Breakout over 2800

Waiting for the breakout over 2800, not to buy, but to short.  Yes, the much talked about resistance level of 2800 is probably going to crack and it should be all the bulls need to forget about trade wars and declare the all clear signal.  I will be out there feeding the ducks over 2800, looking at shorts around the 2820 level. 

The high put call ratios once again marked a bottom, as anything with the word "war" in the headline automatically scares investors, even though it has negligible influence on earnings.  It is typical for corporations to whine about even the slightest of tax increases in the form of tariffs, when they remain silent after their whopper of a tax cut.  And so much for the corporations using their tax cut windfall towards higher wages, as wage growth has been stuck around 0.2% monthly gains despite the tightest labor market in decades. 

It is corporate America's dream, having Trump take the credit/blame for policies that the corporate lobbyists are jamming down the throats of politicians on Capitol Hill.  They like to work in the background, squeezing as much as they can from Washington to minimize taxes and competition, through loopholes and exceptions carved out in the tax code, as compensation for financing the campaigns and golden parachutes of the members of the deep swamp. 

Anyway, it is no coincidence that the vast majority are howling over these Chinese tariffs and fear mongering hard on the trade war, as they have been brainwashed by the corporate lobby machine.  The post 2000 bubble economy (2000 to present) has proven to be a huge winner for capital, and a huge loser for labor.  The key pillar of that is global labor arbitrage, which effectively eliminates any leverage that labor had, and keeps wage growth low.  The growth of mergers and acquisitions due to weakening anti trust legislation which helps create oligopolies is another.  Globalization is great for US corporations but not so great for US workers. 

These selloffs and rallies are starting to remind me of 2015, technically.  From a sentiment perspective, investors are more bullish now than at the top in 2015.  Economically, it can be argued that it is stronger now than 2018, but only from a short term point of view.  Longer term, higher interest rates, higher leverage, and higher valuations make this a much more toxic situation than 2015.  But markets trade on the short term, which provides opportunities for those that trade on the long term.  Long term, this is the time to find assets that benefit from a slowdown, not a boom.  It is too late to bet on a boom and have positive risk/reward.