History Suggests This Spells Trouble for Stocks.
We’re witnessing history: the first meaningful decline in U.S. money supply in 90 years.
Volatility has been the name of the game on Wall Street since this decade began. Since 2020, the iconic Dow Jones Industrial Average, broad-based S&P 500, and growth-focused Nasdaq Composite, have bounced back and forth between bear and bull markets.
These wild fluctuations have left investors to question what’s next for stocks. Although there isn’t any one indicator that can, with 100% accuracy, forecast what’s to come in the short run for Wall Street, there are quite a few economic datapoints that have an uncanny track record of predicting short-term directional movements in the Dow Jones, S&P 500, and Nasdaq Composite. One such metric that should be raising some eyebrows is U.S. money supply.
History is starting to repeat itself. In 2008, bond prices crashed before stock prices did. Here in 2023, bond prices are crashing again. In fact, we are currently witnessing one of the greatest financial crashes in U.S. history at this moment. Of course most Americans have absolutely no idea that this is happening. Most Americans don’t know anything about the bond crash that is causing a tremendous amount of fear in the financial community right now, and that is because the big news networks aren’t talking about it too much. But it is serious. Since the peak of the market, 10 year bonds are 
The gold market may not be able to break out of its neutral trading channel around $1,950 just yet, but 
When Silicon Valley Bank and other banks failed earlier this year, the debate over the sustainability of fractional reserve banking resurfaced. Under fractional reserve banking, banks keep only a fraction of customers’ deposits in reserve. The difference is bank credit, such as government debt, mortgages, business loans, and many other kinds of loans. This practice leaves the bank open to a run, in which panicky depositors attempt to withdraw their funds from the bank en masse but the bank doesn’t have the cash on hand. 
Banks have now reported having more than $309 billion in unrealized losses for the second quarter ending on June 30 alone.
Even as interest rates skyrocketed over the past 18 months, a good job market and strong consumer spending kept the US economy moving.
Banks are closing branches faster than they’re opening new ones. U.S. banks closed over 3,000 branches last year while opening just 1,000. JPMorgan Chase led in branch closures last year, shuttering 144 branches, while opening 133. The trend will likely continue as banks face staunch competition for deposits and younger customers from online banks, fintech firms and Big Tech. 
Our standard of living is being systematically destroyed, but for a lot of years many Americans didn’t fully understand what was taking place because it was happening so slowly. But now we have reached a stage where the purchasing power of our money is collapsing and the cost of living has become exceedingly painful. Thanks to our rapidly rising cost of living, the middle class is becoming “the impoverished class”, and the poor are increasingly being pushed out into the streets. If we do not find a way to turn these trends around, it won’t be too long before we have tremendous societal turmoil on our hands. 
The Conference Board’s index is a composite of ten so-called “leading indicators.” These are gauges of economic activity and sentiment that tend to move up or down several months before overall economic growth indicates an acceleration or a slowdown. 
