Hello
I think the bankers and governments want to avoid too much inflation as well as avoid too much stock crash, while also avoiding other market crashes, so in my opinion we will have this game for a while where nothing happens, there is some inflation but not too much, and markets in general are rather boring with the S&P500 being in a slow-flat multi year bear market.
A 1987 flash crash followed by a rally is possible, this is what many people would expect because it is what happened in the past and what scared people for life but I do not think it is highly likely.
I also think the WW3 FUD, especially the uncertainty, means no one dares to make a move so nothing happens.
These are the elements I believe are important to look out for :
- World War 3
Things are really starting to look like a World War.
UN security council resolution banning missile transfer to Iran has expired today thursday 19 october, so it is likely Russia will transfer big missiles to Iran (payback for US support of Ukraine).
And Iran just switched from a US guiding system to a chinese one (Beidou).
Also heard other stuff going on, Venezuela troop buildup at the border.
The US being busy with Israel and its shell stocks getting depleting could mean everyone wakes up and starts the wars they put on hold.
Personally I think that all the uncertainty because of WW3 are why the markets have been so flat and slow with no clear direction.
- Interest rates and the 33.33 trillion US debt
A few days ago the US national debt passed 33.33 trillion USD. Last year western interest rates also ended the downtrend and shot up. It's getting harder and harder for them to keep them low, they need to feed the bubble. The national debt, M1 money stock and FED/ECB balance sheet charts have really gone parabolic in the last years.
This obviously (if it continues to move) will have impacts on the stock market because there is one thing investors care about way more than anything else : making money! If they can get double the returns lending money rather than buy overpriced shares that do not move and have 0.1% dividends at that point, obviously they will throw themselves at bonds, which will make shares even less attractive and so on, possibly until shares get actually cheap and smart money buys and end the downtrend.
- Mass migration
There is this whole racism and taboo nonsense going on around this, but regardless of them have blond hair and blue eyes or not, if you have 10 million men entering a country overnight, it will have consequences. It is all obviously emotional manipulation to produce social acceptation of migrant workers. How do people even fall for this?
In France in the 70s bosses and their right wing pawns brought in the migrants for profit while leftists (communists) were strongly opposed to it. Now bosses and right wingers are against it. So the underlying demand has gone, people in power are just incompetent puppets that have no idea why they do what they do. That's for Europe, don't know how it is in the US of A. I heard the US of A wasn't going that well and the army had issues recruiting (and even more issues recruiting competent people).
I do not think businesses have much lemon squeezing left here. And all the competent workers have been stolen from the third world, now the ones coming are not so qualified, and not really cheaper than a robot or a touchscreen. They may even cost more to countries than what they bring. It really does not look like it is working out. Oh and alot of foreigners are "difficult cases", for example a very large number of them are rabid violent anti-semites. No more economic growth, no more market growth (without it not just being the market becoming way overpriced).
By the way China have baby issues but they still have hundreds of millions of countryside folks coming in to fuel the machine, so they really do not share the western worker issues.
- The US could lose superpower status and even if it does not the international USD is going to end
With its debt and lousy arms production and unimpressive army the USA are not what they once were.
Just because the debt has been ignored and has not crippled the USA for decades does not mean it is dust that won't ever do anything. It's another major issue that weaken the USD as a reserve currency.
Which means first USD won't be able to be printed to no end to feed (or save) the market and second international will go elsewhere (to Peter Schiff fund maybe?). The king of the bears might finally end up being right, after only 20 years of repeating that it's all over.
- Rising energy prices
I suspect all the Indians cheering for Israel are actually traders that want arabs - just like russians - to stop selling oil to the west, so it will go through them - just like with russian oil.
Well anyway prices have a high probability to go up, with Russia and the Middle East war, and that is always bad.
- Other ones
Other things to consider, like the housing market bubble popping, which could happen for example if shtf and millions of migrants just move out, leaving empty homes. Which is one of the many reasons why this huge recent parabolic migration is so important. That could start a good old panic and everyone looking for safe USD, Yen, CHF, and Bitcoin - just kidding obviously Bitcoin would go down 99%.
Arkansas has just kicked out a chinese state owned company that owned a large amount of land. Even without WW3 if chinese or arabs get kicked out of what they own in the US, that's going to have some effect. I do my FX trading but I do not spend countless hours check US stock markets so I do not know how much US stocks foreigners own, certainly enough to crash the market if they all sell at the same time.
And then you have the elections. I do not think it is very likely taxes or rules get major changes depending on who wins, so this does not get its own paragraph.