U.S. MARKETS

The Dow’s six-day winning streak, which brought the S&P 500 back above where it began the year, ended today, with the Dow closing down 300 points.
While the NASDAQ hit a record high yesterday and today on the what the Street calls optimistic news of businesses re-opening, absent in their hype is the reality that the three-month shutdowns, lawlessly imposed on the people, has devastated the economy… and millions of peoples lives.
Also absent the Wall Street hype is the harsh reality that considering the broad array of newly invented restrictive bureaucratic regulations imposed on business, i.e., capacity, social distancing, hygiene, plastic shields, etc., growth and profits will sink deeply in the coming months and years.
Not a word about business owners and executives of countries that already opened up complaining that the mandated social distancing, etc., makes it impossible to fully staff factories and, therefore, to raise production to normal levels.
In the U.S., some 25,000 stores are predicted to close in 2020.
According CNBC, it’s because “the coronavirus pandemic accelerates industry upheaval.”
No! The coronavirus pandemic did not “accelerate industry upheaval.”
Self-declared dictators of countries, states, cities, and villages issuing illegal “Executive Orders” accelerated the upheaval by locking down businesses and sheltering-in-place citizens for some three months, destroying commerce!
And when businesses did begin reopening – phase by phase – they were allowed to resume life under restrictive, money-losing operational guidelines.
Forget the Fed
Instead of focusing on the facts, the markets have been flying higher as the Federal Reserve, in full view, keeps pumping in trillions to artificially inflate an overvalued stock market… as reported in detail in the Trends Journal.
When will the markets crash? It’s pure guesswork.
Who could imagine what new scheme undreamed of – from bailing out banks, quantitative easing, zero interest rates, negative bond yields, buying corporate junk bonds, etc. – the money junkies will invent next to keep their market high going?
Oil prices, which also are a transparently rigged game, remain near their recent highs following last Saturday’s agreement by the OPEC and others to keep ten million barrels a day at least until July.
Gold prices, which took a hard hit last Friday following what appeared to be positive U.S. employment numbers, has solidly bounced back, closing at $1,715 per ounce.
Again, we maintain our forecast that when gold prices solidify above $1,740 an ounce for some three weeks, prices will spike to above $2,000 per ounce.
On the bitcoin front, at $9,793, it also has remained stable in its $8,000 to $9,000 range, as speculators seek alternatives to fiat currencies during a period of unprecedented cheap money injections by central banks.
TREND FORECAST: With 10 percent of stock market investors owning 84 percent of the outstanding shares, the separation between the reality of a dying Main Street and a booming Wall Street are in the numbers.
By keeping the markets artificially inflated, it creates the illusion the fundamentals of the economy are sound.
 Indeed, when the markets crash, economic chaos will spread across the globe.