Wall Street Soars As Main Street Struggles With Lo’ Rates, No Jobs, & Mo’ Deaths

Record-Watch: For the first time ever, more than half the US population is not working; over 76,000 Americans dead from COVID-19; the US economy is contracting at record pace; earnings expectations are collapsing at near record pace; interest-rates at record lows (and imputing negative rates by year-end); and stocks are soaring at their fastest pace ever…

As we noted earlier, there was one especially scary aspect of today’s jobs report that has not gotten enough publicity, namely that as BofA writes, the employment to population ratio plunged to a record low, with only 51.3% of the population working. Inversely, this means that in April, 49% of the US population was not working.

Source: Bloomberg

And it’s going to get worse. How else do you explain the markets pricing in hope for The Fed to cut rates to minus-40bps by Dec 2020?

Source: Bloomberg

We do note that FF futures spiked when The Fed announced Jay Powell would hold a speech next week (theoretically enabling him to jawbone down any expectations of negative rates)…

Source: Bloomberg

Which must be great news for stocks: think of all the people who have nothing better to do than buy the fucking dip all day with all that helicopter money the Fed will be showering on them for the coming years.

Nasdaq was up almost 6% this week and Small Caps ripped higher…

The Nasdaq composite was up 5 days in a row – the best streak since Dec2019 (when it went 10 days in a row without a drop)…

Sending Nasdaq green for 2020 – as if all those dead and unemployed people never mattered…

Source: Bloomberg

Because fun-durr-mentals are so bad, it must be good!!

Source: Bloomberg

Meanwhile, the nation is split politically between lockdown-deniers and stay-at-home-ers; and Democrats (who politicized the DoJ to entrap Flynn and launch a coup against Flynn) have demanded an IG probe into Barr’s politicization of The DoJ; and states/cities are demanding Federal bailouts for what they have over-promised their voters and benefactors for decades….