Recall the Monty Python line “A minute passed quickly past”? ‘Tis how the year 2017 feels to us. The geometrically-increasing pace of unrelated, and moreover, unimportant items beset upon us on a daily basis is blurring the very passage of time itself. Indeed, 99% of what now passes for “news” doesn’t affect us a wit, nor is about which we even need know, let alone give a derrière du rat. Health & wealth, friends, family & self, (and yes the Yankees’ score too), and we’re good to go. Oh and yes, the price of Gold.
The above opening panel does show us Gold being ahead of where ’twas at this point a year ago, it nonetheless remaining wildly undervalued by currency debasement alone. But from the “Ya Gotta Start From Somewhere Dept.”, Gold and Silver continue to be our leading markets year-to-date. So through the month of May, plus for June two days, below are how the BEGOS bunch stand by percentage performance. And therein note the boffing of “conventional wisdom” as Gold is up 11% — but Oil is down 11% — so surely the stock market as measured by the S&P 500 must be down — yet ’tis up 9%. Cue our favourite Vince Lombardi line “What da hell’s goin’ on out dere?!?!?!” and here are the standings:
Naturally, there’s the age-old adage about the stock market climbing wall of worry, or has been the case in recent years, climbing a pall of no real earnings growth, (our “live” price/earnings ratio for the S&P at present up to 35.3x). Yet as permanently-correctionless as has become the S&P, a minority of non-complacent analysts are on the very edge of their seats. Here are some quick headline phrases we’ve noted these past few weeks:
■ high valuations make stocks dangerous (Shiller)
■ there’s a strange disconnect in the market (Lee)
■ summer correction in the stock market (Gundlach)
■ dot com bubble deja vu (O’Rourke)
■ eerie similarity to 2007 before the bulls were slaughtered (Kass)
■ bad news says for stock market investors (Dalio)
■ buy dip party may be over (Shilling)
■ stock market is choosing to tune out any bad news (Pisani)
■ bracing for all hell to break lose on wall street (Singer)
