WTF? The Russell 2,000 Index is often disconnected from the other indexes but lately it's become disconnected from the economic data, which has turned substantially lower in Q2 while the index has rocketed from 1,500 on April 1st to 1,620 yesterday – not quite 10% in not quite 2 months . As you can see from Zero Hedge's chart, this is the widest disconnect between the Russell and the Economic Surprise Index (data better or worse than expected) since last October, when the Russell topped out at 1,520 and then corrected 50 points to 1,470 but it only stopped when the Data turned more positive. What's propelling the Russell to unreality this week is the suddenly strong Dollar, which is great for small cap companies who do the vast majority of their business locally, in US Dollars. But the Dollar can't keep up this pace and, in fact, just yesterday, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority stepped in to put a floor on their currency's slide and we can expect the PBOC and other Central Banks to follow as the Dollar hits the 5% Rule™ at 93.45. Given the 4.45 run from 89, we can expect a weak retrace of 20% of that run (0.89) so call it 0.9 and that takes us back to 92.55 and a stronger retrace would be 91.65 – so that's what we'll look for to see if the Central Bank Interventions are enough to stop people from running to the relative safety of the Dollar while the World is in turmoil ( see yesteday's Morning Report ). IN PROGRESS
WTF?
The Russell 2,000 Index is often disconnected from the other indexes but lately it's become disconnected from the economic data, which has turned substantially lower in Q2 while the index has rocketed from 1,500 on April 1st to 1,620 yesterday – not quite 10% in not quite 2 months.
As you can see from Zero Hedge's chart, this is the widest disconnect between the Russell and the Economic Surprise Index (data better or worse than expected) since last October, when the Russell topped out at 1,520 and then corrected 50 points to 1,470 but it only stopped when the Data turned more positive. What's propelling the Russell to unreality this week is the suddenly strong Dollar, which is great for small cap companies who do the vast majority of their business locally, in US Dollars.
But the Dollar can't keep up this pace and, in fact, just yesterday, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority stepped in to put a floor on their currency's slide and we can expect the PBOC and other Central Banks to follow as the Dollar hits the 5% Rule™ at 93.45.
Given the 4.45 run from 89, we can expect a weak retrace of 20% of that run (0.89) so call it 0.9 and that takes us back to 92.55 and a stronger retrace would be 91.65 – so that's what we'll look for to see if the Central Bank Interventions are enough to stop people from running to the relative safety of the Dollar while the World is in turmoil (see yesteday's Morning Report).
IN PROGRESS
