Reality stalks a desensitized risk complex

Global capital is all in with record leverage on growth and inflation bets.  But is the consensus confident, or have they just stopped thinking?

Not only are households holding their highest exposure to equities since the March 2000 secular peak.  Global fund managers are also holding record-long allocations in pro-inflation commodities, materials, banks, industrials and other global equities with below-average allocations to rare deflation-defensive positions like cash, bonds and utilities (z-scores shown below courtesy of B of A: zero denotes the historical mean).
Just as emergency liquidity weakened the greenback from March 2020 to January 2021 and helped boost import and asset prices (aka inflation), the opposite also applies, and the dollar index has quietly not made a new low in nearly six months.

While monetary and fiscal funds have drowned the financial system, transmission through the real economy has failed because the cash flows are temporary, and bank loans, leases and wages have not been revived.  Lance Roberts explains this well in The coming dollar rally:

Currently, there is no argument money supply has exploded without a corresponding increase in economic output. If there were, bank loans and monetary velocity would be on the rise. Unfortunately, such isn’t the case currently.
Fed Signals Taper, Fed Signals Taper. Will It Be Different This Time? 06/18/21

As shown below, after a year of literally doing the historic most, both monetary and fiscal stimuli are now contracting as central banks “reverse repo” ROE-suppressing excess cash from banks and governments struggle to agree on even bigger deficit spending.

The trouble with free money is that beneficiaries often expect more, and this typically ends in disappointment on all sides.  Desensitized by a year of emergency help, less support will weigh heavy on risk markets in the months ahead.

Perhaps this is why Treasury Bonds have been rising again since March, stocks have moved sideways since April, and sentiment tokens like cryptocurrencies have halved.

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Lacy Hunt explains inflation today, but deflation tomorrow

This presentation is well worth the 40-minute investment.

The prices of the things we need to live — food, fuel, housing…pretty much EVERYTHING have suddenly exploded higher this year.

After decades of relative price stability, are we about to see the return of crushing inflation like we suffered through in the 1970s?

We invited Lacy Hunt, one of the world’s top experts on the inflation/deflation debate to speak at the recent Wealthion conference held in early June…we’re sharing that very important presentation with you here.

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Risk off sentiment contagious in highly levered markets

Bitcoin is flirting with $32,000 this morning– -48% from February’s 63,000 peak and still some 250% above year-ago levels as China steps up its pledge to crack down on both asset speculation and its CO2 emissions.

Some 65% of global Bitcoin mining has been based in China, where coal power is still heavily used.  As I discussed in my June 10 biweekly market update here, once countries commit to hard targets and emission budgets, it becomes obvious that certain essential activities like food production and transportation have to be given precedence over financialized activities like crypto mining.  This is finally focusing minds on how to decrease energy overall and increase renewable power sources dramatically.   The segment below offers insight into why mining and blockchain verification is so energy-intensive.

In mid-May 2021, billionaire Elon Musk sent a tweet that crashed the cryptocurrency market. The Tesla CEO announced the electric vehicle company would no longer accept bitcoin for purchases due to its huge energy consumption. So why does crypto-mining use so much electricity, and is there a sustainable alternative? CNBC’s Nessa Anwar is joined by Ryan Browne to explain.  Here is a direct video link.

Moreover, as I have noted repeatedly, Cryptocurrencies are emblems of risk sentiment in global markets; they move up and down with speculative impulses, and a risk-off wave has been spreading globally since March. See Crypto reality check:  not stable, secure or a hedge.  Slowly and then all at once?  We enter another week of downside tests…

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