Gloomy forecasts have generally held sway at the Committee for Monetary Research and Education’s annual spring dinner, but this is the only time we can recall when there were no optimists on the dais bold enough to challenge a consensus now gloomier, probably, than at any time since the 1930s. Jim Grant’s off-the-cuff talk was about as sunny as the evening’s presentations got, and even he was unwilling to allow much more than a ray of hope that everything would somehow turn out all right. Bob Hoye, on the other hand, was unequivocally bearish: “The chances of anyone fixing this mess,” he told the crowd, “are literally zero.” But the scariest talk of the night came from Bill Beach, director of the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis. If you find today’s economic news too depressing to imbibe, he said, “things are even darker than they seem.” Read the Rest of the Article | Comments *** The bear rally that wouldn’t die frolicked once again yesterday, leaving shorts badly bloodied and hanging from the ropes. The Dow Industrials, for one, opened sharply higher on a 100-point gap, then just kept going with only tepid pullbacks along the way. The buying spree had been telegraphed the night before when the E-mini index futures appeared to struggle to reach a minor pullback target off Friday’s highs. Because of this, around 1 a.m. Monday, with the June E-Mini S&Ps trading around 878, we warned subscribers with short positions to brace for more insanity: “Bears would be wise to run for the hills if the futures pop above 897.00 today,” we advised, “since that would turn the hourly chart unambiguously bullish. A subtler bullish signal would occur on the 15-minute chart at 885.00.” Not long afterward, both of these Hidden Pivots gave way, overpowered by short-covering
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