This note was originally published at 8am on April 01, 2014 for Hedgeye subscribers.

“It’s ok to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.”

-Kurt Cobain

One of the core #behavioral principles in Jonah Berger’s Contagious is emotion. You need to make people feel something. And that something can be positive or negative, provided that it delivers what he calls “high arousal.” Awe, Amusement, Anger, and Anxiety (pg 109) will all do the trick.

Fishy Feelings - shark

Whether it was Janet Yellen telling you she is “extraordinarily committed” to burning your currency or Michael Lewis proclaiming his book is for the “little guy,” it was all out there yesterday.

So let’s do it for the children. Let’s keep the risk free rate of return on American Savers at 0% forever and have the FBI raid high-frequency-tweeters. We commoners of capitalism don’t have any feelings anyway.

Back to the Global Macro #Grind

On literally no volume yesterday, the SP500 made its best attempt to bubble itself back up to her all-time-closing high of 1878. Just wait until they ban all technology and bring back the NYSE dinosaurs – when you get squeezed, you’ll feel no volume at all.

I better be careful about calling anything we do innovative, or the fun-cops are going to come after me too. The “little guys” (read big lazy guys at bailed out #OldWall banks that can’t compete with math) have their biggest lobby yet.

At the risk of explaining how fractal math helps investors reading this note front-run the machines, let’s just keep our market update to a simple 3-factor model this morning instead:

  1. PRICE
  2. VOLUME
  3. VOLATILITY

And let’s score the US stock market (SP500) on all three:

  1. PRICE - making higher-lows, but not yet higher-highs (vs. the all-time closing high)
  2. VOLUME – decelerating on up days; accelerating on down days
  3. VOLTILITY – front-month VIX continues to signal higher-lows and that the term-structure of VIX is way too complacent

Notwithstanding Biotech and Social Media stocks dropping 15-35% in 2-weeks, what could possibly go wrong in Q2?

  1. FX – the US Dollar continues to signal long-term TAIL risk (trading below our TAIL risk line of $81.17 on the US Dollar Index)
  2. 10YR – continues to signal a series of lower-highs and remains below @Hedgeye TREND resistance of 2.81%
  3. SECTOR VARIANCE – Consumer Stocks (XLY) -3.2% vs slow-growth #YieldChasing Utilities (XLU) +9.2% YTD

I know. I know. Yellen has an implicit policy to Devalue the Dollar, let #InflationAccelerating (Food Prices +19% YTD) rip America’s poor a new one, and slow 71% of the US economy (Consumption), but you can go eat a REIT (+8% YTD), and like it.

If inflation slowing real US consumption growth wasn’t enough, now we have a series of non-weather related #GrowthSlowing data points interconnecting around the world. Here’s this morning’s macro data:

  1. CHINA – HSBC PMI (producer manufacturing index) slowed yet again in March to 48.0 vs 48.5 in February
  2. JAPAN – PMI slowed again in MAR to 53.9 vs. 55.5 in FEB
  3. UK – PMI finally slowed sequentially to 55.3 MAR v. 56.9 in FEB

Yep, in spite of its strong (relative) fiscal, monetary, and currency policy, even the United Kingdom is subject to gravity (i.e. at some point the rate of change in the economic acceleration slows). But, don’t worry, Keynesian economic policy makers say you don’t have to feel that.

They’ll smooth it out. You know, rig gravity. Right, right. And Larry Summers is my uncle.

Amused or anxious yet? No worries - all the backward looking political economists will not be writing about any of this today, because they’re still trying to fit the #weather data to a real consumption #GrowthSlowing narrative that they have once again missed.

If you’re in the 10% of America who gets rich on government spending, money printing, and selling books to mediocre minds in the media, you don’t have to have any feelings about that either. Remember, it’s for the children.

Our immediate-term Global Macro Risk Ranges are now:

SPX 1854-1878

Nikkei 14098-14887

VIX 13.56=15.58

USD 79.81-80.44

Pound 1.65-1.67

Gold 1276-1321

Best of luck out there today,

KM

Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer

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