The Housing Market Has Been Propped Up By The Fed, Not Ready To Stand Alone

Both the housing market and the auto market have been propped up by the Federal Reserve’s cheap money and artificially low interest rates. These markets may not be ready to stand alone. (Ford (F), General Motors (GM), Tesla Motors (TSLA), iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate (ETF) (IYR), Lennar Corporation (LEN), KB Home (KBH))

Markets: If Interest Rates Go Up, The Bubble Pricks

We have a bubble economy. If interest rates go up, the bubble pricks. If you move interest rates higher, by definition, stocks and real estate are less valuable. They are more valuable the lower the rate. If interest rates go up, their values come down, multiples have to go down. (SPDR S&P 500 Index ETF (SPY), SPDR Dow Jones Industrial Average ETF (DIA), Nasdaq 100 Index ETF (QQQ), iShares Russell 2000 Index ETF (IWM), iShares Barclays 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT), iShares Dow Jones US Real Estate (ETF) (IYR))

Stock Market: The Trump Rally

This honeymoon is going on, and everybody thinks this is great and the narrative is feeding on itself but people are ignoring the big rise in interest rates and assuming none of it matters. All of a sudden higher rates do not matter because we are going to get all this extra growth from the tax cuts and from the government stimulus. Well, the rarity is if interest rates rise it does not matter about the stimulus, the sedative that will result from higher rates will more than offset it, plus the markets are assuming that higher interest rates will have no effect on U.S. asset prices or the economy. They are wrong on both those counts.