Market Mayhem

I do a fair share of my normal everyday work online. Since I work online I generally check out what the market is doing every few hours to see if anything is going on. If there is anything actually going on of any significance in the world the market usually is the first to know and the first to react. The thing that gets me about the market in this day and age is it’s so fake that it’s almost pointless to watch unless Godzilla decides to take a swipe at Tokyo.

As most people know, the central banks of countries around the work are now buying back their own bonds. It’s crazy and will not have a pleasant outcome but everyone has been engaged in this behavior for the past 10 years, maybe even longer. As if that isn’t bad enough, the central banks are also openly buying up private debt to keep the larger players on their major indexes up as to not cause a panic. Yeah, I know, that’s pretty crazy too. In Japan and some areas in Europe you have the governments intervening in the private debt markets to the point that they own over 40% of their own stock markets.

So, for someone like me who watches the market like others may watch football it’s just not that fun anymore. It’s like you feel like the game is being played and people are taking shots but we’re not seeing any scoring. The commentators are talking about how great the game is but there really isn’t anything happening if no one is scoring. The crowd still seems to cheer but as time goes on things become more and more clear that it’s all an act.

I suppose that the interesting thing about the markets are the potential for something big to happen. Just like when we watch WWE wrestling, we all know that it’s an act but there is the possibility that something unexpected might happen. Every day that nothing much happens increases the probability that that major something might happen. And, unlike WWE we may have a stake in the action and can profit from this action, or lose.

Moving forward, we have the geopolitical situation with Iran looming which may cause petroleum prices to rise significantly. This may happen, maybe for a short time, or it can be a nothing burger. What makes a controlled market move? Maybe controlled markets only move when control is lost…?

Image source: gyfcat.com