A Poor Set Up For Bears, For the Remainder of 2016

One could only hope for a major catastrophe to finally bring forth an end to capital markets — thrusting us into tribes to conduct civil war. But, barring some immediate fuckery of the first magnitude, things are looking bleak for the bear team.

Here are the seasonal returns, by month, for the S&P 500.

For those of you taking the Exodus free trials today, we provide you with seasonal data for every stock, ETF, sector, and industry.

That’s not to say something can’t go wrong. October is filled with market dislocations and December is usually a snoozer. If you’re a bear, you need to be mindful of November, for the Turkey Gods rarely miss a ripping bull market into national festival day.

For the past two months, markets have traded down — but to a very small degree. While the general indices traded flat to slightly lower, a sundry of small cap and high beta shares shot higher, diverging from the market. This is a sign that risk is still being accepted, even embraced — in spite of the negative backdrop.

I will repeat this indelible point until I am blue in the face — because it’s a fact and not something up for debate. Everything that you see and hear about the market is a fiction. The CNBC-FOX-CNN-BLOOMBERG propaganda machine rarely gives investors a true glimpse into how rigged the market is. They might interview a guest who says it, who is then ridiculed by one of their permanently bullish ‘traders’ — making the one telling the truth appear to be a lunatic. And if markets go up and people make money, that’s great. To that end, just know that if it weren’t for the central banks fixing yields and propping up asset prices, none of this would be possible.

How long can it last? Apparently, this has never been tested before, so that answer remains a mystery.