Bernanke to Wall Street: More Cowbell

“I got a FEVER! And the only prescription...is MORE COWBELL!”
-Bruce Dickinson (Christopher Walken)

There are two reasons why the stock market is trading where it is. One deals with valuation levels. The other is liquidity. These factors are the most direct to stock market levels. From a stock market point of view, the larger macro economic, political, and societal (including cultural and demographic) issues matter only to the extent that they ultimately impact the inputs to the valuation levels – cash flows, growth of the cash flows, and the uncertainty (the risk) of receiving those cash flows – and liquidity, specifically liquidity to the financial system.

It is on this second factor, financial system liquidity, that many fast money professional investors (hedge funds, high frequency traders, prop desk traders) are paying the most attention to in today’s testimony by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. As the primary market forces that move markets at the margin, fast money types want to know that the Bernanke Put (rising prices of risky assets help produce the wealth effect, which helps the broad economic environment) is still operative.

Based on what they heard thus far, all is good. Or as the Saturday Night Live quote above suggests, the fast money crowd has a fever (they always have a fever) and generous Ben assures them that there will be more cowbell.

Investment Strategy Implications

Hang in there. A resolution to the sideways market is not far off. As noted on several recent blog postings, the clock is ticking and appears to be set to strike midnight very soon.

Will it ring a new day for the bulls or will investing Cinderellas themselves with pumpkins and not stagecoaches for transportation? Right now, it's anybody's guess.