Is a bottom in?

Not likely.

A market surging 2% in a downtrend on a single CPI print is probably more indicative of a bear market than an ongoing bull market. We’re about 5% off a peak with enormous valuations, hugely stretched sentiment, many bulls calling a bottom, and elevated earnings expectations for the next year.

Not a great setup.

Vertical rallies with depressed sentiment, terrible news, and a general lack of interest in the stock market is what you want to see when trying to bottom-call. That is clearly not what we have here.

I expect this rally to fail, though not today. That would be too easy. Likely will drift higher for a few days and then I believe the downtrend will resume.

I haven’t posted in a long time but I plan to write my updated macro thesis soon, along with some single stock bear cases. For now, suffice to say, the reasons for a bear market don’t present themselves on day one. They don’t usually start to become obvious for several weeks or months.