Investors have been slower than a tank of turtles swimming in molasses when it comes to grasping reality, but they may be getting the message on inflation and the Fed’s fight ahead at last. That said, one should never underestimate the resolve of people to enshrine their wishes as unholy doctrines in order to continue chasing the phantasms of their greed like drunken gamblers in a smoke-clouded casino. This bear market — now well over a year long — has produced many rallies that were exemplary in demonstrating that unattractive quality of the human condition.
News stories across multiple categories of The Daily Doom last Friday screamed the message of inflation — how the Fed’s fight is far from over and how the rising flames of inflation have just turned the market’s Fed-pivot fantasy to falling ashes and how interest rates are likely to rise higher still and for longer, but especially about how much the stock market hates all of that. And, so, the market began to thrash in those paroxysms that finally hit the mainstream press and has begun to descend from its dreams.