The Real Reason This Market Is Defying Gravity

The S&P 500 popped 2% at the open yesterday, on the first day back from the long Memorial Day weekend. Governments around the world continue relaxing their economic restrictive policies. But even more important, they keep pumping out free cash. It’s gotten so excessive that some people are actually earning more on unemployment than they were in their jobs.

If we only learned one thing from the market over the last decade, it loves free money. As long as the Fed, ECB, and other governments continue handing out free money, expect stock prices to defy gravity. Why fight what is working?

Which is exactly what I wrote last week:

“when a market is trading this well, we follow those signals and keep jumping aboard the bounces. I have no idea how much longer this rebound can continue defying gravity, but as long as it keeps telling me it wants to go higher, I have no choice but to grab on and enjoy the ride.”

Unfortunately for the stragglers, now that the market is nearly 8% above the lows from two weeks ago, the easy money is behind us. Anyone waiting to buy the “confirmation” is putting themselves at risk of a very normal and healthy near-term dip. Two-steps forward, one-step back kind of thing. As much as I harp on this, the safest time to buy is when it feels the most risky. Buy the bounce early when you can place a sensible stop, a nearby stop. If we’re wrong, we get dumped out for a small loss. If we’re right, we make big bucks and are sitting on a pile of profits when everyone else is debating whether it is too late to get in.

Is it too late to buy? I have no idea, but I will keep riding this as long as it keeps going higher. My stops are at Friday’s close and we’ll see if yesterday afternoon’s late tumble into the close turns into anything more significant than the failed dips of last week. Maybe we test Friday’s close and maybe we don’t. But for those of us with a profit cushion, riding these routine gyrations will be far easier than anyone who chased this strength yesterday and bought high.