The New CS Board

[jumanji0881]

The Twilight-Zone Economy & Alternate-Reality Equity Markets : https://www.zerohedge.com/political/twilight-zone-economy-alternate-reality-equity-markets

My Comment : The Fed has created an absolutely insane world. Just how long can the economy sustain the kind of commodity inflation (eg steel and lumber) ? And with $2.25T in additional infrastructure spending, inflation is just getting started.

Excerpts:
Yet, policymakers continue to become further disconnected from the real economy where people work and spend. These leaders imagine an economy of full employment forever, risk assets continually rising in price (not value) with virtually no market corrections. It is an economic wonderland for corporations to use low-cost debt to finance infinite profits and stock buybacks. Wall Street is only too pleased to hype this corporate financial engineering. Goldman Sachs forecasts a GDP surge to 8% in the 4th quarter of this year due to the $1.9T American Rescue Bill. Bond king Bill Gross predicts interest rates surge to 3 – 4 % by year end. Does all this monetary and fiscal stimulus result in a healthy solid economy or the most catastrophic inflationary bubble in modern times? Our post identifies the dimensions of the Twilight Zone Economy.

Sovereign negative-yielding debt reached a record high of $17.8T last month. Thus, a massive level of worldwide debt is not repaying the entire principal to debt holders. Correlated to soaring negative-yielding debt is the meteoric rise of trader speculation in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Such parabolic moves in debt and speculative digital currencies like Bitcoin are candidates for a significant reversion in value at some date in the near future.

Traders are using ever-increasing levels of margin to buy stocks. Corporate executives with record levels of cash are resuming stock buybacks as the Dow and S&P continue to set new record highs. Yet, corporate sales and economic fundamentals don’t support this extreme valuation case.

This chart from Real Investment Advisors notes the divergence of stock valuations growing to 164% versus corporate sales growth of 42% and GDP growth at 22% since 2007.

Another sign of an alternative reality is bubbles in non-financial markets. For example, Christie’s just sold a digital work of art by an artist known as Beepie for $69.3M with a non-fungible (exchangeable) token (NFT) when the bidding started at just $100. NFT collectible prices have sky rocked, providing the buyer with ownership rights indicating their purchase is authentic. Beepi knows he’s riding a soaring market, observing, ‘Absolutely it’s a bubble, to be honest.”

An NFT buyer purchased 351 Top NBA Shot videos for $5,000 last January in the video clip market. Based on social media chatter, Momentranks.com values the videos at $67,000 today. Sneaker reselling has soared as the collectible marketplace, StockX, announced that Nike Dunks sold for $33,400 two months ago. StockX disclosed that a Tom Brady rookie trading card sold for a record $1.3M in January. Even innocuous things like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s first tweet sold for $2.9M.

Investors, executives, and the Federal Reserve are addicted to low-interest rates. And just like physical addiction, the time will come when the zero-interest economic drug won’t work anymore, and withdrawal sets in spiraling into a market crash.