Mar202015
Some people destroy their homes to avoid foreclosure
What would you do if you were really, really angry at your bank?
Losing a home in foreclosure really makes some people angry. I realize that’s not exactly a news flash, but the manifestations of that anger are truly remarkable, particularly when you consider the borrower has some responsibility for this negative outcome.
I contend that Lenders Are More Culpable than Borrowers in the housing debacle. Apportioning blame for the housing bubble has become a polarized political issue. The Left wants to portray the evil banks as taking advantage of hapless borrowers thus entitling these borrowers mortgage relief or absolution for strategic default. The Right points out the responsibility borrowers have for their own behavior and wants to bail out the banks for completely self-serving reasons. As with most political issues, the polarized and generally self-serving positions of each side fail to capture the truth of the matter.
I maintain that lenders bear a greater responsibility for the housing bubble and bust because lenders are supposed to be the adults in the room. Borrowers are like children asking for candy; lenders are like adults who must decide what’s best for the child because lenders are the ones putting up the money. Although lenders bear a greater responsibility, the borrowers have responsibility to, and not all them want to live up to it. When they are forced to accept it, which they are when the foreclosure auction happens, some people become wildly irrational and do things they otherwise wouldn’t.
Mendon police say man intentionally set home on fire
Posted: Mar 05, 2015, Reported by Kimberly Bookman
MENDON, Mass. (WHDH) – A Mendon man appeared in Milford District Court on Friday after police responded to a fire Thursday night and found him in a van with a suspicious device on his chest.
David Cheschi, 49, was accused of prompting a bomb scare and keeping firefighters away from his burning Mendon home.
“My grandfather built that house, it was really said to see it go,” said Megan Shaw.
“It took him two years to build, and like he said, it took two hours to burn down,” said Debbie Deggendorf, said a neighbor.
Prosecutors charged David Cheschi with keeping firefighters away from the burning house. Police said he may have been facing foreclosure. They feared he set the fire and booby trapped the home.
“Cheschi was given verbal orders to show his hands and exit the van. Again, with no response,” prosecutor Robert Shea said in court.
Cheschi shook his head as the prosecutors described how police said they found him in his van blocking the driveway. Officers said they noticed wires tied around his legs and wires around the van.
“The wires were alarming enough that firefighters were ordered to stay back from the fire in fear that they would be harmed,” said Shea.
This guy will find some glib excuses and mount a defense, but the police characterizations are probably right. He started the fire and created a situation that prevented them from putting it out. Further, since this was arson, the insurance company won’t pay the claim, and since the owner likely has no other assets, this will be a total loss for the bank — which is what the guy wanted.
Cheschi said the wires were a belt used to hold up his pants.
Police and neighbors said Cheschi had mental health issues and feared losing his home.
“He didn’t take care of it much because things that were going on, but I don’t think he wanted to give it away,” said Megan Shaw.
The judge ordered a dangerousness hearing for Cheschi next week. Police said they consider him a suspect in what may be an arson.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The cause was anger.
There was a time when bankers and financiers were lionized as great men helping build a great country. Now many people view bankers as soulless agents of evil who will do anything for money.
Bankers fail to repossess homes of delinquent borrowers because when the property is worth less than the outstanding balance of the loan, the banker losses money. Kicking the can and manipulating house prices serves banker’s best interests, so that’s what they do. But perhaps part of the reason lenders don’t foreclose is because they fear what borrowers will do with the homes. A borrower in Bulgaria shows just how far some will go when they feel let down by the mortgage and banking system.
A Man In Debt Demolishes His House And Drops It In Front Of The Bank
Feb 27 • A Paradigm Shift, The Word
In the end of 2013 a man from Lovech-Bulgaria who could not afford to pay the mortgage for his house gave his last penny to demolish it right before the banksters took it away.
The land that the house was built on was not included in the mortgage so the family decided to destroy the house and give it to its new owner.
The remains of the building were loaded on a big truck and moved to the central district office of the bank in the city of Teteven, where the contract for the mortgage was signed.
The man who was in debt to the bank and his whole family entered the office and started crying and begging for mercy, but the director said that they can’t make exceptions and the family had a week to vacant the house.
Imagine the director’s face after the family got out of the office and his precious new house was unloaded in front of the bank’s main entrance…
That’s how we should all deal with the banksters.
LOL!
Over the last several months I’ve made a number of changes in my life. The net effect has been less stress and emotional upheaval, and I don’t carry as much emotional baggage as I used to. That being said, I still find I carry anger toward what the financial elites did during the 00s. At this point it’s less of a seething hatred and more of a feeling of revulsion, disrespect, and disgust. I guess I have more inner work to do.
I still laugh when I think about my favorite scene from Conan the Barbarian:
What is best in life?
Crush the banks, see them driven into bankruptcy, and hear the lamentation of their stockholders.
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That’ll Kill the High-End Housing Boom in US Trophy Cities
High-end American homes are hot among foreign investors. Last year, the Association of Realtors reported that they spent $92.2 billion on US homes over a 12-month period, up 35% from a year earlier. Chinese investors spent $22 billion, up 72%, paying a median price of $523,000. And 76% of them paid cash. They’re desperate to get their money out of China!
Yet with all the official vigilance and handwringing in the US about money laundering and the crackdown on Americans trying to stash some money overseas to escape the sinewy arm of US tax authorities, no one in America apparently asks foreigners where this money comes from.
Other trophy cities where rich foreigners from corrupt countries like to buy are Washington DC, Miami, and New York. Last month, the New York Times ran a series of articles on how foreigners, particularly rich Russians, hide behind shell companies to buy high-dollar condos at the Time Warner Center and elsewhere in Manhattan:
In the decade and a half since Mr. Putin came to power, Russians have socked away hundreds of billions of dollars overseas. Even as the Kremlin was promoting what it called a “deoffshorization” campaign to repatriate Russian capital, an estimated $150 billion left the country last year….
For many wealthy Russians, a New York condo serves as a double parachute – a safe-deposit box of sorts, and a soft landing spot should the climate back home turn inhospitable or dangerous – even if that apartment sits dark and vacant for most of the year. In the process, the Russians, while not quite as ubiquitous as they are in, say, some of the tonier districts of London, have become the face of a sharpening debate about the impact of New York’s pied-à-terre economy.
Michael Bloomberg, when he was still mayor of New York City, said in an interview that these rich foreigners were “a godsend” to the city’s economy. “Wouldn’t it be great if we could get all the Russian billionaires to move here?” the billionaire said.
But it’s a murky business.
Now Global Financial Integrity, a Washington DC non-profit, and 16 other groups sent a joint letter to the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network. It spells out just how murky this business is – and how easy it is to “spend millions of dollars” anonymously in deals that are eagerly “facilitated” by the US real estate industry:
Investors mask the true ownership of property in the United States through anonymous companies. The effects of such companies go far beyond hiding the ultimate owners of Manhattan’s real estate. Anonymous companies allow corrupt politicians and organized crime to transfer and hide illicitly acquired funds worldwide, and fuel an abuse of power and a culture of impunity. The ability to conceal their illicitly-obtained-gains fuels corruption, breeds instability, and diverts resources from those they should benefit.
The letter laments “the lack of due diligence by the real estate industry into buyers’ identities, backgrounds, or the sources of their funds.” It refers to a report by the Senate Permanent Sub-Committee on Investigations in 2010 that showed “how foreign kleptocrats and their close associates were undermining US anti-money laundering controls….”
How can this happen on this scale in the anti-money-laundering capital of the world?
Turns out, buying a home in the US with laundered money is OK for foreigners. But don’t try to do this if you’re American. And that’s on purpose, thanks to the most un-American, big-brother, insidiously misnamed law that just doesn’t stop giving: the Patriot Act. The New York Times explains:
As signed into law in 2001, the Patriot Act would have required real estate brokers and others involved in real estate closings and settlements to conduct due diligence checks on their customers. After heavy lobbying by the industry, the industry was exempted from the final regulations.
This “temporary” exemption for foreigners, handed to the real estate industry in 2002, is now under fire. In their letter to the Treasury’s Financial Crimes unit, the 17 groups are asking that this exemption be yanked, that real estate professionals and banks be required to perform due diligence on these foreign buyers – just like they already have to with American buyers. Why should foreign buyers go scot-free?
Alas, I can already hear the howling from the real estate industry.
In California, selling high-end homes to Chinese investors is a huge business. An entire industry has sprung up to bring in Chinese buyers. It starts with marketing in China and extends to Mandarin-speaking real estate agents who cater to this clientele and create a relationship of trust. They show the most suitable homes. They steer buyers from new homes to existing homes when new-home prices outrun those of existing homes. They sort through the complications of buying a home in the US. They’re helpful in a million ways throughout the process.
These realtors don’t want to ask any questions. They want to sell a home, collect their hefty commission, and use world-of-mouth to attract more business from China.
And what would happen to high-end home sales and prices if buyers from China, Russia, the Middle East, Argentina, or even Venezuela were suddenly forced to lift the veil of their shell companies and disclose who they are, how they got their money, and prove that it hadn’t been obtained illicitly and through corrupt practices and subsequently laundered?
Everyone knows what would happen: These folks would go to London or other off-shore havens where none of these pesky questions would crop up. Sales of these high-end homes in Southern California and the Bay Area or in Manhattan would dry up. Prices would plunge. There aren’t enough Americans who can play in this ballgame. And it might just be what would prick the gold-plated end of the new housing bubble.
The housing industry is already fretting about Wall Street firms that have gone on a buying binge that drove up prices over the past three years at the lower end of the housing market. They’re now the largest landlords in the US. But now these PE firms want to exit.
http://wolfstreet.com/2015/03/12/thatll-kill-the-high-end-housing-bubble-in-us-trophy-cities/
This will not be a surprise to regular readers. This is also the topic of a post next week
With HAMP resets looming, Fannie and Freddie authorize further modifications
A little over a year ago, Freddie Mac reminded mortgage servicers that interest rates on some loans modified under the Home Affordable Modification Program would be resetting soon.
Now, with more HAMP resets looming, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae are instructing servicers to offer further modification to some borrowers who’ve already had their loans modified under the HAMP program to protect against interest rate shock and the potential for an uptick in defaults.
Under HAMP, interest rates on modified step-rate mortgages are fixed for five years, then increase in steps by as much as 1% per year until the interest rate matches the market rate that was in effect when the borrower’s HAMP modification took effect.
“Hopefully the borrowers are aware of the reset,” he said in April. “Though, the fear is there will be some recidivism.”
No kidding?
Some people believe rents will grow to the sky, but the apartment market is getting overbuilt, so despite an improving economy, rent increases will not match recent growth
Apartment construction surges across the Southland amid rising rents
Apartment construction is surging, in Southern California and nationwide.
New apartments and condominiums drove building permits up 8% in April from the prior month, to their fastest pace in nearly six years, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
Housing starts — which measure the launch of construction — climbed 13.2%. Most of the growth came in multifamily building, which is now back at pre-recession levels and up 15% through the first four months of the year compared with the same period last year, even as permits for single-family homes remain sluggish.
All this building comes as rents continue to rise — in Southern California and elsewhere — and reflects growing demand for apartments and optimism from big builders that demand will keep pushing those rents higher even as more supply comes onto the market.
“It’s a wildly different market than it used to be,” said Steve Wilson, executive vice president for West Coast operations at AvalonBay, a large real estate investment trust that owns 12,000 apartments in Southern California. “I’ve got to believe we can get 4% to 5% rent growth a year over the next 10 years.”
[The statement above is a classic example of someone who fails to see the obvious because is salary depends on his ignorance. Rent is already too high. How is rent growth supposed to consistently outpace income growth for 10 consecutive years? Would any rational person believe that’s possible?]
A rational person would not believe that’s possible. But, there is a large cadre of OC ‘rentiers’ who believe reality is composed of their delusions, so it comes comes as no surprise to hear such a notion.
I get a kick out of his choice of words:
“I’ve got to believe”
He does have to believe because his salary depends on it.
He chose a common cliche to express his beliefs without seeing the irony behind it. Funny how the subconscious leaks out.
Zillow: Underwater homeowners sink deeper even as home values rise
Owners of homes at the bottom of the market are trapped underwater on their mortgages even as the real estate market continues to recover, according to the fourth quarter Negative Equity Report from Zillow Group (Z).
That’s because low-end homes – the most likely to be upside-down – are losing value.
Zillow found that while foreclosures, short sales and rapidly rising home values freed nearly half of those homeowners, but now that trend has reversed in many metros. Three years into the recovery, home values overall continued to recover while owners of the lowest-valued homes – those most likely to be stuck in negative equity – were left behind.
“Higher negative equity rates have become the new normal,” said Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries. “We’ve long been expecting the negative equity rate to fall more slowly as home value growth also slows, and unfortunately that’s exactly what we’re seeing. Compounding the problem is the fact that negative equity is decidedly not an equal opportunity predator, and looms larger over the bottom 10% of homes, where homeowners are least prepared to withstand the assault.”
A $250,000 Tour With One Aim: Get Chinese to Buy a Home
(Bloomberg) — Just how confident is Los Angeles property broker Erik Coffin that he can interest Chinese clients in high-end Las Vegas villas? He’s charging $4 million a month for a quick glimpse.
It isn’t just any tour. The marketing push is set to start next month for these twice-monthly journeys that cost $250,000 a pop for a seven-day, private jet and Rolls Royce-chauffeured trip to the American heartland. Eight-person groups also will be offered consultations on plastic surgery, picking the sex of a child and wealth-management.
“It’s already a win for us,” said Coffin, 42, who employs 18 Mandarin speakers, almost a third of his staff, at Gotham Corporate Group, which recently opened an office in Beijing.
Wealthy Chinese have been stocking up on overseas real estate for at least the past five years, according to SouFun Holdings Ltd., China’s biggest real estate website. Now, entrepreneurs such as Coffin are banking on that demand to create an entirely new industry to cater to their needs — everything from websites and brokers to developers, lawyers and international marketers.
“Chinese consumers used to come to us and say, ‘Where can I buy with $500,000?,’’ said Andrew Taylor, 44, who helps run Juwai.com, a four-year-old Shanghai-based real estate platform catering to Chinese clients seeking homes overseas. ‘‘Now they are looking at three or four countries at the same time.’’
I was in an Orchard Hills sales office two weeks ago. A Chinese man was interpreting for a woman. They were desperately trying to find a home she could buy that day. She was flying back to China soon and “had to buy today.” There were frantically going over the available lots to determine which one would receive their deposit.
It was funny, but for the fact that they’re the reason I’ll be paying 10%+ more for my house.
I think this problem will get worse in the short term. A lot of money is going to flee China this year as everyone bails on their domestic real estate market as it implodes.
China is following in lock step with Japan of the 80s. They have blown a huge domestic property bubble. They have obtained high tech manufacturing and now they are buying signature properties in foreign countries. They also have a demographic time bomb that is going to go off with their little Emperor problem. Yup they are the new zombie Japan.
I never really thought about the parallels until you pointed them out. If the analogy holds true, we should witness a decade or more of deflation coming out of China.
Bay Area February Home Sales Decline
More evidence of an affordability problem
February 2015 San Francisco Bay Area housing market report. The number of homes sold was slightly lower than in January and was the lowest for the month of February in seven years. The median price paid for a home also fell slightly from January and the gain from a year earlier was the smallest since the median sale price began rising on a year-over-year basis nearly three years ago.
A total of 4,376 new and existing houses and condos sold in the nine-county Bay Area in February 2015. That was down 1.1 percent month over month from 4,423 sales in January 2015 and down 10.9 percent year over year from 4,911 sales in February 2014, according to CoreLogic DataQuick data.
February 2015 sales were the lowest for that month since February 2008, when 3,989 homes sold. The peak for February home sales was in 2002, when 8,901 homes sold. The February 2015 sales tally was 28.6 percent below the historical February average of 6,129 sales.
The median price paid for a home in the Bay Area was $565,000 in February 2015. That was down 1.2 percent month over month from $572,000 in January 2014 and up 4.6 percent year over year from $540,000 in February 2014.
The most desperate attempt to spin the fall of gold so far
Is The Dollar About To Lose Grip On Commodities And Gold?
The grip of the dollar has been outspoken in almost all commodities, but not in precious metals. Although commodities have experienced a meaningful decline since last year, it has not been reflected in the price of gold. The yellow metal has held up rather well. That is remarkable because gold recently tested multiyear support, and it has done so successfully thus far.
The next chart shows that gold has additional downside potential within its uptrend channel. Based on the trendline that started in 2001, we could make the case that gold could fall to $1050 and still remain within its secular uptrend. Mind how that trendline happens to coincide with a structural support area on the chart which goes back to the 2008 highs, adding to its importance. Old resistance should act as support going forward.
http://sproutmoney.com/files/2015/03/gold_1995_2015.png
[Take a good look at their supposed trend line. Notice that it is detached from the price action, and that if the line were redrawn properly, it would be clear that the trendline is broken. The interpretation of the price action is completely detached from reality, and it smells of deep desperation.]
Lot’s of big money loading-up on the
gold“inert rock” of late.scroll down… names named
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/gld/institutional-holdings/increased
Q1-15 action should be updated in a couple of weeks.
Not only is the old trend line broken, but you can easily see that the new trend line started in June 2013 and it’s pointing in a different direction. (Down, not up.)
el O says:
February 20, 2014 at 11:55 am
Looks like gold’s ”acceleration phase” of its undecline™ that began on June 28 2013 continues; ie.,
Jun 28 2013: $1190oz.
Feb 20 2014: $1317oz.
Cheers!
—————————————————
Today: $1182oz.
Fact meet stubborn.
Uh…. gold went from $1190 to $1317 in 8 months. That is an undecline, so thanks for the hat-tip, much appreciated.
btw, one good deed deserves another in return, so here you go 😉
—————————-
Mellow Ruse says:
June 28, 2013 at 12:43 pm
el numeraire is toast.
What has changed is that we’ve entered the acceleration phase of the decline.
My prediction: Gold will bottom at $500 and stay there.
————————————————————
Let’s recap…
1)Gold price has dropped .40 cents per month since your 6/28/13 proclamation/prediction above.
2)At the current rate of the “acceleration phase of decline” it will only take 142.8 years for gold to hit $500. LOL!
Have a nice weekend!
“…this will be a total loss for the bank…”
Unlikely. Sure, it’s this idiot’s hope. If he allowed his hazard insurance policy to lapse, the creditor likely force-placed hazard insurance. If the policy excludes intentional acts by the homeowner causing the destruction, then the creditor likely has insurance to cover this event. On top of that, the insurer likely has re-insurance to cover a portion or all of their loss from this event.
The Mrs practices complex civil litigation insurance defense…
Thanks for the clarification. I’m not surprised that lenders would find a way to cover their exposure to such circumstances.
Whether the bank is actually covered or not, I bet the guy who burned the house down believed they were not, and that was part of his motivation for burning it down..
Chances are his criminal action will make him liable for the entire shortfall anyway. Wages garnished and tax returns seized.
He probably isn’t too worried about that one. He’s a deadbeat with no assets.
Right, civil liability isn’t an issue – a quick BK filing after an judgment would resolve that. If wants a criminal defense attorney, not a public defender, than he needs to charge $10K on his credit card for the retainer (that will be consumed). Other than that, he’s looking at a plea deal. He’ll be a felon when he’s out, and his low current quality of life will sink even lower.
One way or another, he will capitulate to his loss of entitlement.
Daniel Kahneman:
Hypotheses should be confirmed by trying to REFUTE the hypothesis rather than by searching for additional supporting evidence.
The tendency to see patterns in randomness is overwhelming.
This is an extended version of the same argument I make that the federal reserve will not raise rates this year
A Strong Dollar Forces the Fed To Rethink Its Next Move
At the meeting itself, the F.O.M.C. dropped its commitment to being “patient” about starting to raise the federal funds rate, which it has kept at close to zero per cent since the financial crisis of 2008. On the face of it, this implies that the Fed remains confident the economy is finally shaking off the aftereffects of the Great Recession, which would allow it to go ahead and begin to normalize monetary policy. Based on this reading, an initial rate hike in June or September is still in the cards.
While Yellen was at pains to point out that other recent indicators, notably jobs numbers, have remained strong, the big rise in the dollar over the past year clearly has Yellen’s attention. Indeed, I suspect that the rally in the currency has prompted a serious rethink inside the Fed—and for good reason. The rise in the dollar means, effectively, that monetary policy has already been tightened. From an economy-wide perspective, an appreciation of the currency acts just like an actual rise in rates: it reduces the over-all level of demand and causes a slowdown in G.D.P. growth. Now that this has happened, it’s no surprise that the Fed would reconsider its next move.
To put it another way, the currency markets have already done a bit of the Fed’s work for it. By signalling to the market over the past few months that it was preparing to raise rates, the Fed prompted currency speculators to buy dollar-denominated assets, which bid up the price of the U.S. currency. Since this time last year, the value of the dollar against the euro has jumped by almost thirty per cent. Measured against the currencies of all the countries that trade with the United States, the rally has been less dramatic, but it has still been highly significant. When the value of a country’s currency rises, its products become more expensive on world markets, and if the appreciation is sustained over time its exports can be hit hard.
That’s especially true because a rising dollar has a double impact on the economy: in addition to hitting exports and restraining the growth rate of G.D.P., it makes imported goods and services cheaper, which reduces the rate of inflation. Since inflation is already running well below the Fed’s target of two per cent, this is another thing that Yellen and her colleagues have to be concerned about. Six months ago, Fed policymakers were expecting consumer prices to rise by about 1.75 per cent in 2015, which isn’t far from two per cent. Now, though, policymakers are expecting this year’s inflation rate to be only around 0.7 per cent, which would be the lowest figure since the nineteen-fifties.
The biggest factor in bringing down the inflation rate has been the collapse in energy prices, but the stronger dollar is also playing a role. As long as the currency keeps rising, it is difficult to see inflation rising and exports rebounding. This, in turn, implies that the Fed, despite dropping the word “patient” from its official policy stance, is likely to remain hesitant about raising interest rates. And that’s why the markets rallied on Wednesday afternoon. Investors and traders weren’t reacting to good news about the economy. They were celebrating the rising probability that the Fed isn’t about to remove the punch bowl, after all.
No inflation, no peace.
As noted in the article, this current bout of disinflation is caused by falling oil prices and a stronger dollar. What the article fails to touch on is the cause of these causes, and their durability.
Oil prices have fallen due to over-supply by OPEC nations. The consortium has remained intact thus far, but how long can the weaker nations afford to operate at a loss? By years end, there will be cracks forming in their collective resolve.
The strong dollar is a product of Euro/Japan QE. But that QE is a product of their own low inflation, which is a product of the strong Euro/Yen vis-à-vis the dollar. Now that the shoes on the other foot, will the Eurozone and Japan continue their QE plans? My first thought is hell yes, at least in the short-term. European company profits will rise based on dollar-denominated sales, as the sales are translated back into Euros. Same for the Yen.
Since the European and Japanese economies are smaller than the US, they will build inflationary pressures more quickly and therefore drop QE more quickly than most figure. The timing of the Euro/Japan QE seems notable. They seem to have waited until the US economy got rolling so that they could ride our coat tails. Which makes sense. Had they eased before the US economy recovered they’d have been run over. Literally.
So, the US expansion might slow down a little over the next year or so as Europe and Japan sling-slot ahead. At which time QE in these area will be curtailed, and inflation in the US will really kick in. About the same time, the oil anti-embargo-glut will end as the lesser-heeled conspirators chew their figurative feet off to escape the low-oil-price trap they set for themselves. At this point the FED would be well justified in raising short-term rates, if the data warrants.
I wouldn’t even be all that surprised if the FED had to go back to the QE trough. It all depends on the success of other nations QE efforts.
With the dollar rising so strongly, I can’t see the federal reserve raising rates. If the currency is too strong now, why would you raise rates to attract more foreign investment and make the currency even stronger?
I like your analysis of the Euro and Japan QE and it’s timing. It sounds very plausible and realistic.
The wildcard in all this is what happens in China. If the Chinese real estate bubble bursts and deflation gets out of control there, the central bank in China will print a lot of money, and the flow of capital could have unforeseeable effects, particularly if China tries to control the flow of capital with internal controls. Once the manipulations start, depending on the efficacy of those controls, the deflation may be contained or not. Either way, the problems in China won’t be contained in China no matter what their central bank does.
If a collapse in China hurts the economy here in the US, we could easily get tipped back into recession, and the federal reserve will start QE179 to restart our economy.
The FED “halted” the advance of the dollar temporarily on Wednesday while causing the market to run-off on prospect of smaller rate increases and change in tone. Look like 10y treasury could be stabilizing around 1.9%-2.1%. Noticed that the indexes failed to advance past the last major highs (exception is Nasdaq) so the market [US] IMHO is still consolidating at this point will a slight bullish bias due to the economy slowly getting better. Since late 2011 the indexes have advanced in a rather “narrow” channel, and since this is a bull market, I don’t expect the bull phase to end until we broke outside of this channel to upside in a rapid price advance which signal the blow off top of a major bull market now in its 6+ year. The next move up might not be due to earnings but more so with capital fleeing govt bonds due to fear of default according to Martin Armstrong.
Those who keep touting market is over valued because PE is over x and y or real estate is so high from some arbitrary income level obviously have no idea about the govt meddling with QE and debt market nor abyssmal interest rates one earns from deposit or buying bond nor the fear of bank bail ins i.e. Cyprus 2013 and a host of bank customer agreements that have been quietly changed in the case of a possible bank run.
Your former beloved chairman Ben.