While cherry-picking individual macro data points to confirm self-referential biases appears to work for the majority of Wall Street's strategists and asset-gatherers, the sad truth is that fundamentally (top-down and bottom-up) things are not doing so great. We have exposed many of the divergences in the last few weeks and some cracks are appearing in the unbreakable vestibule of central bank liquidity; however, just as we saw late last summer (as gas prices rose once again), macro fundamentals have collapsed (based on Goldman's Macro data assessment platform) and with the normal hope-driven 2-3 month lag, equities are set to follow soon. The size of the shift implies a 5-10% correction to revert to 'reality' though we suspect - given positioning - if we ever saw it, the over-reach could be notably worse.
Chart: Goldman Sachs