Potemkin Empire

Somehow despite collapse in broad daylight, the burden of truth still falls upon us skeptics of the impossible...

One by one every sector of the market has fallen, now held up solely by Chinese internet. Even defense stocks are rolling over despite the daily military expansion in every direction by Forrest Trump who ran on a platform of military pullback:

In the meantime, the Retail sector which comprises 70% of the economy has imploded from end to end due to "Amazon": shopping malls, apparel retailers, dollar stores, department stores, auto sales, grocers, appliances, jewellers, art work, cappuccinos, cheesecakes, sporting goods, hardware. 

And even Amazon itself. All in broad daylight. All due to the "Amazon effect". Of course that's all unraveling in real-time:

"Shares of Amazon are falling in tandem with a popular retail-tracking exchange-traded fund, and one equity strategist is watching the trend closely as it may signal trouble ahead for the health of the U.S. consumer."

CNBC: Amazon Is One of 200 S&P 500 Companies In A Correction

Fast forward to a brand new false narrative. At the beginning of this reflationary circle jerk we heard that the U.S. economy is strong but the rest of the world is weak. Now we hear that the rest of the world is strong, but the U.S. is weak. Meaning buy Emerging Markets:

August 17th, 2017:

"China's a very important part of this. If you don't believe in China I think it's going to be difficult to believe in EM,"

And which stock is the third largest Emerging Market fund holding and third largest hedge fund holding?

Alibabylon, China's Amazon, what else? Because if a narrative fails in the U.S., just shift the exact same narrative overseas:

And recall that EM stocks and alternative currencies were in manic blowoff mode during the 2011 fiscal cliff:

Back then it was gold:

Now it's Bitcoin, which had a rough night:

Mind the Gap

And careful around that fake news:

The ones that follow