The Morning Line

Time for a Little Skepticism

I’ve supported Trump since his first term, but my hopes for his success peaked a month ago when a panic-induced plunge in the S&P 500 reversed almost precisely from a 4820 target I’d sent out to subscribers. I saw this as the surprisingly quick end to a bear market that had only just begun in February. If my hunch turned out to be correct, this meant America would experience no recession, and the tariff wars would blow over without causing any lasting harm to the global economy.

So far, the prediction — still an outlier, for sure —  looks good, at least on paper. The chart shows how the S&Ps have rallied a Krakatoa-like 1089 points since trampolining in April from within a hair of 4820. The powerful move has somewhat muffled the clamor of TDS sufferers, even if it seems clear by now that nothing will ever bring them around. Meanwhile, dare we hope the radical changes that have set Trump’s agenda will extricate America from a debt trap with no apparent exit?  A debt deflation has long seemed inevitable because public and private debts have grown far too large to repay.

DOGE Gains Up in Smoke

If Trump initially offered a possible way out and seemed enthusiastic about pulling off the impossible, he may have lost too much momentum already to succeed. The DOGE cuts that fired up so many supporters have been voted down by Congress, including by some Republicans, and it took quiet help from the Fed last week to bolster the appearance of strong demand for long-term Treasury paper. Now, if the Supreme Court fails to put the kibosh on birthright citizenship and nationwide injunctions by woke judges, Trump may need a hat-trick of successes in Ukraine, the Middle East and China to rally the troops.

Still more daunting is the challenge of postponing a long-overdue recession. A radical re-shaping of the U.S. and global economies such as Trump is attempting could conceivably accomplish this, but it no longer looks like a good bet. Mainly, it’s a matter of timing. Trump evidently thinks tax cuts, the reopening of factories, and some MAGA ray-rah will keep America’s economy humming. This now looks doubtful, if for no other reason than that 7% mortgages are about to push residential real estate into the same deep hole that has buried commercial real estate. There is also fatal hubris in the stock market’s climb.  Although it has provided spectacular returns for the most affluent Americans, the broad middle class has been beggared by inflation. Trump would have us believe he offers an easy and painless way out, but a bear market in stocks will end that delusion.

I said I would continue to publish my ‘insanely bullish forecast’ until such time as the S&Ps fell decisively below 4820. I am retiring the commentary from the front page, however, because I believe the so-far 1089-point rally is near an end. Powerful as it looks on a chart, I doubt that it will achieve new record highs.  Stocks look poised to fall hard, a development bound to take many investors by surprise.

Trump Magic Losing Its Hold on Investors

[The S&Ps are losing steam after recouping two-thirds of their 1400-point loss in March/April. The stall near 5700 has left them hovering in the danger zone, just like the U.S. economy. Will it skirt recession? I have my doubts, even if price action on the S&P chart on April 7 led me to speculate that business would continue to hum along. The index had bottomed slightly above an important Hidden Pivot target at 4820, and so it was no stretch to infer that this may have marked the end of the bear market. Without the chart, though, it’s hard for me to imagine that America will skate past recession. A real estate crash is coming, and it’s only a matter of time before its mounting weight overwhelms whatever miracles people expect from Trump. His tariff announcements, to the extent they can be construed as bullish for stocks, have lost their ability to affect securities markets for more than an hour or two. He did a deal with Great Britain last week, spinning it as the first of many.  That story will not distract anyone from the only deal that matters, however — with China. No one could be optimistic that President Xi Jinping will be an easy touch, so don’t be surprised if stocks take a header this week. Meanwhile, the commentary below will continue to run until an S&P breach of 4820 proves my bullish thesis wrong. RA ]

***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Four Weeks Off Bottom, Stocks Enter ‘Danger Zone’

[We are coming up on a month since I blew ‘Taps’ for a bear market that supposedly was just starting. There was panic in the air that Sunday because America’s enemies in Brussels were dumping T-Bonds in an attempt to crash the market. They were intent on forcing Powell to ease, but their plan failed when he stood firm.  The S&Ps dove several hundred points, but instead of continuing into the abyss, they turned from within a hair of a major target at 4820 that I’d billboarded in Rick’s Picks. From this, I inferred that the bear market had seen its worst and that there would be no recession, nor any lasting, destructive effects from the tariff war. This prediction seemed outrageous at the time, and perhaps even moreso now, since Canada, America’s biggest trading partner, has just elected a leftist who wants to go to war with the U.S. rather than kowtow to Trump’s demands.

I wish them good luck – and China, too – since curtailing business with the U.S. will send their respective economies into a death spiral. Europe’s economy is already dying, and they, too, will eventually have to come around. If the U.S. doesn’t sink into recession itself, Trump stands to win it all. The recession would not be due to supposedly falling GDP, which, in the context of reduced government spending is a meaningless heap of statistical manure, but because bear markets happen, and U.S. stocks may already be in the grip of one.  That is notwithstanding what I’ve written below – my commentary from several weeks ago, when stocks failed to crash.  I will run it every week until the S&Ps prove my thesis wrong by relapsing decisively below 4820.  If and when that happens, it will be time for Katie to bar the door, since, with the U.S. economic engine sputtering, the world will face the risk of a Second Great Depression.  RA ]  

***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Insanely Bullish Forecast Survives Yet Another Week

[My prediction three weeks ago that the bear market had seen its worst seemed crazy at the time — particularly to me, because I’m an inveterate permabear.  However, last week, bulls distanced themselves further from the low of the mini-crash that occurred when tariff  panic was in the air.  I’d said the selling would take the S&Ps no lower than 4820, and that is almost exactly what occurred: a 4835 low marked the bottom of a 1312-point plunge. If it also caught the bear’s last gasp, that would mean everyone taking pot-shots at Trump for screwing up the world is flat-out wrong. In any case, I will continue to run my original commentary (see below) until SPX proves me wrong by relapsing decisively below 4820. I have reduced the odds that the low will survive to 50-50 because the continuing rise in long-term rates could make it impossible for the economy to avoid a recession. But maybe that trend is about to peter out as well. In any case, it is still much better odds than most economists, the news media and the blogosphere are giving Trump and the economy.  RA ]    

***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Outrageously Bullish Forecast Survives Another Week

[Two weeks ago, I made the seemingly outrageous prediction that Trump’s tariff offensive would not cause a recession and that the stock market bear would soon be over.  Shares were in a steep plunge at the time, and investors around the world seemed ready to hit the panic button that Sunday night. The S&Ps had last traded around 5300, but my technical runes said they would fall no lower than 4820, even with traders in the grip of fear. Lo, the SPX fell no lower than 4835 on Monday, then bounced a whopping 646 points. Although they’ve since given back some of the gains, they are still 447 points above the low and showing little inclination to test it.  That could change, of course, and stocks could relapse with a vengeance. If so, it would likely put the U.S. and global economies on a path toward deep recession, or even a Second Great Depression.  That is what I might have expected if the 4820 target hadn’t looked so promising as a support. We shall see. In the meantime, I’ll continue to run my original commentary (see below) until the stock market proves me wrong. It is either going to new highs by summer, or about to resume a historic crash.  RA ]

***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Round One vs. The Bear Goes to Trump

[Just ahead of last Monday’s steep plunge, I predicted here that an S&P reversal from 4820 would mark the end of the bear market. So far, SPX has rallied 646 points off an actual low at 4835. Bulls are not yet out of the woods, however, since a relapse could occur at any time. The stock market remains spooked by Europe’s dumping of Treasury paper in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the U.S. financial system.  With the EU economy swirling down the crapper, the globalists are desperate to force Powell to ease in order to rescue big hedge funds that were leveraged up to their eyeballs with Treasury paper.  So far, the Fed chairman has stood his ground, and it appears the EU attempt to sabotage the U.S. bond market will fail.  In any event, the commentary below will continue to run until such time as the S&Ps crash the 4820 Hidden Pivot and prove me wrong. If you keep my thesis in mind — that as long as 4820 holds, there will be no recession, nor any harmful effects from tariffs — you will be better able to judge the jaw-dropping stupidity of the mainstream media’s coverage of Trump 2.0. Because of their blind hatred of the president, the eggheads, reporters, pundits and benighted editorialists will continue to get everything wrong until stocks are once again soaring to new all-time highs.  RA]

***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Round One vs. The Bear Goes to Trump

[Just ahead of last Monday’s plunge, Rick’s Picks predicted that an S&P reversal at 4820 would mark the end of the bear market. Here’s a chart that shows the 661-point rally that occurred off an actual low at 4835. Bulls are not yet out of the woods, however, since a relapse could occur at any time. The stock market remains spooked by Europe’s dumping of Treasury paper in a deliberate attempt to destabilize the U.S. financial system.  With the EU economy swirling down the crapper, the globalists are desperate to force Powell to ease, ostensibly to rescue big hedge funds that were leveraged up to their eyeballs with Treasury paper.  So far, the Fed chairman has stood his ground, and it appears the EU attempt to sabotage the U.S. bond market will fail.  In any event, the commentary below will continue to run until the S&Ps crash the 4820 Hidden Pivot and prove me wrong. If you keep my thesis in mind — that as long as 4820 holds, there will be no recession, nor any harmful effects from Trump’s tariffs — you will be better able to judge the head-slapping ignorance of the mainstream media’s coverage of Trump 2.0. Because of their blind hatred of the president, these clowns will continue to get everything wrong until stocks are once again soaring to new all-time highs.  RA]

 ***

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle jerk.

                                                                                         Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare shit-stain Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

Trump About to Kick the Bear Market’s Ass

A word of advice if you’re looking for bankable information on the direction of the economy:  tune out the mainstream media’s cavalcade of Trump-deranged bozos and focus on the 4820 target in the SPX chart above. Think of it as Trump’s lucky number, but also a very good place for these all-too-interesting times to find temporary equilibrium. That is my worst-case target for a bear market that many believe is only just getting started.  As a die-hard permabear myself, I’ve been eagerly anticipating the Mother of All Bears since, like, 2010. The global economy was badly in need of a reset and still is. It will happen, but not now. Instead, it looks like Trump is about to achieve the impossible, averting a catastrophic debt deflation while also staving off recession. Even the already certain collapse of commercial real estate will have to wait.

You cannot get to this happy place, psychologically speaking. if you stay tuned to the MSM morons who invent the news. You might as well listen to Whoopi Goldberg as to the “experts” who cover tariff news for MSNBC, The New York P.O.S. Times and Bloomberg. Bloomberg is probably the worst offender, since they literally live to kick Trump in the balls at every opportunity. (Don’t they know he’s wearing a Kevlar cup?)  The latest Bloomberg teaser headline sums up the mainstream media’s knee-jerk reaction to the Orange Man:  Trump’s Bear Market.  Leave it to Bloomberg’s sniveling lightweights to discover and attempt to exploit a bear market just as it’s ending. Indeed, the storm surge is due to blow out to sea before the news editors at Bloomberg, the Times and WAPO have reached the Kleenex phase of their long-running circle-jerk.

Christmas Glide Path

Tune them out and trust my 4820 target as a worst-case low for the bear market. To borrow Vizzini’s line, it is ‘INCONCEIVABLE!’ that the S&Ps will fall significantly below it, if at all. And that means Trump, Musk and their intrepid band of budget vigilantes will have put America back on a glide path just in time for Christmas.  In other words: no recession, no harmful fallout from the tariffs, and no serious disruptions from lawfare scumfuck Norm Eisen and other treasonous actors hell-bent on destroying the U.S. through the courts. Far from a tariff-induced recession, watch for felicitous stirrings in the Rust Belt, where union workers will be telling a very different story compared to the ‘Orange Man BAD!‘ narrative on MSNBC and CNN.

If you’re interested in precise bear market targets for the ‘lunatic-sector’ stocks, take a free trial to Rick’s Picks and see my post on this in the chat room, or find them in my latest interview on Howe Street. Prepare to have your mind blown three months from now by the precise accuracy of my forecasts for climactic declines in NVDA, TSLA, AAPL, MSFT, GOOG, NFLX, CMG, META and AMZN.

‘Golden Era’ Could Face a Deep Valley First

Here’s some cold water on the notion that Trump’s radical trade policies could help bring about an economic golden era. I’d written here last week that punitive tariffs might be the only medicine strong enough to jolt the world into doing honest business. Foreign manufacturers would leap to relocate their plants to the U.S. in order to avoid the levies and also greatly reduce delivery costs.

There’s just one problem with this, wrote a subscriber, Ben, who posts regularly on the site. “I don’t think Trump has the time to re-shore to any great extent. He has 3.5 years, but this is something that takes more than two presidential terms to accomplish.” Indeed, as ambitious as Trump’s plans are, there is no political consensus to implement them.” Even some Republicans are resisting the idea of re-shoring.

Bear Threat

An additional problem is that a shake-up of global trade could trip stocks into a bear market, weakening the ability of middle class Americans to cope with the enormous cost of putting America first. High tariffs cannot but dramatically inflate the price of cars, appliances and other big-ticket items that Americans depend on from sources outside the U.S. Is Trump just bluffing? Even if he is, investors don’t have the luxury of counting on it.

A more immediate and intractable problem Trump will face is the ongoing collapse of commercial real estate. In dollar terms it is a huge number, and yet no big cities have taken commensurate writedowns. Instead, they all seem to be hoping that a massive economic upswing brings workers back to their offices. One San Francisco developer bet a hundred million dollars on this, buying an 11-story building for $40 million that had been assessed at $140 million. He plans to put $50 million of improvements into it, but the investment evidently is predicated on the fantasy that AI workers will fill San Francisco’s empty towers.