S&P 500 (^GSPC)

The issue I take/took with all the talking heads on bloomberg and cnbc who felt that we would continue in a bull market is that valuations and earnings are all based in the past. We are talking about a situation in which there are 800,000 new unemployment claims a week for months and 13 million continuing claims... those people won't spend money, (and if the government just hands them money, we will just get inflation). -- and that means forward based earnings will similarly collapse, and valuations going FORWARD will be much, much, much higher than even these high levels right now. So its just not possible to see any bull market and in fact to recalibrate with what these valuations are going to be in 6 months requires the market to be 50% of what it is today, with a crash before that which will pop your eyes out of your head. S+P will break under 2000.

Wow... Now it is new car sales that are down and will continue ... car sales are down 26% from last year (doesn't say if that is month to month year over year or YTD year over year) - which might change due to an aversion to mass-transit.

Housing in August was still somewhat on fire with multi-family starts down quite a bit in August - likely due to a coming implosion in rents where a huge % of renters are at a quite immediate risk of missing their rent payments. Rental units are likely going to become very available very soon with homelessness increasing and to what degree is the question...

The urban flight to the suburbs or lower density areas is still driving single family higher over 2019 but lower than July of this year (which was hugely up) - that current "urban flight" driver is likely to slow once the demand has been met. What then? And is that 2, 4, 6 or even 12 months away? Given our shortage in housing, likely at the higher end of duration.

One thing that we will likely deal with is ... COVID for the next 12 months if not longer. Given the vaccine seems to be pushing through, people will undoubtedly pass due to the lack of safety and efficacy testing. Which is worse - an imperfect vaccine or getting COVID will be a question people will be asking themselves.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pretected-reveals-covid-19s-dramatic-130000191.html?.tsrc=fin-srch

Has anyone checked lumber prices recently...? Home prices? Inflation is here, alive and well.

While overall inflation is low, we have inflation and significant inflation in several industries - e.g. lumber has nearly doubled just recently. Food is up over 4% over the last 12 months... overall inflation is low partly because energy and travel industry prices have decreased significantly over the last 12 months.

Perhaps the Fed is missing something here. If energy and travel prices start to rise, we could go well over 2% inflation quite fast.

For example, if the US, Saudi's and the Russians stop fighting for market share and stop glutting and selling oil at a loss, inflation will be way over 2% and quite fast. And the US oil industry might actually survive this market share fight. US oil (and other nations) companies are struggling at best at the moment... largely due to COVID as fewer people are taking vacations and more are working from home. Think about the travel and tourism industries... prices are way down due to over supply and super low demand.

Trump University deposition finally released. Trump University students were tricked into paying a lot of money for no real training, and then coerced into writing positive reviews. This is the scenario Trump wants to avoid after office for all his other crimes. Trump Foundation is already dissolved from fraud. Trump Organization (his hundreds of fake businesses and money laundering operations?). He claims the office of the U.S. Presidency gives him 100% immunity from all crimes, which is why he's been committing and suggesting others commit all sorts of crimes while in office. This is the reason he's using fear mongering tactics (like all dictators in history) and manipulating the very core of the American democratic way (voting) in order to stay in power, simply to avoid jail time.

The truth for Trump (as psychologists have pointed out about Trump due to having traits from all three dark triad traits, below) is whatever he believes at the time his mouth is opening, so there is no absolute truth in Trump's mind. This is why he lies 24/7 depending on who the audience is. This is also why he has no empathy. He's NOT CAPABLE of that human part of us. That's why he doesn't care about the sufferings of other people, including the almost quarter million dead Americans from his massive intentionally mishandling of the coronavirus. That's mass murder. His ex wife, Ivana, said Trump kept a book of Hitler's speeches by his bed and read it from time to time. Hitler liked to boast about his failures (North Africa and Russian fronts) as successes. Trump boasts about his failures as successes after his idol.

1. Narcissism is characterized by grandiosity, pride, egotism, and a lack of empathy.[10]

2. Machiavellianism is characterized by manipulation and exploitation of others, an absence of morality, unemotional callousness, and a higher level of self interest.[11]

3. Psychopathy is characterized by continuous antisocial behavior, impulsivity, selfishness, callous and unemotional traits (CU),[12] and remorselessness.[13]

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