This market is running on fumes. There is no solid floor beneath it. No wave of earnings. No surge in demand. No real liquidity. It is all built on guesswork, misplaced optimism, and the fear of missing a rally that never had a base to begin with.
The Fed keeps everyone waiting. But waiting for what? Every time yields collapse and the bond market gasps for air, the message is clear. Help is needed. The Fed sees it but refuses to move. They could cut. They could buy bonds. They could stabilize the pressure that is building. They choose not to. They are not here for you. They are here to protect the architecture that serves their system.
They drained over one and a half trillion from the balance sheet. That is the backdrop. There is no fresh fuel coming in. No direct support for households. No easing of rates. Just the constant erosion of cushion. People feel this. That is why they are using credit like oxygen. Credit card debt now sits at one point three trillion. Defaults are starting to rise. Delinquencies are pushing higher. But the Fed is not blinking.
This is not about inflation. It never really was. This is about control. This is about managing decline without letting the gears come off in public. Every time markets jump, it is not because anything improved. It is because traders are trying to front run some kind of intervention. They are guessing. They are hoping the Fed will eventually panic and act. So far, it has not.
Each spike ends in a collapse because there is no structure underneath. There is no demand wave. No household savings rebound. No relief at the bottom. The consumer is exhausted. Retail is thin. Even corporate debt is being rolled over at interest levels that cannot be sustained. Quiet layoffs have begun. Real estate is softening. But none of this gets attention until it hits the banks.
This is the pattern now. Hope. Spike. Silence. Crash. There is no liquidity wave coming. The rallies are just noise. The reversions are the truth. The Fed will only act when the entire machine starts misfiring. And by then it will not matter what the S&P prints.