Central Bank intervention in the markets has completely destroyed the stock market’s value as a reflector of economic activity and business profitability. Rather, like the mainstream media, the stock market has become little more than propaganda tool used in an effort to manage public perception.

I was fooling around with some charts and discovered something interesting. Of the 30 stocks in the Dow index, 21 of them are below to well below their all-time highs despite the fact that Dow hit the 20k milestone and a new all-time high this past week. Only 9 of the stocks are pressing an all-time high along with the Dow:

The Dow index is price-weighted somewhat arbitrarily by Dow Jones & Company, which is now owned by News Corp (Rupert Murdoch). Each stock is assigned a weighting in the index. So for instance, Goldman Sachs – for whatever reason – has been assigned a weighting of 8.16%, which is by far the highest weighting. GE on the other hand has been assigned a weighting of 1.03%. What this means is that if both stocks move up in price by the same percentage, GS has a nearly 8x greater affect on the move in the Dow index than GE.

Of the nine stocks that are at their all-time high, the first four stocks listed are 4 of the 6 stocks with the highest index weightings (3 thru 6 and the numbers next to the symbols represent their respective weightings. Cumulatively these four stocks represent a 21.8% weighting in the Dow index. Goldman Sachs (GS) has the highest weighting in the Dow at 8.1%. IBM is 2nd highest at 6.08%.

In other words, primarily four stocks out of thirty are fueling the Dow’s move to 20,000. In addition, GS did most of the “heavy lifting” after the election, as it hit an all-time on January 13th. GS soared 27% for some reason between election night and December 8th. Think about how easy it would be for the Plunge Protection Team (Fed + Treasury Dept) to “goose” the four stocks on the right side of the list in order to induce hedge fund algos to chase the momentum.

The point of all of this is to show the insignificance of the Dow hitting 20,000. As discussed in a recent Short Seller’s Journal, the indices that represent the critical components of GDP – housing, autos and retail spending – are well below their all-time highs. In fact, the XRT S&P retail ETF is nearly 10% below its 52-week high hit in early December and 14.8% below its all-time high hit in April 2015.

You can read the rest of the accompanying commentary plus see the three short ideas presented in the last Short Seller’s Journal by clicking on this link:  Short Seller’s Journal subscription info.

I present compelling data and analysis of the public reports that explain why the housing and auto markets are getting ready to fall apart.   Just today an article was posted by Wolf Street that describes the impending collapse of the condo market in Miami.  Miami happened to be one of the first markets that cracked when the big housing bubble popped. What’s happening in Miami is also happening in NYC, San Francisco and several other cities (for sure Denver).  In the latest SSJ,  I describe several more indicators which are nearly identical to the pre-collapse signals that emerged in 2006-2007.