S&P 500: Roaring Twenties 2.0 Bullish Harmonic Fractal

2023年4月15日

In the lead up to the 1920s, the US Federal Reserve significantly increased its balance sheet by almost nine times, starting from 700 Million Dollars in December 1916 to 6.6 Billion Dollars by January 1920. This move was presumably to fund the US's entry into the First World War, which led to an increased demand for US government debt globally and loose lending conditions domestically, and low rates thereby encouraging a round of inflation in the US. However, after the war ended, the Fed stopped increasing the balance sheet, and between 1920 and 1922, they began to reduce it from the already elevated $6.6 billion to $4.8 billion, almost a 30% cut in just two years.

This action successfully controlled inflation but did not eliminate it completely, yet the dollar gained significant buying power, resulting in a somewhat disinflationary period. As a response to this, the Fed maintained the balance sheet within a tight range around $4.8 billion for a decade, neither raising nor lowering it much but the federal reserve did continue to significantly lower the interest rates; During this time, equities rallied.

While the 1920s were a period of economic growth and prosperity, there were warning signs of overheating towards the end of the decade. Investors were becoming overly speculative, leading to a surge in stock and real estate prices, while lending standards declined and consumer spending continued to rise rapidly.

To counteract these inflationary pressures, the Federal Reserve implemented policies to tighten credit conditions; They doubled interest rates and also raised reserve requirements for banks, which reduced the amount of money available for lending.

In essence this would kickstart The Great Depression which could have instead been a Simple Recession if only the fed had acted sooner as it wasn't their intention to crush the market but rather they just wanted to cool the market down a bit to contain inflation.

Years deep into the Great depression, the Federal Reserve realized they had gone too far. So, to fix this, they would begin to raise the balance sheet again while also cutting rates drastically in an effort to relieve pressure from the economy and promote new opportunities for economic growth, which then led to a new expansionary cycle.

With that all being said, it would appear that the Fed is doing now what it was doing back then. Over the last decade, they raised the balance sheet by 900% and lowered interest rates by over 95%. Only over the last year, they have begun to reduce the balance sheet by about 10% while raising rates by over 1500%. If we are to go off of the Harmonic Fractals on the chart, then we are likely nearing a point in time where the Fed will begin to loosen rate policy and bring the balance sheet back to all-time highs. This would align with the S&P reaching a 2.618 - 4.00 Retraces as the Fed attempts to keep policy as loose as possible in the hopes that inflation won't come back to bite them. But once we reach harmonic targets, we will likely see inflation return in a great way, which would then force the Fed to induce another Great Depression in the next several years rather they want to or not.


Technical Argument: ABCD BAMM, after breaking a long accumulation range and entering a long term expansionary cycle, we are now in the later phases of said cycle while showing heavy amounts of MACD Hidden Bullish Divergence and harmonically have room to go up significantly higher before it ultimately reaches D and comes to an end.