I asked a dear friend what he thought of the current scene and this is what he sent back

I am cautious.for several reasons:

 

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1. The market today often seems reactive. It ignores obvious things right up until the moment they happen, then there is a sudden adjustment.

Thus, the recent obsession with "Fed pivot" and "rate cuts" which supposedly will fuel a new bull market. Yet history shows, when the Fedstarts cutting, the economy is doing badly and employment is falling. So there is a disconnect vs. conditions today. There is air below when everyone realizes that maybe a/ the Fed is not even close to cutting rates b/c

They might even hike again (?!) as some Fed voters want.

Some isolated stuff has "broken" (SIVB, FRB, CS) but there is still more stuff yet to break before the cycle is complete.s  Not a sure thing, but a lot of smart people think that.

2. Supposedly earnings are "not that bad." Maybe true. But for individual stocks, when they report poor numbers, they get slammed.

3. Valuations for some segments of the market, especially on the NASDAQ, are still pretty high. I believe all the companies which had ridiculous valuations are slowly seeing P/E's compress. As we know from 1973-75, and 2000-2002, this process takes a while.

4. Importantly, the breadth of the market is incredibly poor. Very narrow. This is not healthy. Every day I check the new highs vs. new lows on the NASDAQ, and most every day it is negative. As are other measures of breadth.

5. I have said the market won't really bottom until the Apes have set all their money on fire. This has not yet happened.

As for positioning, I have a lot of cash, several high yield cash- proxy equities, a large position in oil/gas, and pretty big slug of Financials and Industrial names. For the year to date, I am about flat......not great, but I have not blown up capital either.

Best regards,

R.

Thanks, well said. like the attached video. The insane have taken over. The radicals want control.

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Dragged in is inappropriate usage of our language. and facts

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Durham Dragged Into Court

Special Counsel John Durham is scheduled to testify before the House Intelligence Committee in a closed session on June 20 and publicly to testify to the chamber’s Judiciary Committee on June 21. During both sessions, he is going to talk about his final report which resulted from the four-year investigation into allegations of collusion between former President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and Russian officials.

Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Texas, confirmed the scheduled hearing with the Judiciary Committee through his Twitter account on Friday. The National Review also reported the date of the hearing, while also pointing out that it had been almost found years since then-Attorney General Bill Barr had appointed Durham as special counsel to oversee the investigations into the origins of the probe into the allegations of ties between Russia and former President Trump.

Earlier this month Durham released a report in which he noted that the Department of Justice and the FBI did not have “any actual evidence of collusion” when the investigation was first launched. He further argued that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence relied too heavily on tips provided by Trump’s political opponents.”

On Thursday, Rep. Ben Cline, a member of the Judiciary Committee, told Newsmax that Durham’s testimony was going to provide the American people with the exact details of how the FBI had lied to the public and how rotten the intelligence agency had actually been. He further pointed out that it would reveal how the agency had used the Steele dossier despite knowing it was fake.

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