Quote from Locutus:
I'm not long anymore since quite some time (if I had been I'd be broke now) but this situation seems strange to me:
1) Stocks down
2) Yields
3) Gold up and making significant highs
4) Oil coming down but still pretty high imo
Basically the story is "We won't have inflation and everything will suck so much returns for equities will be so low that you better sell them and since you have nowhere to put the money put it in gold just cos". If anything, the only element of the market that is "running ahead" of fundamentals right now is gold and maybe oil somewhat. The rest seem pretty reasonably priced to me (as in a price which makes sense to me given the cirumstances).
And yes, if treasury rates are at 2.6% then the market believes inflation will be ridiculously moderate *for the next 10 years*. Remember that 2 yr rates are 0.32% so that basically means that within the next 2 years there has to be pretty significant deflation to get anywhere near a decent ROI (and by decent I mean what the market deems "normal" for a real return on bonds).
So I'm not long anymore since some time because although earnings were pretty good macro economics have failed to beat expectations and in fact have in many important cases continued to suck even after such a long losing streak which does not really inspire much confidence to me. However it still looks like we are in an uptrend and at strong support so I wouldn't be surprised by either direction at the moment because markets are well priced (imo) and nobody knows whether the economy will pick up or not anytime soon.
On a final note the market's inability to rally on the news that the debt ceiling has been raised is no news at all because real traders in neither the bond nor the equity markets ever gave a shit about that because the basic facts are
a) The US is not insolvent
b) The US cannot possibly be "insolvent" given the current setup
c) Even if the debt ceiling wasn't raised that does not imply default in any way at all for quite some time