The Morning Line

Trump Must Outrun the Inevitable Bear Market

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Trump looks like a hero now, but he could become a goat when the bull market ends. He campaigned as the man who would make America great again, and no one should doubt the sincerity of this quest or his commitment to returning the nation to its core values. To judge from his accomplishments so far, he is up to the task. Few could have imagined, for instance, that he would crush the entrenched woke movement and hamstring Deep State within less than a year of taking office. If he can finish the job by bringing criminal charges against Obama, Hillary Clinton, Comey, Clapper, Brennan et al., and make the charges stick, his presidency would become one for the ages.

But odds are considerably less favorable that he will be able to prevent the stock market and the U.S. economy from imploding under the weight of public debts grown far too large to repay. They include $37 trillion owed by the U.S. Treasury, as well as the financial liabilities of at least two dozen states, led by the breathtakingly reckless Illinois, whose pension system, along with many others, is just a bear market away from failure. The sums involved are much too big for a taxpayer bailout, and when they are ultimately deflated to zero by bankruptcies, the result will distance America more than ever from greatness.

Many Jobs — for Robots

Trump’s plan is to ignite economic growth robust enough to make public debts manageable and homes more affordable. But the way he is going about it, with a surge in deficit spending and a Federal Reserve Board hand-picked to turbocharge an already overheated financial system, will only add more IOUs to the mountainous pile that already exists. Although there will eventually be offsets from tariff collections and the re-shoring of U.S. manufacturing, revenue growth will take years to make a dent in what Americans owe. And no economist or pundit I am aware of has even mentioned that the new factories would necessarily employ relatively few workers if they are to compete in markets where labor is cheap.

Making America Great before a bear market wrecks the economy is the crux of the challenge Trump faces. But only a blind optimist could believe that revving up stimulus past the redline will be a winning strategy.

(Click here for my latest interview — a real doozy — with Jim Goddard on This Week in Money. We discuss the limitations of AI (and Bitcoin!), as well as the reason America’s debts can never be liquidated with a Weimar-style hyperinflation.)

Rick's Picks for Sunday
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$MSFT – Microsoft (Last:520.17)

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$GCV25 – October Gold (Last:3355.40)

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$GDXJ – Junior Gold Miner ETF (Last:73.89)

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$ESU25 – Sep E-Mini S&Ps (Last:6471.50)

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As a hard-core permabear, I find this chart painful to contemplate. It says a thousand-point rally is coming in the S&Ps and that nothing, not even an October surprise, can derail it. This conclusion is related to the way in which buyers penetrated the midpoint Hidden Pivot support at 6165.88. Not only did they slice through it on the first try, they then closed above it for three consecutive bars and never looked back. The pattern itself is too obvious to yield a penny-precise top to short, but there is no mistaking the power that made such short work of p=6165.88. As many subscribers will already know, price action at the midpoint pivot is a reliable telltale even when the underlying pattern is less-than-appealing, never mind perfect. In this instance, there is also the prospect of a back-up-the-truck bottom-fishing opportunity if the futures relapse to the green line (x=6498.94).  Although the implied plunge of nearly a thousand points would be widely viewed as the start of a bear market, it would be an exceptional opportunity to reload, as far as we’re concerned.

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$SIU25 – Sep Silver (Last:38.020)

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I’d said the weekly chart shown could serve as a road map for the next couple of  weeks, and that is still the case. This is notwithstanding the fact that the dipsy-doodle of the last two weeks did not quite come down to the 35.946 midpoint Hidden Pivot support where we’d intended to do some buying.  The pivot is sill valid for bottom-fishing, although the failure of sellers to push the September contract down to it is bullish enough to suggest that the ‘c’ high (39.910) is a slightly less than even bet to get exceeded. The best way to get ahead of the action is to follow it on the hourly chart. Here it is, and it implies the first place we might attempt tightly stopped bottom-fishing would be at p=37.770. I have masked the ‘a’ and ‘b’ coordinates for proprietary reasons, but you can figure them out by working backward from the target. ______ UPDATE (Aug 16, 2:36 p.m.): It’s no fun playing to an empty house, so let’s hear some applause from those of you who bought down at 37.770 as I’d explicitly advised.  Here’s how the chart linked above evolved, producing a theoretical profit so far of $1,400 per contract.

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$TLT – Lehman Bond ETF (Last:87.31)

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TLT’s performance over the last four years has grown increasingly painful to watch, and there are no clear signs this is about to end. In fact, a little more downside remains to complete the pattern shown to D=80.84.  Alternatively, I’d need to see an uncorrected thrust above both of the circled peaks to infer that an important reversal is under way. Barring that, we should assume that more downside to at least 80.84 awaits; or if any lower, to 74.79 (! ) (Weekly chart, A= 108.87 on 4/7/23)

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