I recently watched this video with Jim Rickards, financial threat and A-Symmetric warfare adviser for the Pentagon and CIA. Rickards is predicting that the dollar will crash and plunge us into a 25 year great depression.Now I must admit it looks a lot like bullshit and is essentially an infomercial to sell Rickards book, The Death of Money. Some of his theories on how the dollar will collapse seem pretty far out there but nonetheless he raised a few good points about our current economic environment.
"You can print all the money you want. But if people aren't borrowing or spending it, your economy is collapsing..."
Look at what has been happening with the velocity of money. It's plunging.

"We are piling on the debt but we are getting less and less growth."
This is his chart illustrating how much economic growth per dollar of debt we are getting.

"The misery index is where you take the unemployment rate and you take the inflation rate and you add them together and chart that."

He goes on to state that the Fed is actually insolvent superimposing it's liabilities over it's capital reserves.

To me that chart showing the trend of the velocity of money confirms what I have read from various other sources, which was that all of this money the fed is printing with their QE programs is being hoarded in reserves and isn't actually exchanging hands as it needs to if it wants to help stimulate commerce.
The fed has a lot of debt on it's balance sheet. Hopefully our economy can actually turn around and start growing so we can begin paying down all this debt or sooner or later providing a catalyst emerges the shit could indeed hit the fan. Nobody knows what will happen, as far as I know central bankers have never been so involved. 
Quantitative Easing began as an experiment. It has successfully managed to balloon up asset prices, cause negligible inflation, make the rich richer, not meaningfully increase the employment to population ratio, and somehow manage to drastically increase the money supply at the same time it slows the velocity of money.
Is everything going to collapse into the throws of another great depression? I doubt it. Central banking has shown to be a very powerful force in markets, if they start dropping too fast I imagine a fresh round of QE is always on the table to save the day. I do think that at the very least a correction in the major indexes is overdue.

The markets staying lofty, some parts of it anyways. There has been lots of talk of divergences lately. This article stating that 47% of the nasdaq is in a bear market was making rounds last week. The large caps have been propping up the major indices but there has been some serious damage under the surface. Take a look at the russell index etf IWM, it is forming what appears to be a two headed H&S Topping pattern. Double/Quadrouple top whatever you want to call it small caps are looking weak and have been diverging from large caps for most of the year.

We are entering a time of year that is usually extremely seasonally weak. Here is a seasonal chart Posted by jhburton on stocktwits with different lengths of time averaged.

Looking at the technical picture of the SPY we can see that the market, at least the large caps are continuing to find buyers up here at ath as the SPY continues to rip the scrotums off all bears who dare bet against it by shortselling or buying volatility. There is amazing complacency in the market for there being so much damage in small caps and momentum names underneath the surface.

This Divergence between large and small caps needs to resolve one way or the other. My moneys on a breakdown as the free money QE gravy train comes to a halt. Goodluck, make some scratch next week!

The market spent last week churning with major indices all finishing the week lower. The S&P led to the downside finishing -1.24%. I'm not going to harp on how high we are or how unusual and long lasting this bull market run has been without even a test of its 200day MA. I think that at this point everyone knows the risks involved with buying just off the all time highs. At least to me, common sense dictates if you are a long term investor you wait until a company goes on sale before you buy and hold. I once read that the sure fire way to get rich is to find a great profitable company and buy it at a 50% discount to what it's worth. Of course quantifying true value in an emotional flavor of the week marketplace can seem next to impossible as stocks are only worth what price people are willing to trade them at. This market rewards popularity, momentum. People buy what they know and understand. People love their AAPL, NFLX, TSLA. They check their FB every day so surely the stock will go up forever, right? The unfortunate reality of the situation is no, stocks do not go up forever. Stocks ping back and forth between extreme levels of undervaluation and overvaluation constantly. Good luck buying something that is fairly valued, most likely it is at one extreme end of the spectrum or the other. TSLA is now trading at 34x estimated 2019 earnings That doesn't sound like a 50% discount to me. Some of these companies are turning into 2014 tulips and sooner or later these wildly overvalued momentum names are going to get smacked down hard IMO. 

Check out the P/E on TSLA. -206.81 Do you really want to be chasing this thing up here?

Next week we have the biggest IPO of all time as Chinese internet company Alibaba goes public valued at $21.1B I suggest to you that this offering which the underwriters stand to rake in absurd amounts of dough from could be similar to the skyscraper indicator foreshadowing a potential decline in equity markets. Money losing ipos are at a 14 year high, the greedy investment bankers are loving this bull market and are milking it for all it's worth. 

I started getting bearish on the market in June with this post Bull Market Could Be Topping Out and honestly not much has changed except higher prices. I wasn't aware of just how grindy and slow summer trading was at the time and got squeezed out of some shorts. I was taught an important lesson in not getting too stubborn. The market is clearly still in a longer term uptrend, so trade the price action, not the conjecture. Just be aware of what macro factors are driving the market (Fed Policy, QE, Buybacks, etc..) and be cognizant of when those factors are changing. The fed is likely to end QE in October and sooner or later the market is going to begin discounting that.

Conjecture aside what can we say about the technical picture of the market? On the SPY we have SAR Resistance, Under the Pivot, MACD cross, ADX Bearish cross, RSI neutral although a cross below 50 would be considered bearish. Price is still above the cloud which is bullish but a move down to S1 or the lower BB would not be out of the cards. The risk to bulls is a fast trip down to the 50day MA or lower. The risk to bears is another explosive V shaped rally up to new ATH. I remain with a bearish bias and think that Risk/Reward of initiating new long positions at these levels is unfavorable but the market does what it does and nobody can predict the future. Good Luck and make some money next week!

The market keeps grinding higher. The first week in september was a shortened week with no trading Monday. Everyone kept saying that after Labor day volume picks up as the big boys come back from their vacation homes in the Hamptons and the kids on the Eastern seaboard head back to school. Well the market hasn't exactly been flooded with volume yet but I suspect that it can't be long before more players return to their battlestations. Over here in Montana it's beginning to feel a bit more like fall as the air turns crisp and the nights cold. 
As America winds down its QE, Europe begins theirs. I wish I knew and understood macro economic policy a little more because I would like to think that there is reasoning behind some of these moves central bankers have been making other than some overbearing desperate attempt to save struggling economies. Seems to me as a layman that if an economy is strong it doesn't need help from central bankers. You can put the training wheels on the bike, but sooner or later you are going to have to take them off and learn to ride on your own. Anyways as a result of the agressive monetary policies the Euro is tanking and the USD is soaring. Vacation time anyone?
Traders are scared of heights. This is because if you spend much time in markets you eventually learn (most likely the hard way) that what goes up, must come down. The market is chopping around, strength off the back of the ECB aggressive monetary policies got faded three times last week which is a bit of a change of character in the market. However any sell pressure at all would be a change of character as this market continues on its unprecedented bull run. Friday was met with buyers as people were afraid to let the 1% 'buying opportunity' slip through their fingers. I am of the opinion that if you wait long enough you can almost always find a better price to buy or sell something at but traders are not patient people. We must work with what we are given every day and at least for now BTFD continues to reward. The S&P closed the week at an all time closing high. 

The market is in overbought territory and is working off the last V shaped rally sideways for now. SAR indicator flipped to resistance. Volume is starting to pick up slightly from the summer doldrums. Along with the market, bullishness is at an all time high.

The risk to bulls is a swift and fierce correction as Americas QE winds down. The risk to bears is an explosive blow up in equity prices as bulls continue their unrelenting stampede and trample bears. The market is a pendulem, momentum is a very powerful force. Just keep in mind that sooner or later it slows and begins to swing the other way. Never get complacent or the market will humble you. Have a good week and make some $!