COMMENT: It looks like the Plunge Protection Team had a field day with the 1,000 rally in the Dow. Back in the 70s I read a small article near the back page of the WSJ that said that the CIA was using two small obscure banks in the Midwest to trade futures. The way they do it is to buy the futures and force the floor traders to stop selling. Then they pile it on and force the shorts to cover. CM ANSWER: That is really impossible. I have NEVER found a market that has EVER defied our model. The market bottomed precisely when it should have. Our Cyclical Array pinpointed the day well in advance. That proves there was nothing unusual. Last Friday the 21st, I wrote on the Private Blog: “We do have another Weekly Bearish Reversal at 22739 and a closing below that could warn of a Cycle Inversion meaning down into new week bottoming perhaps on the 26th and then rally into the following week for year-end and then turn back down into January.” If what you are saying is true, then the government would never collapse and they are 100% in control of everything. That is just not the case. You are attributing power to them that they believe they have. However, if they had such power, then taxes would never rise for they are 100% in control and nothing would happen. Larry Summers, the father of negative interest rates, admitted in a Bloomberg interview that those in power can NEVER forecast a decline because it is a complex system. I wrote on the Private Blog on December 24th: “The likelihood of lower lows into the 26th are good. But this week remains as a Panic Cycle so we can then see a whipsaw back up into the end of the week. Primary support still lies at the 21600 and 21450 level followed by 20002.” Then on the day of the low, 26th of December, I posted on the Private Blog at 3AM for the European Open: “Often the bulk of a decline will unfold the day BEFORE the market closes. This is typically as natural human response of the fear of the unknown after the market reopens.” I just do not see ANYTHING in the market behavior or patterns that would indicate something abnormal. The real explanation is just that all the selling took place on Monday as people feared it would collapse further on the 26th after the market opened. That has been the pattern for more than 100 years – panic before a close of the market for fear of the unknown. Sorry, great story about the Plunge Protection Team. A similar theory prevailed in Japan that the government would NEVER allow the Nikkei to fall. It did, and that belief led to a 19-year depression in share market price, but 26-year economic depression which did not begin to shift trend until 2015.75. There have been attempts to create a Plunge Protection Team before. The banks got together to try to save the market back in October 1929. Here is the Los Angeles Times from October 26th, 1929 talking about the Stabilizing Forces to save the market. They failed to prevent the Great Depression. Nobody can step in front of a falling market and survive. Nevertheless, despite the continued failure of such efforts, this myth is always spun. Anyone who believes that such a Plunge Protection Team can even survive never bothers to look at history.
— Read on www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/panics/the-myth-of-the-plunge-protection-team/