evening wrap, december 17
market vibes
Stock indexes continued to rotate out of AI into an unwilling market again today. Nvidia, Tesla, and GOOG were down 3 to 5%. The Dow was relatively steady. Bitcoin posted a $5,000 whipsaw but held its lows for the week. Silver rallied above $67.00 briefly and spent the session near all-time highs. PGMs were strong; gold tagged along. FX was mixed, and oil was cautiously higher on Venezuela.
Narratives and news
According to Michael Burry’s official site on X American households hold more wealth in stocks than real estate for the third time since World War II: $61.1 trillion in equities vs $49.3 trillion in real estate (St. Louis Fed). The stock market market fell 48% in 1969/1970 and 49% in 2000/2001. Comments in the X-post point out the metric has been unreliable since 2011.
Looking closer, real estate is not actually going down nationally. The percentage of household wealth is going down because stocks have been going up so much faster. Zillow, Moody’s, and Goldman all agree there is a chronic 3- to 5-million-unit shortage.
The $18 trillion FDI that Trump touts is a notional total of leveraged pledges. Most of it, even if it all comes to fruition, will be financed with unsecured bonds at the same time the Treasury is borrowing $8 trillion short-dated and $4.2 trillion longer-dated bonds in 2026. Whatever happens with real estate prices next year, a steeper curve seems certain.
**Trump speaks at 9 PM EST this evening. Tucker Carlson was on a podcast on Telegram this afternoon. He said according to his sources, members of Congress were briefed about war in Venezuela yesterday and Trump might declare it tonight. Stocks weakened into the close, and crude turned higher.
In the markets
Bitcoin suffered a gnarly smackdown today. Bloggers tracking it said $120 million short covering ripped IBIT and futures higher betweem 9:50 and 10:00 AM EST and $200 million responsive long liquidation sold it down after a few minutes. Elevator to roof and down to basement.
Hard selling in S&Ps on the opening and as usual… hard selling into the close..
