* It really was a brutal week on Wall Street, led by the tech-heavy NASDAQ, which is down about 5-1/2% on the week; 3% of that alone came today, now down about 17% from its high * Not officially in a bear market yet, but getting there * The vast majority of NASDAQ stocks are in bear markets, in fact, many of those stocks are down 40 or 50% or more - a number of those stocks down 40 or 50% today alone * The Russell 2000 is already in a bear market; it's down 24% * Dow Transports also down 25%, and transports were actually up this week * The S&P and the Dow are only down about 12% - in correction but not quite a bear market, but remember, all bear markets begin as corrections, and I think this is just the early stage of a bear market * You can contrast that with what's going on with gold; gold was up 5% on the week. It added $18 today alone to close above 1170, in fact the price of gold has risen by $120/ounce since the Federal Reserve raised interest rates in December * The dollar also had a bad week, despite rising somewhat today on the jobs numbers, the dollar index had its worst weekly decline since 2009 * So now, the opposite of what everybody expected has happened * Everybody thought the stock market would go up, because the rate hike was proof that the economy was stronger; instead the stock market has tanked, in fact the beginning of January was Wall Street's worst start to the year in history * In contrast, the expectation was that rising interest rates would help the dollar; instead the dollar has actually declined * Higher interest rates were expected to be bearish for gold; instead it was the catalyst for a huge rally in the price of gold * The weaker than expected jobs report was assumed to be the reason for today's stock market carnage, because we only created 151,000 non-farm payroll jobs and the Street was looking for 188,000 jobs * The reality is not that the report was weak, it is that it was not weak enough * The only thing that could have saved this market would have been a horrible jobs report - a jobs report so bad that an interest rate hike would be clearly off the table * Instead, this jobs report could indicate that the Fed is more likely to raise rates as a result of the numbers * That is why the market went down * No one wants to admit that the only thing holding up this market is the Fed, so they pretend that the market is disappointed by the weakness of the report * Jobs have nothing to do with it - this market has always been about one thing - the Fed and cheap money * Now it hangs on weather the Fed will raise rates again * I believe the next thing the Fed is going to do is to cut interest rates * I think they might even go negative and they going to launch QE4 * The markets have not figured this out yet * Even the Atlanta Fed, whose first estimate of Q1 GDP at just 1.2% (I think this is an over-estimation; I think the Q4 .7% will be downwardly revised) saw this apparently strong jobs report they increased their Q1 GDP estimate by a full percentage point to 2.2% * If the Atlanta Fed thought the jobs report was so strong, why are the reporters assigning blame to the jobs report for the sell-off * If you look beneath the headline number of the miss, on the number of non-farm payrolls, you'll find out what the markets were so worried about: * 1) The official unemployment rate moved down to 4.9% - that's the first time we've had a 4 handle on the unemployment rate since Obama has been President * In fact, he did not waste much time calling a press conference proclaiming the success of his administration and declaring that the U.S. economy is the strongest in the world; quite ironic because I thin we are already in recession Our Sponsors:* Check out Infinite Epigenetics: https://infiniteepigenetics.com/GOLD* Check out Justin Wine and use my code SCHIFF20 for a great deal: https://www.justinwine.comPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

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“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.

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