(Bloomberg)
They’re baaaaack! Day-trader cult stocks like AMC Entertainment Holdings Inc. are dominating investors’ attention once again, with eye-popping rallies and crashes and even some free popcorn thrown in for those with the gumption to ride the rollercoaster.
US stocks climbed on Friday, led by technology shares, after a tepid US monthly jobs report relieved investor concerns that the US Federal Reserve might soon rein in monetary stimulus.
US employers last month increased hiring and raised wages as they competed for workers, but the nonfarm payrolls increase of 559,000 jobs was below the 650,000 forecast of economists polled by Reuters.
Investors were concerned that a robust jobs report that pointed to rising inflation could prompt the Fed to pull back on stimulus put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It keeps pressure off the Fed and will enable them to keep
I picked a hell of a day to quit drinkin’
– Russell Casse in
YOUGHAL, IRELAND – Bubbles, bubbles, bubbles.
Today, we look at another institution that has been zombified by the feds – the stock market.
The stock market is supposed to allow investors to exchange shares in profit-making, wealth-increasing, goods-and-services-producing businesses.
Nobody ever knows what any share is worth. So the market “discovers” the price… minute by minute.
This price may be based on a single, most recent trade, but it sets the current value of all the similar shares outstanding. And it changes as new information comes forward.
In the U.S., prices are quoted in dollars. And the Federal Reserve has been tampering with the dollar’s value for many years. In the 12 months starting at the beginning of March 2020, it inflated the base supply of dollars (the Fed’s balance sheet) by 78% – with most of it going directly into the asset markets.