The US dollar is crashing (UUP).

Interest rates are in free fall (TLT).

The price of gold (GLD) is going through the roof.

It all seems like Armageddon.

And I haven’t even started talking about the weather yet!

Here in the San Francisco Bay Area we saw the highest temperature in recorded history, with the suburbs reaching a blistering 117 degrees.

BART ran at half speed because of buckled rails. Much of the famed Napa Valley’s grape crop turned into raisins.

This isn’t global warming. This is global barbequing!

While Texas and Florida were setting up Hurricane relief centers, we were opening cooling centers.

Did I mention that the US government almost ran out of money?

It all seemed like the end of the world, except in one place: the stock market.

Even with the prospect of North Korean nuclear missiles raining down upon us, all equities could manage was a single move down of some 270 points. It wasn’t even a feeble downside half effort.

Looking at the chart of the Dow Average for the past month, you might as well be looking at a Kansas mountain range. It’s as flat as a pancake.

I will now refer to an old Wall Street nostrum.

There aren’t many old Wall Street nostrums that still work, as they have been rendered useless by computer algorithms.

But I think this one is still valid.

“Throw bad news on a market, and if it fails to fall, you buy the daylights out of it.”

I can’t remember this much bad news getting dumped on a market, yet here we are just 1.81% short of a new all-time high. The hyper active, ADD deprived NASDAQ has been nearly as dead.

It all sets up a nice sideways “time” correction, instead of the more violent “price” correction where prices actually fall, to be followed by yet another run to new all time highs.

Of course, you can blame corporate earnings, which are moving from strength to strength.

Analysts were caught flat footed when Q2 earnings came in at a hot 12% YOY growth, instead of the mid single digits expected.

As a result, big institutions were largely underweight stocks, and are now Jonesing to get back in. That frustrated buying will spill into the market for the rest of 2017.

Want another reason for stocks to go back up?

They say every cloud has a silver lining, so we’ll have two big ones from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma.

The combined reconstruction spending from the two monster storms could top $400 billion.

By comparison, 9/11 reconstruction spending topped at only $25 billion, and is still going on.

President Obama’s 2009 post crash 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act pumped $787 billion into the economy, and was enough to boost GDP growth by 50-100 basis points for several years.

The storms’ initial impact on the economy will be negative, as business in America’s second and fourth largest states grinds to a halt.

Witness the enormous jump in the Weekly Jobless Claims last week from 234,000 to 298,000.

But after that, the storms will have a positive impact, possibly adding 25 basis points a quarter in annualized growth for the foreseeable future.

So if the much predicted market correction fails to unfold in coming weeks, it will be off to the races to new highs, again, and again and again.

At this point, I can’t let the recent performance of the Mad Hedge Fund Trader service pass without mention.

I have run up 23 consecutive profitable alerts since June 23, taking our trailing twelve-month return up to an eye-popping 56.42%.

The all time record was 24 winning alerts in a row set in 2012, when I clocked a 60% profit for the year.

If you are among the hundreds of new subscribers who just signed up, be patient.

Your time will come.
 
On Monday, September 11 the US markets will open and we will be getting the first damage estimates from Hurricane Irma in Florida.

On Tuesday, September 12 at 10:00 AM EST we get the JOLTS Report on job openings.

On Wednesday, September 13, at 8:30 AM EST we get the August Producers Price Index, an inflation read.

At 10:30 AM EST the weekly EIA Petroleum Status Report is out, which will be meaningless in the wake of Hurricane Harvey.

Thursday, September 14 at 8:30 AM EST we learn the Consumer Price Index. We also get the Weekly Jobless Claims, which will most likely mirror last week’s gigantic increase.

On Friday, September 15 at the close we get a Quadruple Witchingexpiration in the options markets.

Wrapping up the week at 1:00 PM is the Baker-Hughes Rig Count, which has been up for most of the last year, boding ill for oil prices.

As for me, I am heading to Travis Air Force Base this weekend to watch the last of the California Air National Guard leave for Florida, taking all their helicopters with them.

They only returned from Texas the week before.

Then I am off to a Texas relief fundraiser at one of the 10,000 schools in the Golden State doing so this weekend.

We managed to go from rioting Nazis to all helping each other in only two weeks.

Only in America!

Good luck and good trading!