CELENTE: Stocks Up as Retail Goes Down
When will the reality of Main Street hit The Street? It is at best a guessing game
NOTE TO READERS: The following is our weekly Economic Update — Market Overview found in this week’s issue of The Trends Journal. Consider subscribing here for in-depth, independent geopolitical and socioeconomic trends and trend forecasts that you won’t find anywhere else.
“Economic Cracks Are Getting Exposed in the 2024 Market Bounty,” was a headline story in Bloomberg last Friday. They went on to note that “Fresh meme-stock mania took center stage on Wall Street this week just as the world’s biggest equity market closed out another blistering quarter.”
A new week, same story. Stocks keep going up, as the S&P 500 jumped nearly 15 percent this year… while retail sales keep going down… as we detail in this and previous Trends Journals; U.S. jobless benefits hit their highest level since the height of the COVID War in 2021; with interest rates near 7 percent, home sales in May slumped to a near-record low.
Again, as we keep noting, by the facts, there is no correlation between Wall Street and Main Street. The equity market is a gambler’s game run by hedge funds, private equity groups, venture capitalists, and the multi-billionaire gang.
Indeed, what is old news for Trends Journal subscribers is big news being reported by Bloomberg: “The slew of weaker-than-estimated data prints has sent Citigroup’s U.S. Economic Surprise Index to the lowest since August 2022. It all highlights how elevated interest rates are slowly but surely pressuring demand, by making borrowing more expensive for everything from consumer goods and home purchases to business equipment.”
Yes, and how about those “elevated interest rates” taking a toll on the office building real estate sector? Not a peep from the Presstitutes about the massive defaults on those interest rates hitting the commercial real estate sector that will crash many small and medium-size banks as we have greatly detailed in this and previous Trends Journals. (See “TOP TREND 2024: BANKS GO BUST. BIG BANKS SELLING MORE COMMERCIAL REAL ESTATE LOANS” and “A QUARTER OF U.S. OFFICE SPACE WILL BE EMPTY BY 2026, MOODY’S SAYS” in this issue.)
But what is making the business news is the skepticism, which again we have greatly detailed, as to how few stocks are driving up the equity markets—while others are sinking or flat—especially in the retail sector.
And with some 70 percent of U.S. GDP consumer-based and retail sales sinking, there will be a major market downward slide into bear market territory.
When will the reality of Main Street hit The Street? It is at best a guessing game, since, again, the markets are run and manipulated by not only a very few stocks, but also a small number of money junkies.
Indeed, as stated by AI Overview, “According to Federal Reserve data, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own 54 percent of the country’s stock and mutual funds, which is an all-time high and up from 40 percent in 2002. This includes more than 50 percent of equity shares in both private and public companies, and much of their wealth comes from stock prices. The wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households own about 93 percent of stock market wealth, which is roughly $42.7 trillion,” … which once-upon-a-time was called “The Land of Opportunity.”
TREND FORECAST: Besides the mainstream business media downplaying the realities of how the Office Building Bust is going to bring down many small and medium-size banks, which will, in turn, crash equity markets and much of the global economy, they have ignored the socioeconomic implications of the Israel and Ukraine Wars.
On the Israel front, as we have detailed and continue to do so, should Israel ramp up its war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, Iran has said they will retaliate.
Therefore, should this occur Brent crude, which is trading at nearly $85 per barrel, will spike to above $130 per barrel, which will in turn crash economies and equity markets.
And on the Ukraine War front, with the U.S. and NATO supplying Kyiv with aircraft, missiles and weaponry to strike deep into Russia, that war will also escalate as Ukraine targets Russia’s oil infrastructure…which in turn will drive up oil and gas prices. Thus, the higher those prices rise, the greater the risk of more nations sinking into Dragflation: declining economic growth and rising inflation.
Clif high calls it ,crack up and boom