Spoiler alert: it’s not the Fed, even though the portfolio rebalancing channel courtesy of a $4.5 trillion Fed balance sheet certainly assured that the artificially inflated bubble in stocks, as a result of the Fed’s own purchases of bonds, is unlike anything seen before (and to all those debating whether the bubble is in bonds or stocks, here is the answer: it is in both).
The answer, according to Goldman’s David Kostin is the following: “From a strategic perspective, buybacks have been the largest source of overall US equity demand in recent years.”
In other words, not only has the Fed made a mockery of fundamentals, the resulting ZIRP tsunami means that corporations can issue nearly-unlimited debt to yield chasing “advisors” managing other people’s money, and use it to buyback vast amounts of stock, which brings us to the latest aberation of the New Abnormal: the “Pull the S&P up by the Bootstaps” market, in which the only relevant question is which company can buyback the most of its own stock.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on 11/09/2014.
Follow on Twitter
Recent Comments