mondays are for macrobating

Friday was fireworks, but let’s not lose the plot…

Here’s today’s stream recording:

Jackson Hole: The “Green Light” That Wasn’t?

As soon as Powell uttered the magic phrase “the balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance” the market reacted like he’d announced the restart of QE.

Stocks blasted higher, breadth was huge (90% of NYSE stocks green) & the Russell led the charge with a whopping +3.8% day.

On the surface, it’s classic risk back on…

But here’s the other side. This reaction was, in large part, a volatility crush (as discussed in Friday’s stream)

Hedging and fear got unwound after all the worry about a hawkish speech was squashed.

It’s a familiar pattern.

Big events, big relief, then everyone’s resetting their exposure.

What matters now is what happens NEXT.

We know stocks tend to go up over time & we generally want to align ourselves with that trend.

The problem with drawing strong conclusions from stats like Ryan’s (aside from the small sample size) is that for our purposes (i.e. trading/investing), the path matters far more than the destination.

More on that in a sec.

Max Macrobation - Ignore the Grandstanding

Macro Twitter & financial media rushed to paint this speech as an epic pivot.

Don’t buy into their nonsense.

There’s plenty of data on deck (PCE, NFP, Nvidia’s earnings) that’ll matter way more for market trends than one conference soundbite.

Keep focusing on what actually changes flow: the labour market, inflation prints, & big earnings.

What Actually Moves Risk Next?

• PCE inflation this week

• Nvidia’s earnings coming up

• Next jobs report


Any of these can wipe out, or reinforce, all the “September rate cut” certainty in about two seconds.

Watch the data & reactions, not the macrobators