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So - futures (Sunday night at 6 PM) opened sharply down - massively - 3%. Then around 7-8 PM - the Japanese Central Bank acted. That erased some of it. But - it ran out of steam at about 2-3 AM until the European Central Banks acted and then it came up again. Then the news was worked in that a 50 basis point cut was coming and then the short positions started getting closed. That's the only way you get this sort of rally.

But - I want you to look at what is happening since the actual announcement: It ripped up (and a lot of cheerleaders on here who really don't know you know what from Shinola) starting singing "Happy Days are here again" - yet we are now down 3% from that rip up. Now - that doesn't mean we can't run up higher....but here is what is dangerous: 1) We are sitting right at the 200-day exponential moving average - and just moved back down below it; 2) As I explained to a poster yesterday (who was lamenting the selling of his portfolio on Friday) - the Vix long term futures for April and July went UP - and April was up big on massive volume. That means the ALGOS (more next paragraph) think this is not over. This is a dead cat bounce. The big money already figured in the rate hike - and it banking on the VIX being higher next month than what it is now. For the record - it is ALMOST ALWAYS a great investment to short the longterm vix. When the market is bullish - it is a 100% (almost) guaranteed profit to go longterm shorts on the VIX futures. But the Algos are going long.

And that brings me to my final point: ALGOs. Too many people on here fail to remember that 90%+ of all trading is done by computers today. The stock market floors are almost bare. It is not a situation where, yesterday, the average investor decided he wanted to get back in because stocks were cheap. It was purely the algos closing the shorts. Had investors REALLY thought stocks were cheap - it's time for another melt-up - you would see people piling on even now - 2 hours after the rate cut announcement. And I just looked - TNX at all-time lows. NOT GOOD. Anyone who thinks it is has a hole in their head (when the economy is supposed to be so healthy).

Remember -- in a healthy economy - the FED should not be needed to constantly pump tens of billions into the overnight repo market - and constantly save the markets from tanking. However - they have been doing this for months. They saved it in late January. They have stepped in in the middle of the night NUMEROUS occasions with $50 billion loans to the banks - otherwise, you would have woken up with a bank run. These are not things that go on during a great, financially stable, free-market economy.

All one has to do is be honest and ask themselves ONE question: Where would we be without ZERO FED intervention? No 10's - 100s of Billions from the PPT - no rate cuts - no repo markets saves - no stock buybacks. Where would the market be if hundreds of trillions of dollars had not been printed and put into the market? For a bunch of people who are supposed to be about free markets - that should be an honest question. And a scary one.

Thanks for that response Nelson. I enjoy the pros on here that can discuss the markets in technical terms and know where to look for sentiment.

I got a pretty good seat on the show, although it galls me that the terminal we’re hooked into goes into mini-Mike’s wallet.

There is some discussion around the flat screens of a 50 bps cut looking like a “Holy S——t, they know there is something even more awful coming.”

My systematic buys these days are canned goods and .223 ammo.

Anyone that knows anything about economic history and particularly the sordid history of banks knows how this movie ends. And if it does not end that way, we would be unique. One of the great ironies of this board is how many can educate each other on the failures of communism, but very few can ID those times when capitalism was perverted and then done wrong...