this post contains sponsored advertising content this content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice tuesday’s faded rally was an important event because it demonstrated just how challenging it is going to be for bulls to regain the upper hand in the narrative surrounding the economy inflation remains enemy 1 and it’s going to take something extraordinary for risk appetite to return when cpi is running at the hottest levels in 40 years investors have been eagerly awaiting signs of slowing price pressure but the first sign of it in yesterday’s monthly figures couldn’t support any meaningful gains in the stock market naturally bulls are looking to earnings the next two weeks as a possible catalyst for upside they’re likely going to be disappointed there is a meaty chunk of companies that are benefitting from the surge in commodity prices and some sectors like travel and healthcare could offer some positive surprises tied to reopening the rest of the market is problematic banks were supposed to be the anchor for the market in a rising interest rate regime but their prognosis is looking more worrisome by the week the federal reserve’s hiking path is squishing the yield curve so their lending margins will not be what many hoped for in this environment yet treasury yields are still surging enough to finally dampen demand for housing so volumes may also disappoint and it’s not like this group was left behind in the covid regime either the smorgasbord of ipos and spacs last year was a windfall for wall street’s capital markets leaders like goldman sachs whose shares gained 70 during the pandemic the quarantine trading boom pumped up numbers for equity behemoth morgan stanley whose stock price doubled this group looks plenty susceptible to valuation unwind like so much else and that’s what’s absolutely crucial to remember the bear case for us stocks is not russia’s aggression in ukraine it’s not runaway inflation and it’s not even recession yet the bear case for stocks is that the biggest equity bubble in recorded history is popping people like to forget the nasdaq peaked with cloud earnings in the fourth quarter of 2021 what went up even more than at the invention of the internet is simply coming down when the global economy ground to a halt investors dumped all the money they had into tech companies that benefitted from the pandemic most will never be able to match the growth rate they saw in those two years and so their valuations will continue to slide the ones with the strongest profits will make it through the downtrend but many will not there is still more pain to come and earnings will likely refresh this uncomfortable truth that’s been masked by other shortterm narratives this post contains sponsored advertising content this content is for informational purposes only and not intended to be investing advice