Stocks have been on a tear. After looking weak in February, when the bottom could have fallen out, stocks have soared close to 13% in a matter of weeks, we’re finally here: positive for the year, above the market’s important moving averages, above resistance, and just plain sitting pretty.

So why does it all feel like a magic trick? Why isn’t the market giving investors any solid feelings? Why is everyone so nervous?

The reason it’s hard to get a handle on the market is because the old free market is gone. The free market isn’t free any more.

There are two major forces manipulating markets right now – but it’s nothing more than smoke and mirrors designed to push stocks higher and give the illusion of healthy markets.

I’ll tell you what’s going on, who’s responsible, and what you need to do now.

Let’s get started…

The Manipulation Is Worse Than You Think

Of course, any discussion of market manipulation has to begin with the Federal Reserve.

Everyone knows the Fed and other central banks have been manipulating the markets for years through artificially low interest rates, quantitative easing experiments, and more.

But here’s something you might not know…

Instead of just buying sovereign bonds, central banks now buy everything from mortgage bonds to stocks. They are even contemplating creating their own ETFs to sell to the public so they can then buy them back. Some central banks have even pushed interest rates into negative territory, which is itself proof positive they are completely out of control.

The manipulation is so deep, they’re so out on a ledge, all central banks can do to keep from losing control of markets and global economies is to keep manipulating in the desperate hope that global growth will bail them out of the holes they’ve dug for markets and themselves.

Here’s something else you probably didn’t know.

The real reason the Federal Reserve didn’t raise rates at the last FOMC meeting, even though the Fed’s all about being “data dependent” and the data they’ve been looking for to start “normalizing” rates has been filling up their inboxes, is because they ran into a big problem.