How Far We Have Come – The Aleph Blog

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Posted on 21 May 200822 June 2017 by David Merkel

Okay, here is the S&P 500 over the past year:

We haven’t quite made it back to the highs made in July or October. But the VIX has normalized:

And the spread between A2/P2 commercial paper and the two-year Treasury has narrowed as well. Normalcy has returned to the lending markets?

Well, sort of. The question remains as to what happens when the Fed ends their new lending programs, that is, if they can end them. As with many government programs, they take on a life of their own, and they are difficult to end. If the Fed can’t end the new facilities, can they really say that they have ended the crises?

As for market sentiment, consider this graph:

This is a knockoff of the oscillator that Cramer cites. How accurate is it? Over +/- 500, Cramer comments that there are extreme readings. But as for now we are near zero — this indicator tells us nothing here.

So, what am I saying? We have rallied a great deal, and a lot of fear has come out of the markets, but we still have not eclipsed the highs of July or October. My sense is that we will muddle from here and not do much on net for the next three months. Fear has ended too quickly.

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