Alright, big post coming up:
If you were to believe the quants, you'd think we were just in a widening market and had simply hit resistance no worries m8 everything's normal:
This is not so. The world (specifically, the northern hemisphere) is about to see a third wave that is going to be several factors worse than what we've seen so far. Do NOT pay attention to the technicals, they are NOT relevant in this market. This market IS the virus and there are a lot of dinosaurs and quants with their heads in the sand trying to figure things out using their number-crunching thinking that this is going to tell them what's going on like it usually does. It isn't. In non-normal market conditions, almost all financial modelling and quantitative analysis goes out the window. If you don't believe me, just ask the guys at long term capital management what I mean.
We also actually have data showing how the quants are doing vs the rest of us. Retail traders have actually traded the pandemic better than the dinosaurs running the hedge funds:
And we are doing so precisely because these are people that cannot see the forest for the trees and can only see their formulas and technical analysis - analysis which does
not work in these market conditions. Lately (over the past few weeks) they've been banging on about a rotation from growth into value, which they've only just realised, days (weeks really) after it stopped, is no longer happening.
As a result, you now get headlines like this:
Followed up by ten minute segments talking to whatever talking head they can get on and asking questions like "can this rotation rotation continue?"
(yes, they really asked that, and yes, his answer was really just a long winded way of saying he had no idea)
This market is and has always been since the pandemic started, the virus. And the virus's worst hit is yet to come.
Global cases have just hit 50 million:
And the northern hemisphere's third wave, which actually began a month ago, is now well & truly under way:
Let me be clear here: This one is going to be much, much, MUCH worse than the other two and far more lethal on account of the cold's effect on both infectiousness and lethality. Ten minutes on google or five minutes talking to any epidemiologist will show you the exponential difference that environment makes to both.
Governments, it would seem, are actually ahead of the markets on this one though and aren't messing around this time.
New york's just announced shutting of bars etc:
Sports are done for:
Even sweden, the country all the morons were banging on about being a model response that we should all emulate is going back into lockdowns:
Russia's also absolutely shitting bricks and even halting food exports, and when you think about the winters they have, I'd be doing the same thing too: