I have always refrained from commenting about politics as there are a myriad of sources out there plus I generally deem it to be counter productive to our mission at hand. Which of course is to succeed as traders in the financial markets – period. As such today will be no exception. But watching events in Minneapolis and other U.S. cities unfold over the weekend I could not help but feel a growing sense of surrealism above anything else.

Here I am – stuck in our vacation rental thanks to a nationwide quarantine taking effect this morning – and honestly I could not be happier. Although I have never been a perma-bear the past decade of eternal effervescence had become the bane of my existence. Living in Valencia I increasingly noticed it everywhere around me as unbridled mass tourism is a prime litmus test for an economic bubble that’s just waiting to be pricked. Beyond mere ‘moral hazard’ the grand financial experiment of the 21st century wrought cultural and social implications that ended up destroying families and inter-personal relationships on a mass scale, and in the process pitted [...]

Gauging market momentum is as much art as a science in that you’ll probably always find charts that satisfy a particular directional bias. The trick lies in remaining as objective as humanly possible and to collect evidence from a diversity of sources. As many traders are starting to return from their summer vacations I thought it a good idea to get everyone a jump start on what’s going on.