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The PPT Is The Only Thing Stopping An Outright Crash

February 12, 2018

The markets have changed and many are going to get “taken to the cleaners.”

Last year, 2017, was a not a normal year for stocks. Stocks as an asset class are not meant to go straight up without even a 1% pullback. But that is precisely what happened for nearly an entire year.

Now that massive market rig is over. And anyone who continues to invest as though it’s 2017 is going to get annihilated in the coming weeks. The only thing that stopped an all out crash in stocks was clear and obvious intervention in the markets by Central Banks.

Take Friday’s action for example. The S&P 500 briefly broke its 200-DMA. At that point the Plunge Protection Team stepped in and ramped stocks over 3% in the span of an hour.

This was intervention, plain and simple. NO real investors “panic buy” stocks in this kind of rapid frenzy.

This raises the question…

What would have happened if the PPT had not stepped in? Where would stocks fall to?

Buckle up, it's about to get nasty. The PPT can trigger bounces, but it requires REAL buyers for stocks to enter a prolonged rally.

Put another way, we're still going to that circle in the next few weeks.

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

Graham Summers is Chief Market Strategist for Phoenix Capital Research, an independent investment research firm based in the Washington DC-metro area with clients in 56 countries around the world.

Graham’s clients include over 20,000 retail investors as well as strategists at some of the largest financial institutions in the world (Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Royal Bank of Scotland, UBS, and Raymond James to name a few). His views on business and investing has been featured in RollingStone magazine, The New York Post, CNN Money, Crain’s New York Business, the National Review, Thomson Reuters, the Glenn Beck Show and more.