re: There are some major issues lurking in the US financial markets

We have certainly approached an interesting inflection point.

On the one hand, we are now near the very top of the range of what most quantitative analysts have been telling us that a bear market rally could achieve. If the markets go another 5% or so higher and exceed the Fall 2018 peak, then that will certainly be egg on my face, along with a lot of other pundits out there. (I'm still waiting on that mythical "Point G" to occur, right?)

On the other hand, the bears have taken cannonball broadsides from the two factors feared the most (Fed policy and U.S.-China trade news), and the bulls no longer have much dry powder left. The Fed has been trotting out members to calm the markets on an almost daily basis, the bond markets aren't seeing any rate hikes in the future, QT might be over sooner rather than later, and yet we're still not as high as we were in September when rate hikes and QT were still expected. The unlikely tariff hikes scheduled for March 1 will not occur, and U.S.-China trade developments seem to be as much of a classic "buy the rumor, sell the news" type of event as you can get. (And I don't think any type of pending trade deal can rescue us from the effects of a deep upcoming Chinese recession at this point.)

All the while, we have been inundated with bad economic news nearly throughout the whole year-to-date so far for 2019. When the selloff of Jan/Feb 2018 occurred, I noted that it might be the beginning of the end, but I also knew that the bear market was yet to actually commence in earnest, because that particular selloff was based almost entirely on good underlying economic data (which sent bond yields too high). By the same type of logic, we can look at the underlying economic data for the recent rally--as well as the story being told by the bond markets--and understand that this time it looks very bad for the bulls.

Today we had the markets open at 2804 and quickly rise to 2813 as the worst-case scenario on Trump-Xi that the markets feared most was officially avoided. Yet near the end of trading, the market had nearly returned to its previous close of 2792, before rebounding a few points up. It's impossible to tell when exactly we'll be out of the woods for this late rally, but from a bear's perspective, it looks like it can't possibly have much steam left.