In this week's Off the Cuff podcast, Chris and John Rubino discuss:
- Senseless Markets
- Today, they only serve as a "liquidity gage"
- Negative Data Everywhere
- Economic growth is moribund despite the historic stimulus
- Setting The Market Free
- 100% in our best interest, but will be fought the entire way
- Eventually Fundamentals Will Win Out
- You can bend the laws of nature for a time, but you can't break free of them
John Rubino returns to Off The Cuff this week to discuss markets. Specifically, the benefits a free and fair market lend to investors and value producers alike. Free markets not only lead to efficient price discovery, but also to efficient capital allocation, as the most promising ventures out-compete the lesser.
But sadly, we have nothing like "free and fair" markets today.There is so much distortion and manipulation that they have ceased to be meaningful for any sort of signaling — save for as a measure of market liquidity. More money enters the market = stocks go up. Less money = stocks go down. But beyond that, today's prices don't tell us anything useful.
No surprise, both John and Chris think if it could talk, the market would be screaming "Danger!" and warning "Look out below!". After 7 years of pouring new money down the hole unearthed during the Great Recession, economic growth remains anemic and is slowing once again.