Juggling Dynamite

The beauty of electric vehicles is that as battery technology improves (and it is in leaps and bounds of range and size every year), owners can simply slip out the old and slip in the new battery under the body shell.  Meanwhile it’s not just fuel that is free and zero emission thereafter, but also parts and maintenance costs are virtually non-existent over the life of the vehicle as compared with old ICE “internal combustion engine” models.  Conventional car dealers design to make the bulk of their profits on the never-ending need for repairs and marked up parts.  That model is in its dying days…

Go London! See  100% solar-powered buses arrive in London as UK eyes zero emissions:

Following the Climate Change Act passed in 2008, the U.K. is currently aiming to cut its CO2 emissions by at least 80% by 2050. Also, according to the U.K.’s pledge made at the United Nations climate change conference in Paris, in less than 35 years all new cars sold in the country will be emissions free.

Relevant oil discussion starts at 1:12 on play bar of this clip. Here is a direct video link.

Without ongoing manipulation from central bank jiggers, brazen HFT skimmers and corporations un-GAAP’ing their earnings and blowing up their balance sheets to buy back their own shares, the stock market would be a fragment of its present level today. That much is clear. The harder questions are to what end and where next? Bulls think the sky’s the limit and none of this matters so long as prices are going up!!  Bears worry that the farce is a farce and inherently unsustainable.

After bouncing back 13% since February 11 (similar to previous moves in October 2014 and 2015- in green bars below) the cyclical trend for the broad markets remains negative to date.  The below chart is of the 1900 company NYSE composite Index courtesy of my partner Cory Venable and captures the big picture of a market which remains more than 9% below its highs of last May.

Note to bulls: making back losses is not investment progress and higher prices on lower fundamentals do not make assets more ‘attractive’ as investments, just the opposite. With central bank announcements in the rear view mirror once more and investor flows continuing to exit into rallies, the question is who or what can continue to prop up an over-bought, dramatically over-valued market from the weight of a global downturn in revenue?