SP500 filled downside gap today.  Uptrend not broken as of today’s close.

Great stuff here:

Genius is no guarantee of investment success.  The ‘smart’ guys at Harvard are a perfect example:

Key bit:   Harvard Management Company lost almost $2 billion in endowment value during a “disappointing” fiscal year 2016, posting its worst endowment returns since the nadir of the financial crisis and marking the latest in a string of underwhelming investment results for the world’s largest university endowment.

The negative 2 percent returns, which HMC announced Thursday evening, bring the endowment’s total value to $35.7 billion, down from its $37.6 billion value at the end of fiscal year 2015.

Read the whole thing:   http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/9/23/hmc-returns-2016/

Hat tip Josh Brown

Not so much.  As mentioned earlier, this week is historically the weakest week in the weakest month of the year.  The Fed’s decision to keep interest rates unchanged has given stocks a huge boost.  Not such a weak week after all.  With today’s gain, the fourth in a row, the SPY is now up just shy of 2% for the week and appears headed for more gains tomorrow.   

Cheers! Beer Makes People Happier, Maybe Even Sexier

From cbsnews.com:   Raise a glass of your favorite brew and toast the Swiss researchers who offer scientific proof for what you surely suspected and probably hoped.

Drinking beer does make you friendlier, happier, less inhibited — maybe even sexier, they report.

But that’s not all.

“We found that drinking a glass of beer helps people see happy faces faster, and enhances concern for positive emotional situations,” said lead researcher Matthias Liechti, head of psychopharmacology research at University Hospital in Basel, Switzerland.

Read the whole thing:  http://www.cbsnews.com/news/drinking-beer-makes-people-happier-maybe-sexier/

Fed Teet & Gaps from Doug McKay on Vimeo.

Key bit:  The FOMC kept the funds rate unchanged, but the statement indicated a divided committee, with three members dissenting. The statement also noted that risks were now “roughly balanced,” and that the committee decided to stay on hold “for the time being” to collect more evidence that the economy is making needed progress.

The markets reaction after the Fed’s decision was very bullish.  In fact, overly so.  Almost every investment category rose on Wednesday.  Here’s some color from Jason Goepfort from sentimentrader.com:   

“After the FOMC announcement on their rate policy and outlook, pretty much everything is rallying. It’s odd to see stocks, bonds, gold and commodities all enjoying relatively large gains, because they tend to react differently to economic inputs.

Regardless, there have been 12 times since the inception of the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) , iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bond ETF (TLT) , SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) and United States Oil ETF (USO) that all of them rallied on the day of a FOMC decision. … Today will mark the 13th.

Stocks have showed a negative short-term tendency after the other instances. The worst was eight days later when SPY was positive two times and negative 10 times, with a heavily skewed risk/reward ratio to the downside. It had at least one lower close over the next two weeks every time.

Given the mostly uptrending market over the past decade, by a little over a month later, the instances were mostly positive.”

Interesting, very interesting.  Despite the immediate post Fed surge a correction usually follows. 

Hat tip Doug Kass of realmoneypro.com

Robert Citrone, who runs one of the world’s biggest macro hedge funds, believes a massive correction is ahead for stocks.   Key bit:  As cited first by Bloomberg, Citrone said “we believe we are in the midst of the market correction we have been expecting,” adding “It will likely persist over the next 3-4 months and be the largest correction since the 2008 crisis.”

Citrone, whose fund has been battered this year having generated substantial losses in the early part of the year along most other macro funds, tempered his view by describing the correction as a “healthy adjustment from overvalued market levels, which are primarily a result of exceptionally easy monetary policies.” One of the many hedge fund managers dubbed Tiger cubs after working at Julian Robertson’s Tiger Management, Citrone founded Discovery in 1999.

This is another extremely bearish call by a top hedge fund strategist.  Certainly worth considering. 

Hat tip Zerohedge.com

Key bit from BusinessInsider.com:   Maybe you’ve heard that a new book out right now is planting propaganda voice in the war on cash. In “The Curse of Cash,” Harvard economics professor Kenneth Rogoff makes the case that nixing paper money—at the very least, larger-denominated bills—“could help more than you might think” in combating criminal activities such as drug trafficking, corruption, extortion and money laundering. It could even prevent the spread of terrorism and discourage illegal immigration, Rogoff argues.

It gets even worse. Central banks, he adds, should have the latitude to drop interest rates below zero during recessions to spur spending. If the Federal Reserve tried this now, of course, many people would likely convert their savings into paper—which at least yields 0 percent—and hoard it in bedroom safes. This is precisely what many Germans have reportedly done, prompting safe manufacturers to scramble to meet demand

But in a world where nothing larger than a $10 bill exists, hoarding cash would be highly impractical. Better to buy that new boat you don’t need!

Very interesting take.  The rest of the article it here:  http://www.businessinsider.com/war-on-cash-could-increase-gold-demand-2016-9

The last day of summer is tomorrow(Autumn Equinox).  September 21st also happens to be the weakest day of the year for the S&P 500.  And, it’s Fed Day.