Kevin Warsh stood at a podium in Jackson Hole and attempted to fix the mess he made in July. The mess was words. His words. The Fed Chairman had somehow confused every single person who listens to Fed Chairmen speak, which is already the saddest demographic on earth.
Markets tanked because nobody knew if Warsh wanted to raise rates or just liked hearing himself talk. Turns out both were true. He spent July being cryptic. He spent August being clear. The inflation warning got sharper. The rate hike signal got brighter. Retail traders who bought the dip in July now own bags they'll carry into retirement.
Jackson Hole exists so central bankers can pretend Wyoming is interesting while they read speeches to each other. This year Warsh used it to say what he should have said the first time. Higher rates are coming. Inflation is bad. Water is wet. Groundbreaking stuff from the most powerful economist in the world who needed two attempts to communicate a single coherent thought.
The technical analysis here is simple. None of this matters. The chart doesn't care if Warsh speaks in riddles or plain English. Support breaks or it doesn't. Resistance holds or it doesn't. A moving average has never attended Jackson Hole and it never will.
Some guy named Derek in Milwaukee definitely heard about this speech and immediately checked his Robinhood account. Derek owns three shares of a leveraged ETF he can't pronounce. Derek thinks the Fed controls his destiny. Derek is wrong. Derek's destiny was sealed the moment he confused a YouTube comment section with financial advice.
Warsh gave markets clarity. Markets will ignore it by Tuesday. The S&P will do whatever it was going to do anyway, and twenty million Dereks will reverse-engineer a narrative that makes them feel smart about losing money on the wrong side of a head-and-shoulders pattern they saw on TikTok.
Photo by on Unsplash
Leave a Comment