Time to Sell… Maybe

BALTIMORE – Yesterday, the S&P 500 hit a new all-time high. And the Dow just hit a new record close as well. If you haven’t sold yet, dear reader, this may be one of the best times ever to do so.

It’s still flying… sorta. Meet Bill Bonner’s tattered crash flag

Image credit: fmh

We welcome new readers with a simple insight: Markets are contrary, pernicious, and downright untrustworthy. Just when the mob begins to bawl most loudly for stocks… the market sets its trap.

Longtime Diary sufferers will be quick to straighten out the record. We’ve warned that stocks have reached a peak several times over the last four years. Each time, we thought we saw the writing on the wall… and each time, we were mistaken. We raised our Crash Alert flag.

But the poor ol’ Black and Blue just fluttered in the wind, as stock prices rose ever higher. Eventually, it became so tattered, we took pity on it, folded it up, and put it away.

In the interest of full disclosure, as well as reputation hygiene, we saw a bear market coming in 1999 and 2007, too. We were right then. But lately, we’ve either been dead wrong… or dead early.

Since stocks, bonds, gold, bitcoin, works of art – literally anything that looks like an investable asset – are rising indiscriminately in price, our suspicion is growing that we nay be witnessing the early signs of a plunge in money’s purchasing power that is bound to eventually spread beyond the confines of markets for financial assets and collectibles. Just saying, one should perhaps not rule it out

 The Zombie – Crony Complex

Which just goes to show what a four-flusher Mr. Market can be.He (helped by the Fed’s EZ money policies and the Greenspan-Bernanke-Yellen “put”) has driven prices higher and higher – even as the global economy slows down.