What a busy week!
It hasn't even started yet and the dow is up over 400 points. Why? Who know? Actually, it's because it's Monday and Monday's pre-market futures are very easy to manipulate. Trump is 10 points behind Biden in the WSJ/NBC poll so he has to at least push the markets up into the election so he can keep pretending he's got a great economy. It's hard for him to keep up with the other charade – that he's "beaten" the virus – when the infection rate is hitting new daily records in the US 50% higher than the previous peaks after the July 4th idiocy and now it's time for holiday idiocy, where you get to infect your entire family at Thanksgiving.
My Nephew, Neice and Sister-in-Law all got it last week and they all seem to be doing OK, thank goodness but that's how fast it spreads through a house – as soon as my Nephew showed symptoms it was too late for his mother and sister to avoid it. Testing might have helped but we don't test – so we'll never know.
Stanford did a study of 18 Trump rallies between June and September and found that 30,000 of his followers were infected with 700 of them dying for their leader. Trump knew about this early on and held the rallies anyway as he loves the idea that his followers are willing to die for him – what's a bigger power/ego trip than that? At a rate of 1,000 infections per day doubling every 3 months, we'll all be dying for Trump in the near future? How soon, you may ask?
Well, 100,000 new infections per day between now and February is 9,000,000 but then 200,000/day through May is 18,000,000 by August and then 300,000/day into November will give us another 27M infected so, if we "stay the course" and re-elect Trump and he continues to do nothing, then we're looking at 54M new infections by this time next year. MAGA!
This is what is going on in the UK (our Government refuses to allow official research into the "fake" virus like this) and this is why the UK just announced a one-month lockdown this weekend – along with most of Europe. That's because these projections – the same ones we'd be seeing in the US if we were allowed to make projections – are terrifying. And Europe isn't even trying compared to the US in their pace of infections. In fact, America has so many infections that it has to be compared to entire continents in terms of new cases per day:
Trump CAN'T call for a lockdown ahead of the election. His whole attack on Joe Biden is that Biden will call for a lockdown if he's elected so it's not even possible for Trump to consider doing the right thing at this point. Instead, just to maintain another one of Trump's lies, tens of thousands more American lives will be sacrificed on the atlar of Trump. But that's nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who will pay the price of 4 more years if he manages to stay in office.
We're at peak insanity folks and the markets are doing pretty well considering and, since Biden is up 10% in the polls, we have to assume the Biden Victory is baked in but Biden will raise Corporate Taxes for sure, and that's going to send earnings backwards so I really don't think that's very bullish for the market but it's a lot more bullish than letting 54M more Americans get infected over the next 12 months with a virus that, so far, has killed 2.5% of the people infected so that would be 1,350,000 Americans dead – over 100,000 per month – if we stay this course for just one more year.
Scanning life through the picture window
She finds the slinky vagabond
He coughs as he passes her Ford Mustang
But Heaven forbid, she'll take anythingAll the way from Washington
Her bread-winner begs off the bathroom floor
We live for just these twenty years
Do we have to die for the fifty more? – Bowie
It's a busy week on the Economic Calendar with PMI, ISM and Construction Spending hitting the books just after the bell. Tomorrow we'll see factory orders followed by PMI and ISM Services and then Thursday it's the Fed Announcement followed by Powell's press conference and Friday it's the Big Kahuna – Non-Farm Payrolls.
Earnings are still slamming us daily and we're getting into the small caps, which is very dangerous territory so enjoy the last of the big-time spenders while you can. While it's tempting to play, the election is far too much of a wild card and that ain't over 'till it's over – could be weeks…
Meanwhile, rather than depress you with news, here's a few charts that make you go hmmmmm….
Come on, that one is funny!
