year we seek to celebrate, gave us Mr. Belvedere and The Wuzzles. But what sealed the deal – at least for me – was Thursday’s IPO of the iconic Levi-Strauss Corporation, which went private back in ’85, and remained so until this past week.

So yes, let’s continue to wind the clock back 34 years, and nothing could mark the occasion more appropriately than everyone busting out their skinny jeans. Let’s face it, we’re all young again, some of us are babies; others of us are not even yet born, so how difficult should this be?

Certainly the hedge fund industry is doing its part, as recently published data indicate that the field is shrinking:

Those that remain are mostly moving into the optimum range for our desired fashion statement, mostly by virtue of their tepid returns, shrinking AUMs, compressed fees, and, in consequence, diminished revenue streams.

On the other hand, the concept barely existed in 1985. Alfred Winslow Jones, the George Washington of the industry, coined the term in 1949, and backed it up by creating a product to match it. But no one paid much attention for the next 40 years. It wasn’t until the late ‘80s that the industry began to binge out, and the binge has lasted to the present day, so there’s still some treadmill/salad work to be done before the skinny jeans paradigm can be fully realized.

Elsewhere in our field of vision, however, progress towards the donning of those narrow-waist, pencil-legged denims is more visible, and perhaps in no region so much so as the yield side of the global bond market.

Here, our story begins with Wednesday’s FOMC presser, where Fed Chair Powell (i.e Mr. Kite), jumped over men and horses, hoops and garters (and yes, lastly through a hogshead of real fire) to reassure the public that his and the ECB’s (i.e. the Hendersons) production will be second to none. More specifically he froze rates through at least year end.

We thus concluded the week with the two largest and most powerful Central Banks having committed to the maintenance of sub-atomic interest yields for the final three quarters of the year. This, mes amigos, in a global economy which is indeed slowing but nonetheless still growing, is nothing less than astonishing.

And, for about a session and a half, investors had no idea what to make of this – at least on the equity side of the equation. Our indices sold off in the wake of the release, rallied back on Thursday, and then, in reaction to a truly disastrous factory output report from the Eurozone, followed closely on its heels by the lowest domestic manufacturing PMI in two years, puked out nearly 2% by Friday’s close:

U.S. Manufacturing PMI: Producing Much Indigestion:

By contrast, Fixed Income investors reacted in Pavlovian fashion – by gobbling up every global bond in sight. The German Bund went negative for the first time since ’16, the Swiss upped their reverse vig, and now demand nearly a half a percent a year for putting our money to use, Japan tumbled to -0.08%, and even the often-ignored Danes are on the verge of demanding payment for their borrowings.

But most of the attention is focused on the U.S. yield curve, which – horror of horrors – inverted at various points. To illustrate, I actually created my own chart here, using Excel, and sourcing the data from the United States Treasury Department itself:

Now, I admit that it ain’t hardly pretty, but I’m enormously proud of my handiwork nonetheless.

I leave readers to their own devices in terms of figuring out which spreads are actually inverted, but mostly they reside within the realms of very short-term durations as plotted against the middle of the curve (3s through 5s). Suffice to say that there was a great deal of hand wringing respecting these configurations.

There is some irony in the realization that it is the elevation of front end of the curve – i.e. the part that is most explicitly controlled by the Fed – that is causing most of the inversion agita. My guess is that this won’t last long. Investors are likely to pile into the rich-by-contrast short end as early as Monday.

But one way or another, for anyone wishing to trade yield spreads, the moment when skinny jeans become de regueur is indeed upon us. There’s simply no juice in the alternative: the 1990s-bred “Levi’s With a Skosh More Room” investment construct of borrowing short and lending long – in the action. And, since this is precisely what the banking industry is supposed to do, it bore the brunt of the last couple of sessions’ brutal action:

KBE Bank ETF:

Thus, while broad-based indices plunged on Friday to close nominally down for the week, the Banking Sector experienced a one-way drop of more than 10%.

There’s not much comfort for them to take in all of this, but for those wishing to look on the bright side, at least the banks aren’t Boeing, which is down more than 20% from its highs in less than a month.

I’m on the whole feeling pretty smug about all of this action, because I am on consistent record in stating my belief that interest rates are more likely to go down than up. Moreover, I feel I am vindicated in suggesting that the Central Banks have reviewed the data against their models, and have concluded that rates must continue to be aggressively suppressed, or the world will face a nasty and politically problematic recession. My own belief is that policy makers are most terrified of the bursting of a credit bubble. The amount of short term, borderline junk paper – particularly in the energy sector – that must roll over or evoke a potential cascade of cross-sector defaults is enough to incentivize our monetary custodians to keep priming the yield pump. The hope is that this will keep asset valuations up and impede defaults. I’m paying particularly close attention to the Energy Complex. If Crude drops, it could cause a domino-like credit event that is unpleasant to even contemplate.

Someone said to me last week that the latter half of 2018 was an experiment in interest rate normalization, and this comment stuck with me. He’s probably right, and if so, the experiment was a failure. Policy makers tried this, and found that the global economy cannot abide higher borrowing costs. Central Banks know it, and will act accordingly — by extending their historic cycle of monetary stimulus.

Someone else called what’s happening now an interest rate and currency race to the bottom, and this makes sense to me as well. Both, in fact, I feel, are correct. But here’s the good news: the intent of all of this monetary love is to sustain and, if possible, boost, asset prices, and I believe it will be successful – at least for a time. It won’t end well, of course, but in the meantime, I’m not at all troubled by the end-of- week equity puke. In fact, I rather hope it continues, because at finite distances down from here, I think investors will be impelled to do a little bit of shopping, and it’ll be party time once again.

Call it a form of financial bulimia – the binge and purge kind. And the latter will certainly be necessary if we’re ever to hope to fit into our skinny jeans. As for me, I’d probably need to hork up about two decades-worth of gastric excess to hope to fit even one leg into those buggers. But I can’t find them anyway, and there’s nothing the newly public Levi Strauss can do to induce me to by a new pair. So all I can do in this regard is to wish the rest of you a heartfelt:

TIMSHEL

So, somebody finally did Frankie Boy. Did him Old School. Ran into the Escalade parked in his driveway, in – where else? The Richmond Hill Section of Staten Island. Plugged him with 12 rounds after he turned his back, and drove off into the night. Frankie’s wife and kids were in the house at the time. And here’s the best news of all: the hit appears to have been arranged, or at minimum, sanctioned, by Gotti’s kid brother.

While I abhor violence of every form, and though I’m not proud of the sentiment, part of me is feeling a warm nostalgia respecting these tidings. It was, according to published reports, the first mob boss hit in 30 years – which is a long time to go between New York Post front page photos of such a scene. But to me, it turns the clock back another half decade (or so), to late 1985, when the Gotti Crew took out another Gambino Crime Boss: Big Paulie Castellano, who was offed by three guys wearing identical Russian sable hats, in broad daylight, at the entryway of Sparks’ Steak House on 46th Street in Manhattan. Gotti and his perfidious sidekick Sammy the Bull watched the action from a parked car across the street.

Now, I have no idea what the beef was about, who authorized the hit, or how it changes the mugshot org chart posted in the police precinct conference room. But I will say that it gives me hope that we can return to a more vigorous time in our lives, when men were men, friends of ours lorded over friends of mine, when made guys outranked connected guys, and, as to everyone else?

Fuhgeddaboutit.

Reagan was President, Koch was Mayor, Rudy was the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. I was 25, single, and still somewhat cool (or thought I was). The economy and the stock market were booming. That quaint 1987 crash was an un-thought of nightmare seven quarters into the future. The Gallant 500 was outstripping the heroism of even its literary forbears in Tennyson’s “Charge of the Light Brigade”:

SPX: 3/16/84 – 3/16/86

Of course, the modern-day SPX is currently enjoying its own significant rally at the point of this correspondence, but, somehow, it feels a bit tentative, a bit effete, if I may make so bold. Doubts plague our every purchase, while few divestitures are met with much regret.

In summary, the index feels as though at any moment, it could engage in ignoble retreat. Memories of the horrific pre-Christmas rout are still too raw and present in our psyches to truly rock us into a proper state of mojo.

So perhaps you’ll forgive me as I morph a sensationalized violent crime into a smarmy remembrance of things past. Perhaps such sappiness on my part is also a sign of the times.

Because there’s very little so encouraging in this trail of tears that I have selected as my lifelong career than a tape that reads negative, but keeps roaring upward. I review last week’s action as transpiring against the backdrop of news flow which can hardly be viewed as encouraging. As was perhaps pre-ordained by the Gods, the Brits enter the penultimate week before the Brexit deadline not knowing whether they will leave with a deal, leave without a deal, stay with a deal, stay without a deal, or even carry forward with their current parliamentary coalition. America’s only significant airplane manufacturer – which carries the largest weighting in the Dow Jones Industrial Average (~10%), and which is also the nation’s largest exporter, was compelled, by two deadly crashes in the space of six months, to ground its signature flying vessel. The love-fest between the U.S. and both Korea and China can be viewed as being on the rocks. Trump issued his first-ever veto. Yet another lunatic shot up a couple of mosques in the otherwise tranquil land of New Zealand, killing 50 poor souls in the process.

Oh yeah, and the shooter livestreamed the whole episode on Facebook.

“Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them, volleyed and thundered” wrote Tennyson. And so it goes with our own Gallant index, which managed, foregoing notwithstanding, to post a weekly gain of 2.9% — best since November. And, notably, that pre-Thanksgiving uplift transpired in the midst of a rout, during one of the worst quarters in living memory, whereas the current spike has manifested as an extension of a rally of 11 weeks standing, which now positions us a little over 3% from the all-time highs registered in late September.

And, of course, stocks weren’t the only market segment enjoying a rally. I’m pleased to report that the Wheat market lamented in last week’s epistle, has recovered at least a fragment of its vitality:

I’d like to think that part of this is owing to last week’s plea in this space for everyone to eat their Wheaties. However, further research suggests that perhaps our grain farmers may have been feeding these foodstuffs to their hogs (or, at any rate, to investors in same):

Hogs haven’t been this rich in nearly a decade, but, in the interest of full disclosure, it should be pointed out that some of the rally appears to be tied to a breakout of African Swine Flu among the porcine population of China. Given, of course, that 2019 is the Year of the Pig on the Chinese Calendar, this cannot be viewed as a unilaterally encouraging sign. For now, though, we’ll give it a pass.

And then of course, there’s those irrepressible bonds, which, across the globe, are either rallying, or, at minimum, holding on to lofty valuations. This week’s honors stay at home, within the U.S. Treasury Complex, and particularly our 10-year note, currently commanding a beggarly yield of 2.59%. It’s hard to believe that as recently as last October, this paper was throwing off a lordly vig of 3.25%.

Further, the love, by all accounts, has spread to the domestic private debt markets; let’s just say that across the entire credit curve, buyers have represented, and in force:

Investment Grade:

High Yield:

One might go so far as to socialize a hypothesis that all of this bid for debt instruments might’ve negatively impacted the returns that the Gambino family is getting for paper they’re putting on the Street. That, someone had to take the blame, that this someone was Frankie Boy, and that he was compelled to answer in the time-honored fashion associated with these affairs.

I rather think, however, that my original hypothesis holds true. The global QE process, now a decade in standing, and re-invigorated most recently by the ECB, has created a paradigm where too much fiat currency is chasing too few investible assets, in the process turbo-charging bids for both equity and debt securities. With all of that cheap financing, mergers, acquisitions and buybacks abound. Adding further to the imbalance, there is currently a trend for successful, privately held companies to stay private over longer intervals, and in some cases into perpetuity, than had historically been the case. Time was, if a company thought it could go public at pittance-level valuations of $1B, it would crawl through broken glass to do so. Now, the bogie appears to be more like $25-50B. But we’ll cover that in future editions.

In the meantime, suffice to say that while the technicals of the market are remarkably strong, the current rally feels weary to me. I reckon it could lurch along for a spell, but I can’t enthusiastically recommend incremental risk assumption at this moment in time. One way or another, I’d exercise caution. The Franky Boy investigations now suggest that the Gottis may not even be involved, that the hit may have been an unauthorized act of a love-sick knucklehead pining for Frankie’s niece. If so, then it’s definitely NOT the Eighties; instead it’s the New Millennium Teens. I am old, and the prerogatives of decorum have lost their menacing edge. I reckon we’ll have to deal with the consequences, but in terms of the assertive seizing, sustaining and expanding of turf, I can only close, not with my usual salutation of TIMSHEL, but rather with: a forlorn:

FUHGEDDABOUDIT

Though I dealing with non-work-related issues, thousands of miles from my post, the week’s noteworthy events were not entirely lost upon me. And I’d be remiss in failing to begin with the recognition our high-flying equity indices experienced some gravitational drag. In fact, not only did their annualized rates drop below the minimally acceptable level of 100%, they did so in menacing fashion: the Gallant 500 is now on a pace for a pitiful 67% gain this year, Captain Naz is sucking wind at a projected 77%, and even the Icarus-like Ensign Russ is currently extrapolating to a beggarly 95%.

Oh well, it was a good run – while it lasted.

I’d urge everyone to stay calm. And eat their Wheaties. I encourage the latter in particular because perhaps the most shocking lack of energy associated with any financial instrument that that I track is that of the good old Wheat market:

Let’s try not to panic, OK? Published reports suggest that the Ag Bears are coming out of hibernation a bit early, and shorting commodities at their angriest magnitudes in about three years. The crops look strong, and the warehouses are full.

Plus, there’s the whole trade war thing, which, whatever form its ultimate resolution assumes, is not currently helping the holders of this most stalwart of amber wave grain crops. Nor, for that matter, is it offering much solace to the other charter members of the Grain Complex: Soy Beans and Corn.

So there’s some perverse good news here: if the eating of Wheaties does indeed procure the benefits that were featured in those adverts of old, there should be no shortage of affordable supply about which to complain.

Besides, other markets are showing signs of vigor, and none more so than the global bond complex. Yields on virtually every benchmark government security dropped by unmistakably large amounts this past week, as the 30-year bull run in fixed income securities displayed no indication of running out of steam in the foreseeable future.

The signal event of the week – and one that I strongly believe merits our sustained attention, was the comments of ECB Chairman (Super) Mario Draghi, who, in ending what I believe has been a creditable run (he retires from the post in October), looks, by all indications intent on going out in a blaze of glory. Specifically, on Thursday morning, he took to the podium to inform his constituents and well-wishers that: a) the Bank is lowering its 2019 GDP forecasts for the Eurozone from 1.7% to 1.1% (a fairly alarming downward boot); b) is committing to hold rates steady for at least the rest of the year (and beyond the point of his retiring); and c) is reinstituting a menacing sounding program called Tactical Long-Term Refinancing Operations – designed to grease the rusty engines of European bank lending.

His renewed, or, if you will, reinvigorated pessimism is summarized in the chart provided below.

By way of context, it’s important to bear in mind that the more dismally positioned dark blue line is the new, March projection, and, in this chart is compared with the forecasts of December – when everyone (including yours truly) was justifiably concerned that the wheels were coming of the global economic bus – this time perhaps in earnest.

Perhaps most notable about Mario’s aggressively dovish turn is that it comes on the heels of a similar 180 executed by our own Fed Chieftain: Jerome (Jay) Powell.

As might be expected, global equities sold off in the wake of these sentiments, while the world’s bonds rallied like banshees. And, for me, there are only a couple of related inferences to draw from these tidings. First, Central Banks (and we can certainly throw in both the Bank of Japan and the Peoples’ Republic Bank of China) are terrified about a deceleration of global economic activity.

And second, they’re not going to stand idly by and watch it unfold. What I myself am seeing in all of the above is the likelihood that within a finite period of time, the big Central Banks will be revving up their printing presses and creating new money. Stated another way, not only will they encourage economic agents to eat there Wheaties, they’ll be tearing open the boxes, pouring them into bowls, adding milk and shoving them across the table at us.

Further corroboration of this scenario came to our shores on Friday, with the February Jobs Report informing us of the creation of a pitiful 20K new private engagements. Now, as you’ve probably read, the release was not unilaterally negative. Average Hourly Earnings exceeded expectations, the separately calculated base unemployment rate hit a new secular low of 3.8%, and the broader, underemployment metric (including those searching for full-time jobs but only able to find episodic gigs) also breached a decade-long minimal threshold at 7.3%.

But there is a decided lethargy in view across the great economic expanse, and those that ignore these tidings do so at their own peril.

As we have covered in great detail over our time together, much of the manner in which these trends should be interpreted is through a political lens. I believe that a visible slowdown is simply an unacceptable outcome for elected and appointed officials across the globe. It. Just. Can’t. Happen. Not in the United States, where the children are so bored that they decided to start the 2020 election cycle about nine months early, where the economic policy debate focuses most intently on whether we should institute a wealth tax, break up our great technology companies, eliminate, full-stop, our usage of fossil fuels, and provide free education, health care and a guaranteed income for everyone who manages to plant a toe on our shores. Not in Europe, where they have never recovered from the Crash, and where, among other problems that plague them, they must contend with this whole Brexit mess before the end of the month. And not in the Peoples’ Republic, where the slowdown that they do their best to hide menaces the absolute dictatorial control which the ruling party voted for itself just last year.

So I don’t believe that there will be any clearing of the markets. Rather, we will deal with our global hangovers of excessive debt using the same remedy as that of our forebears – with a dose of the hair of the dog that bit us. If you doubt this, just take a look at the proposals for the repair of the fiscs of American states including New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, California, and, of course, Illinois. All feature not only Democratic governors (white males – natch – including billionaire scions, ex Goldman partners, former hedge fund managers and other such world-class statesmen) but majorities in both legislatures, and all propose to energize their flagging economic fortunes and looming insolvencies by a combination of more borrowing, increased taxes, and, of course, bigger budgets.

What could possible go wrong?

But I’m inclined to take a somewhat more optimistic view of these dynamics (except perhaps the issues at the state level). What is most clear to me is that again for political reasons, interest rates CANNOT rise – anywhere in the world, and, with any signs of an accelerating economic downturn, they will in fact have to fall.

So, in a world where financial assets other than perhaps Wheat are evidencing patterns of increased shortage, where borrowing costs are at laughably low levels and may submerge from here, how much risk is there in holding onto, or even increasing one’s inventory of these assets?

Over the medium term, I think the answer is not much. But I do expect that the current downturn carries forward for a spell. I fact, I kind of hope that it does. A few percentage points down from here, with the world awash in fiat currency, with politicians and Central Bankers (pseudo-politicians that they are) telegraphing their absolute terror at any kind of December-like selloff, equities in particular will start to look like a bargain.

And, on balance, I’d include Wheat in this equation. After all, it’s trading at a three-year low, and if, as expected, we do strike some sort of deal with China, the silos across the Great Midwest should begin the emptying process.

And yes, you can help, and, if you’re so minded, you know exactly what to do. So, boys and girls, I close this note by encouraging you to eat your Wheaties, for the good of the nation, its farmers, and the global economy.

I hardly need to add that the extra fiber may also come in handy as you prepare yourselves for what is likely to be an eventful rest of the year.

TIMSHEL

Or should I ask “qui est Robespierre?”. We probably should start with the latter, asking who this Robespierre character is. Or was. And I must mention, by way of full disclosure, that I’m a pretty fanatical Robespierre groupie. His name, Robespierre, Maximillien de Robespierre – elegantly trips of the tongue. Save for the fact that he’s been dead for 9 generations, I’d probably drop all of my present affairs and follow him on tour.

Further, though he didn’t live into the 19th Century and the associated advent of photography, you’ve got to admit he takes a nice portrait, right?

The six or seven biographies and historical novels I’ve read about MdR suggest that he liked this sort of thing, being captured in portraiture that is. From this perspective (and not others) he was something of a late 18th Century Paris Hilton, and in fact rose to fame and infamy in the city named after America’s former favorite social butterfly.

He came from humble beginnings (the de in the middle of his sir-name notwithstanding), and even at the height of his power, he lived in a single room above the stables of a local carpenter. He held no official title greater than that of one of many deputies to the Third Estate, formed in hostile response to King Louis the 16th’s unfortunate decision to disband the senate a couple of years prior.

He never married, amassed no fortune, and in general had no worldly objective other than to advance the revolution he didn’t start, but led for a brief time. Back in turn-of-the-19th-century France, they had their reasons for revolting. The peasants were starving; the farms lay fallow; in the cities, there were almost no staple provisions and what foodstuffs could be secured were sold at obscenely high prices. More than anything, they wanted a Constitution, something akin to the document recently drafted across the Atlantic Ocean, in the United States whose own revolution they had financed.

Meanwhile, Louis XVI and his even more famous wife (Marie-Antoinette) partied it up in far flung locales such as Versailles, often with the uber-incestuous European Royalty (MA was the sister of the Emperor of Austria). Louis doesn’t seem on the whole like a bad fellow, but it appears that he was too occupied with his own grandeur to devote much attention to the welfare of his subjects.

In light of all of the above, the French Revolution wanted no fortune-seeking partiers, only zealots, to lead its cause, and Robespierre fit the bill perfectly. He worked day and night, fueled only by his obsessive commitment to the success of the movement.. For these reasons and others, they called him The Incorruptible. And, for about 18 months in the 1790s, his every utterance was the rule of law in France. One of his first major acts was to separate the King’s head from his carcass – without so much as a trial. It was Robespierre – The Incorruptible – who argued successfully against due process for Louis, suggesting that to hold a trial for the King was to imply that the entire French Revolution stood on shaky ground. The revolution was a war, he argued, and the Crown was the enemy. To submit the case to a court of justice was to unthinkably suggest that the Revolution itself might be founded on flawed premise. And after that speech, there wasn’t much left to do but lop of Louis’ head.

Not long after, through his guidance as a member of the ironically-named-but-indisputably-omnipotent Committee for Public Safety, it became a capital crime to take any action not deemed to advance the cause of the Revolution, or even for thinking counter-revolutionary thoughts.

The streets were soon awash in blood. Hunger and pestilence increased. Opportunistic foreign powers began dreaming of seizing France for their own, and moving their armies into a position to do so.

I’m not the first to suggest this, but with each passing day, the modern Progressive Movement appears to be more closely adhering to the script set forth by Robespierre and his cronies. The 116th Congress, in two short months, has introduced bills to impeach The President, is hitting its marks in admirable fashion, as just over the last several days, it has introduced legislation to, remove the health care system from the filthy claws of the private sector, eliminate the usage of fossil fuels, and to impose a redistributive wealth tax. All of these efforts have evolved in eerie reminiscence of the Jacobin Clubs where the modes of operation of the French Revolution were fomented. Late last week, published reports told of behind-the-scenes meetings where House Democratic Caucus members were instructed to either vote as they were told, or find themselves on THE LIST. Ah, THE LIST. Robespierre would be proud.

But the question remains: who is today’s Robespierre? I’m having a difficult time finding a suitable Progressive to fill his literally small but figuratively enormous shoes. Liz Warren had a chance but probably blew it by misrepresenting the racial origins of her forebears. Kam Harris will have to live down her rise to the pinnacle of California politics while being Willie Brown’s side piece. The more we learn about Bernie, the more his Incorruptible nature is given the lie (see the Burlington College closure episode for further details). Booker? Maybe, but I wouldn’t look too closely under the hood there. Pelosi? Married to an uber-wealthy SF developer. Gillibrand? A documented political opportunist. AOC? Probably the favorite at the moment, but she has a long distance to travel before one can place her in the pantheon violent revolutionaries. I will admit, however, to admiring her efforts to gain this status.

But the modern-day Jacobin engine roars forward, grinding up most everyone that dares to get in its way, and as for me, I am rather enjoying the spectacle. It’s certainly entertaining and enlightening to learn that all employees of organizations that perform such tasks as searching for, extracting, refining and distributing fossil fuels, developing, obtaining regulatory approval and dispensing pharmaceutical medicines, underwriting the health care costs of the populous (at considerable risk) are enemies of the people. Who knew? Progressive politicians who describe those with differing viewpoints (including the President) as racists, bigots, fascists, Nazis, etc. are contemporaneously bemoaning our loss of freedoms and issuing dire warnings about our rapid-fire transformation into a totalitarian state. The irony of their crescendo of verbal assault and descent from decency bearing no consequence to them (on balance it accrues to their benefit) is apparently lost upon them. Can’t you see? Trump is Hitler circa 1933? Wake up! Get Woke! Before it’s too late! But I doubt that Hitler would’ve allowed even the tiniest fraction of these sentiments to be expressed in any forum whatever, back in the ‘30s (to say nothing of the early ‘40s). Just the other day, former Vice President/presumed Presidential Candidate Joe Biden found himself castigated for his suggestion that his successor (Mike Pence) might be a decent guy. Joe wasn’t born yesterday. Or even the day before. He immediately walked back this pleasantry.

You can put me in the camp that believes that all of this is tantamount to a modern-day Progressive circular firing squad. And I can only hope it continues on for, say, the next 6 quarters. Because that’s about the only way to ensure that some of these nutty ideas, which would not enhance, but rather would destroy, freedoms, and which would certainly destroy the economy, can be properly vetted and rejected.

And I suspect that Mr. Market agrees with me. Our indices lurched forward to yet another in the longest string of weekly gains in more than a generation. And I think that we might owe a perverse debt of gratitude to the Progressive Caucus for these happy tidings. Had the left side of the political aisle acted with more discipline, patience and decorum, investors might have had more to fear, might’ve felt less sanguine. As a case and point, let’s wind the clock back to December, before the 116th Congress placed its collective hands on the bible. If we had awakened midweek to the spectacle of the President’s lawyer/fixer slinging as much mud as he could on his former boss (under oath in Congressional testimony), and contemporaneously learn that the President himself had abruptly walked out of a much heralded summit with a rogue nuclear nation, what would’ve happened in the markets? My guess is that they would’ve sold off and hard.

And I think we can in part thank lefty politicians who dominate the airwaves and are in an apparent frenzied struggle to outflank one another in terms of hysteria/ideas to destroy the fruits of our free society

So the markets rallied, albeit with reduced vigor from recent patterns. It is my sad duty to report that the Gallant 500 is currently annualizing at a beggarly 97%, and that it may even slow from here. Earnings are over, and the macro signals are mixed. Confidence measures are at all-time highs, and GDP revisions came in above estimate, but inflation is tepid, as is manufacturing, and housing is downright impaired. The Fed, however, remains in our corner, and all I can say is thank heaven for that.

Those searching around for something about which to fret should consider that the Atlanta Fed’s introductory Q1 GDP estimate has plunged to microscopic depths.

If you’re having a hard time seeing this figure, it’s the single point in the southeast corner of the graph, and it clocks in at 0.3% — a nosebleed-inducing drop from the ~3.0% registered across 2018.

But I reckon we’ll see. The estimate is likely to move around a bit before the Commerce Department weighs in officially at the end of April.

Among other benefits, by then that lonely dot in the lower left hand corner will have morphed into a more visually pleasing time series.

I still think this here market could use a breather, and, as a further indication of this, I note that the global bond prices have backed off a bit, with yields rising in virtually every jurisdiction. The U.S. 10 year is now at a robust 2.75%, JGB rates have risen almost back to the Mendoza Line of 0.0% and the Swiss now only want a skinny 14 basis points/year for the purposes of using our money. Rising yields in a slowing economy at the end of an extended and improbable rally, combine, at least in my judgment, to point the equity valuation arrows nominally downward.

Meanwhile the search for a modern-day Robespierre continues. The man himself, after ruling the roost with such violent panache in 1793, found himself escorted to the guillotine in the summer 1794. But then again, pretty much every member of the Committee for Public Safety met the same fate before the turn of the century. Let’s all agree on one thing, though, shall we? Max de Robe had one heck of a run for a while there, and the modern day Jacobins would do themselves no harm by studying his example – all the way to its violent conclusion.

TIMSHEL