This Business Will Get Out of Control.

Equities start the day lower because big bad Kim Jong dumb is fueling up his toy rockets again. Sigh…another 0.25% lopped off futures because a guy who likes playing with fire found more matches. I’ll tell you what…this business will get out of control…it will get out of control and we’ll be lucky to live thru it (I’ve been waiting forever to use this link, man I love that movie). @stockcats put out this wonderful spinning chart showing what we keep going thru so hopefully that cycle gets broken one day. CPI came out this morning and it was a touch hot, 1.9% YoY vs expectation of 1.8%. Inflation ex shelter, food, and energy is near a life time low though so I guess if you don’t own a home, eat, or use any energy you definitely don’t care about inflation (h/t @boes_). The odds of a hike in Dec jumped to 42% but I’m in the camp that the Fed is about to use its balance sheet as a primary tool for monetary policy so meh. New highs yesterday!! Boom! Who has two thumbs and loves new highs à this guy. @RyanDetrick pointed out that the S&P is up 5 months in a row and “going back in history a five-month win streak is one of the more bullish signals for longer-term returns. A year later it was higher 23 out of the previous 24 times and higher 13.2% on average”. In other words markets trend...crazy right? Ok, let’s see if another stupid, stupid, stupid pre market selloff due to another potential missile launch did any permanent damage to the rally. Hey, guess what, he’s gonna do this for a long time. He’s been doing it for a long time. Why does it matter so much to the market now and not then? 

After the open we rallied for the entire first half of the day because, like I’ve said a bunch of times on $TWTR, people are still overreacting to headlines. The problem is, we get these blips where it makes sense to fade the crowd but the blips don’t last very long. We hit unchanged just after 11am ET where we jumped right into our vol crushing compactor that happens every single day. VIX at 10.7? no no no, we can’t have that, 10.30 makes sense. Crude…we haven’t talked about Crude in a while…remember when crude fell every single day like a retail stock? Not anymore, Crude hit $50 like it was nothing and I can’t wait for all the bears from $40 to flip and tell us why $75 feels right. Winners were mostly energy names like CHK, RRC, EQT, and FTI but Utes like SO, ETR, and D got in on the action. DIS appears caught in a mouse trap, falling another 1% today after Moonves of CBS gave them a verbal smackdown. I love this quote:  "We think there is a place in the market for straight clips and scores," he said. "I'm a sports fan, but when I turn on ESPN, I see people yelling at each other." Actually, you know what I really hate?  How hard it is to navigate ESPN.COM. I don’t need auto-played highlights of Grambling vs Acorn St while I’m trying to find the freaking Cubs score. Enough of these insanely complex websites PLEASE. There weren’t a ton of losers worth making fun of to be honest but TIF fell 5% after Qatar sold a stake and EFX fell another 3% because “stairs up, elevator down” is a thing from time to time. By lunch we sat on unchanged but well off the morning lows. 

The rest of the day was as exciting as a dry Arby’s sandwich and we closed at 2,496 down 0.09%. Not much to take away here other than the fact that headline reading algos are alive and well. A decent amount of economic data tomorrow so hopefully that’s enough to hit 2,500 on the S&P. Oh and if you’re looking for a LOCK OF THE WEEK Cincy is gonna CRUSH Houston tonight. Who dey!!  Final Score:  Dow +22bps, S&P500 -9bps, Nasdaq -48bps, Rus2k -13bps.

 

News Highlights:

 

I have 2 final links tonight because I couldn’t decide between them.

The first comes from my guy Elon Musk showing all the failures it takes for mankind to advance. Yea, let’s bet against our Thomas Edison because “wow, he really burns cash” So he’s trying to make rockets that land and cars that don’t destroy the environment yet people who sit in fancy offices want to fade all that? Sigh.

 

The second is one of the best tennis serves I’ve ever seen! Love how he sold it too. 

 

Have a good night