Can the focus get any more short term? Is it irrational with the influences on the market getting more and more top-down each week? It seems unfathomable that this can persist – at least with the current level of participation.
Just today – up we go (oversold bounce?), then pause – must defer to the view from the Great Oz. Oh, now we’re going to have two more years of weakness? Guess those GDP forecasts were too rosy? Then (wait for it) we’re going back up – fast – since, oh yeah, He’s heli-Ben, he won’t let us go down.
It seems certain to me that the market is now discounting some serious monetary help coming out of Jackson Hole. If we don’t get QE3 then, you have to expect it’s risk-off again big time. Hard to hang your hat on those choices. Seems like we need a serious reset of agenda to get past this frenetic headline watching flavor of market participation.
It seems likely to me that Retail investors are more likely to not want to play anymore – that fear will win out given that the upside potential of participating seems limited to whatever bump is likely to come from another round of QE. Certainly not the effect on confidence that the policymakers are insisting they’re trying to engender.