Sleeper in there is cash is trash, and food/energy are where the money will be made. Grantham says we're running out of resources. He doesn't cite it, but Club of Rome told us this 50 years ago.

Have to run with value stocks, energy, commodity funds, dividends. Debt (bonds) are dead. Fed is squeezed. 3/4 of a point is mentioned in the press over the weekend, but would Powell do that? Racing to get to 3% which will do nothing. This economy needs 5-6% interest rates to slow it down.

but it would nicely burst the real estate bubble, more unpleasant medicine this economy needs.

The talking heads aren't going to be able to blame labor for this one, it was too many investor dollars chasing too few investments and going places they shouldn't have, like snapping up real estate to hold off the market and corporations buying back their own stock. Well, that tide of easy money has now turned. Biden doesn't seem inclined to lower taxes even more on the rich and the corporate and there's no more Covid relief money to steal and QE is a thing of the past.

Nobody in Congress seems willing to raise the minimum wage which, instead of paying a wage that would support a worker doing a day's work was allowed to fall far below even bare subsistence. Homeless shelters are full of minimum wage workers who are doing jobs that need to be done but can't afford a place to live, and Congress doesn't seem to think this is wrong.

BTW, stocks that pay dividends are not going to be dead, not for a while. They escaped the hyperinflation of the easy money part of the market and while the per share price is likely to go down out of the stratosphere, it won't crash to earth. Companies that never turned a profit are the ones that will be shaken out of the market first, then it will spread to the ones that are struggling.

One hopes that this time people are finally going to realize the stock market is only a casino off to the side of the real economy main street, and the real economy needs to get rethought, refurbished, re ordered, and made viable for all of the people who participate in it, not just the few who hit a slot machine just right in the casino.

S&P Futures
3,862.00
-37.00(-0.95%)

Dow Futures
31,209.00
-179.00(-0.57%)

Nasdaq Futures
11,669.00
-171.00(-1.44%)

Russell 2000 Futures
1,783.50
-17.10(-0.95%)

Crude Oil
118.95
-1.72(-1.43%)

Gold
1,879.90
+4.40(+0.23%)

Will FED raise 50 or 75 basis points this week?

Fasten your seat belts!

Yes, if the S&P 500 closes below 3838, which is 20% down from its all-time high of 4797 on Jan 3, then we're in a bear market. I can't say "official" bear market, as there is no "official", but by very widespread consensus.

"3838" is easy to remember -- Munich, Neville Chamberlain and "peace in our time" was in 1938

so think "Munich Munich".

If the S&P 500 closes below "Munich Munich", then we're in "bear bear".

Fortunately, there's always refuge in bonds. From today's market outlook/summary --

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/inflation-puts-pressure-on-powell-what-to-know-this-week-162615319.html

Well, guess not. That's a lot of decline for an intermediate bond (I think of 10 years as intermediate, maybe that's not the consensus).

Or take an intermediate term corporate bond fund like Vanguard's VICSX

The year-to-date total return (including dividend payments) is, coincidentally down 12.8% as of Friday close
https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/VICSX/profile?p=VICSX
(the adjusted close column adjusts the price for distributions, so that's the one to use for total return calculations)

https://finance.yahoo.com/