Bill Fleckenstein's Blog

Overnight equity markets were unremarkable, while debt markets around the world continue to rally while they follow our Treasuries higher, as whatever weakness was inspired by the fear of Fed tapering comes back out of the market.

Some of you may be scratching your heads and wondering, if Syria was the proximate cause for today's decline, why didn't it matter until now? I think that brings up a point I have made many times, though not recently, that markets these days seem to discount next to nothing anymore.

Overnight markets were quiet and modestly higher. Equities in the early going here were perky, led by the Nasdaq, which gained 0.75% as speculation begets more speculation, in the same way rising prices beget a continuation of rising prices.

Overnight markets were higher, led by Japan, which gained 3.5%. The Reserve Bank of Australia joined the worldwide easy money party last night, as it dropped rates by 25 basis points.

Overnight markets were a nonevent and the early going saw the indices flopping around unchanged, though they spent most of the time slightly lower in totally dull trading, especially considering the epic run that has taken place thus far.

Worldwide equity markets were higher last night as the global rally, which began in mid-November and has been grinding higher in various fits and spurts, continues. It seems to me that some of this rally has been a consequence of so-called professional investors who must outperform their various benchmarks.

Congress and the administration are a total embarrassment, as this entire exercise has been about posturing rather than dealing with any of our issues. Even worse, we are going to see this same sorry movie again as we approach the debt ceiling, since it is extremely unlikely that anything of consequence will be done until that deadline is fast upon us.

Overnight markets were nonevents; even the downgrade of France's debt by Moody's had no real impact, though French bonds did decline in value just a bit. As for the market here, it traded mostly unchanged in a small range before closing flattish.

Stocks here gained about 0.5% in the first couple of hours despite a preannouncement from Caterpillar, which has been impacted by cutbacks in spending, most specifically in the base metals, as a consequence of economic weakness in China and the world over.

Today's market action is a tale of Before-and-After-Mario-Draghi, a.k.a. "B.D." and "P.D." After the ECB basically said it wouldn't do anything new, Draghi in his press conference uttered a lot of brave words, not the least of which was the phrase, "it is pointless to bet against the euro."