A romance that sank the market

What triggered this two and half month selloff ? It all started with one small romantic dinner. This is a perfect example of how the market behaves and why speculation is such a difficult profession. Since that famous dinner the market is down abut 15%.
The factors which are being sited for the correction like inflation, rising interest rates, slow down in housing were the same factors being talked about for eternity till May. None of that mattered till May and now its effect are magnified.
Now what will trigger a rally ? Something completely innocuous event which will catch everyone by surprise. Till then you will here several explanations for continued bearishness. The latest worry is war worries with Iran and Korea.



I know only two things when a market is down 15% from recent high a good tradable rally has very high probability. Second thing which I have taped on my trading desk is "Wars are bullish. Buy when the bomb start falling."


The May 03 post

Was Ben Bernanke romancing Maria Bartiromo ?
I do not watch CNBC, so I had no idea about what happened till next day. There are several traders very bitter about this and there are several theories about what happened. I like this one: Victor Niederhoffer thinks that Bernanke was trying to impress Maria.

My first reaction to this is that Dr. Bernanke suffers from a disease that old men are all too prone to -- the temptation to try to impress a pretty reporter. It's so easy to try to appear expansive and profound at an evening off the record session with an attractive reporter. "Why is it always romance?" Horace Rumpole asks at the end of one of his mysteries where he follows the pretty girl to catch an English Professor for a terrible crime? I believe that many of the most powerful people on Wall Street succumb to this character flaw and they should follow the motto that the prettier the reporter, the more careful they should be in their utterances.

Here is what Maria said about her conversation with Ben Bernanke:

Federal Reserve Chairman Bernanke told me over the weekend that the media and the markets basically got it wrong last week in speculating that the Fed is done raising interest rates. I asked Chairman Bernanke whether the markets got it right after his congressional testimony. He said flatly, 'No.' Bernanke also told me it is worrisome to him that anyone would think of him as dovish, that that feeling did permeate last week.
He said that he and his Federal Open Market Committee members were trying to basically create some flexibility for the Federal Reserve, saying the Fed may pause, but the data will really dictate whether more rate hikes will occur at future meetings. Chairman Bernanke made the comments to me during the annual White House Correspondents' dinner Saturday night. He used Europe as an example. He said look, Europe moves either up or down, takes pauses and then moves again."

Update: Barry Ritholtz has more on this story.
More here: Bernanke slips on Bartiromo peel