Wall Steet's Recovery

Macro Perspectives: Wed 19 August 2020

With the S&P closing at a new record high yesterday, I want to revisit my note from March 25th, the day after the stock market bottomed.

"Make no mistake, with global governments and central banks following the 'print and backstop everything/everyone policies' we have explicit devaluations of currencies. That makes it a 'buy everything' market.

This is the global "debt monetization" event people thought we were witnessing during the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).

The difference? In the GFC, people thought the result of the Fed's actions would be hyperinflationary, and therefore a defacto debt and currency devaluation. It didn't happen. When you give people money in a debt crisis, they hoard it. With that, we didn't get hyperinflation, instead we got a deflationary bust.

The Virus War is the opposite. Never has there been a more applicable environment to inflate away the value of everything (in the medium term) to keep the economy (the world) intact (in the near term). It's the only option. 

Again, as we discussed yesterday, this is a brew for massive inflation when we come out on the other side of the virus. That means, just as people are wanting to hold cash, it's the worst place to be. The early evidence: Almost everything (all global assets) was up today.

With this backdrop, the first place you look, as a preservation of buying power: gold."  

As I discussed back in the March note, the policy response made it (and continues to make it) a "buy everything market." Let's take a glimpse of what that has looked like since that March 23rd low in stocks (a little less than five months ago).

The S&P 500 is up 56%. Oil is up 91%. Gold is up 33%. Copper is up 41%.   

Now, as we also discussed in my notes surrounding that stock market low, "in historical crises Wall Street panics well before Main Street panics." That was the case once again. By the time the economic shut down hit, and Main Street started panicking, the bottom for Wall Street was near.

So, now Wall Street has recovered, and not surprisingly, well before Main Street has recovered. And Wall Street is now pricing in a wave of inflation. That's what's next for Main Street.