THAT UTOPIAN LEVEL PLAYING FIELD

Fear and greed, safe assets versus riskier ones are considered polar opposites and, as some would say, that's the usual. One problem with "that's the usual" is its linear as in thinking. If you think such is superior, take a look at U.S. foreign policy over that last two or so decades. The other is it's usual until it isn't

Traders talk risk-on, risk-off jargon. See Japan or China earlier when officials there did what officials officially do--intervene. Usually, there's that word again, they intervene under some guise--false or otherwise--of helping things or making them better. Better for whom? There's two choices here. Pick one. You and me or them.

Fear remains. Those who lose site of it can lose more than that when markets turn. There are enough concerns in the world today without compiling a huge list. That's the province of bureaucrats and officials. One of them is the "muddle through" meme that if successful invalidates a basic market principle--blame or ownership. It's every bureaucrat's dream.

With the pale rise in commodities of late, inflation-assets swung into the picture after being lodged in the investment orphanage for years. Say hello to junk bonds, emerging markets and a sector that's  been DOA for longer than the list of lies most politicians tell, mining firms. They have a couple of ugly birthmarks: They're polluters and their cyclical.

Linear thinking said at the end of 2015, with the Fed's threat of higher and more frequent interest rate hikes, the utility sector was toast. And it has been, with peanut butter and jelly on top, leading the market so far this year. Like mining stocks they too are polluters and cyclical. We're most likely at the point now where bureaucrats and central bankers the globe over are secretly hoping for a little of both. We'd say praying but that might get us in trouble.

Back in the dark ages of the 1950s there was another presidential election going on for those who bother with their history that featured a campaign button: "We Like Ike."  Collectors might well know about that. In this another mindless presidential year, it seems few people like anybody. Some think this is unhealthy.We beg to disagree.

The stock market has its own history, not much different from presidential elections.  At the start of 2016 and well before that: We liked utilities. It was just our anti-linear thinking sort of sick way of assessing things rather than a high IQ. We're still trying to find our IQ, if we actually have one. It's been accepted wisdom most people usually do.

Way back in the dark ages of the early 1980s utility stocks were yielding around 13-14 percent and 30-year Treasury bonds the same. By our feeble calculation those bonds matured for the most part at the end of the last decade. During those intervening years there was a raft of mergers and acquisitions of those utility firms to add to the spicy yield of those that survived. Just ask a fellow name Buffett.

So what's the theme here? Anything you want it to be. From our perspective, attempts, however well intentioned, to eradicate fear and greed successfully means eradicating the species, something those who are always seeking to establish that utopian level playing field never get.

It also means eradicating any pretense of open and even semi-free markets.