Big Red
inflation down, but so is IBM
The big economic event of the week is done - - that is, the release of the government’s own totally-not-made-up-for-political-purposes inflation data, and it just confirms what we’ve all suspected: things are just getting cheaper and cheaper! You betcha! Forget inflation. Prices are deflating, buddy!
As such, all assets roared higher which, conveniently, is precisely what the party in power desperately needs to see.
The reason inflation dropped, of course, has nothing to do with most goods, but is specific to one quirk, which is that the cessation of war (that is, the war that started on February 28th, not the totally new war that was announced just a couple of days ago) hammered oil prices down for the month. To borrow a Bernanke term, this drop in inflation will be transitory, just like the Strait of Hormuz used to be.
Still, for the moment, bonds are spiking.
As is poor, battered, gold.
And, sadly, semiconductors. The relief rally in tech is especially pronounced today.
Oh, with one notable exception. IBM is getting absolutely nuked, since they’ve issued a statement that their quarterly earnings report isn’t going to be anything that shareholders will dare want to read, so the stock is crashing. If anyone cared about Big Blue anymore, like back in the 1980s, the whole market would be falling, but this is just one stock.
I took some profits yesterday, so I’m coming into the day lighter than yesterday (specifically, 122% committed instead of nearly 200%), but it’s still going to be a mildly rough open for me. All the same, as of this moment half an hour before the opening bell, over half the spike has already vanished.
Maybe things will work out.