On December 23rd the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed above 18,000 for the first time after data allegedly showed the U.S. economy posted its strongest growth in more than a decade! The DOW has tripled its March 2009 lows, trading at 18.5 times forward earnings, higher than the 10-year average of 13.9.

However what you probably don’t know is that when the DJIA just blew past 18,000, high yield debt is starting to crash again, and Bloomberg’s Commodity Index for Industrial’s

(BCOM:IND) dropped below the 2008 financial crisis lows of 125, for the first time.

The collapse of the commodity prices is considered a “leading indicator” by most Wall Street pundits of where the broader markets are heading and this is an ominous trend in regards to the stock market. Because prior to the horrific collapse of stocks in 2008, the high yield debt of the bond market that is based on the price of commodities and energy prices collapsed first.

Below is a clear example of what happened with the commodity markets that led up to the financial crash of 2008. The graph below of the U.S. High Yield B Total Return Index Value shows that high yield bonds began crashing early September, two weeks before the Lehman Stock Market Crash on September 15th 2008:

However, the U.S. stock market did not crash and bottom for nearly another 3 months (early December) AFTER the debt collapse of the corporate junk bond market:

The point is, what happens to high yield debt is often an excellent indicator of what is about to happen to stocks and nearly 20% of the commodities market is composed of energy bonds. Because of the declining price of oil, the panic in energy bonds is starting to infect the broader markets. So if you really want to know where the stock market is heading in 2015, keep a close eye on the market for high yield debt by looking at the recent activity on the high yield debt on the the junk bond market.

Above is the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bd (HYG) ETF first trade horoscope. The iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bond ETF seeks to track the investment results of an index composed of U.S. dollar-denominated, high yield corporate bonds.

Since the beginning of November, junk bonds have been falling steadily on the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bd (HYG), as the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) has continued to reach new heights…

Keep in mind that the dynamic, as shown above, is one that is neither sustainable or tenable, nor is it one that will persist indefinitely. Either junk bonds will rebound or U.S. stocks will start falling.

The blackbox planetary transit forecast to the iShares iBoxx $ High Yield Corporate Bd (HYG) ETF first trade horoscope portends a period of extreme volatility and drastic price changes. For the Uranus-Pluto square alignment throughout 2015 will continue to exert tremendous downward pressure on the high yield corporate bond market — a testimony that the junk bond market will continue to fall in the coming months ahead.

In addition, the Baltic Dry Index (BDI), which is one of the best leading indicators of economic activities, measures the demand to ship raw materials and precursor materials to production. The BDI indirectly measures global supply and demand for the commodities shipped aboard dry bulk carriers, such as building materials coal, metallic ores, and grains. As of now the BDI is at the lowest point since 2008.

Due to the recent collapse of commodity prices along with massive fleets of credit-driven malinvestment-based shipping vessels, the BD just plunged back below 1000, now at its lowest for this time of year since 2008.



Keep in mind, not only are commodities crashing but Crude Oil is cliff-diving:



Meanwhile, the $9 trillion carry trade is starting to unwind.

The following is an excerpt from a recent Zero Hedge article…

Oil’s collapse is predicated by one major event: the explosion of the US Dollar carry trade. Worldwide, there is over $9 TRILLION in borrowed US Dollars that has been ploughed into risk assets. Energy projects, particularly Oil Shale in the US, are one of the prime spots for this. But it is not the only one. Economies that are closely aligned with commodities (all of which are priced in US Dollars) are getting demolished too. Just about everything will be hit as well. Most of the “recovery” of the last five years has been fueled by cheap borrowed Dollars. Now that the US Dollar has broken out of a multi-year range, you’re going to see more and more “risk assets” (read: projects or investments fueled by borrowed Dollars) blow up. Oil is just the beginning, not a standalone story. If things really pick up steam, there’s over $9 TRILLION worth of potential explosions waiting in the wings. Imagine if the entire economies of both Germany and Japan exploded and you’ve got a decent idea of the size of the potential impact on the financial system. And that’s assuming NO increased leverage from derivative usage.

In many ways 2014 is the new 2007 with all the negative potential but 1000 times more explosive going into 2015, as similar economic patterns that were in play going into the financial crisis of 2008 are now happening once again, with the stock market becoming completely divorced from economic fundamentals as the “real economy” continues to disintegrate.

Another Ominous Sign of Financial Trouble

Five “Too Big To Fail” Banks U.S. With More Than $40 Trillion Each In Exposure To Derivatives

Another ominous sign that we are heading towards a financial trouble is President Obama recently signed omnibus spending plan that changed several provisions in the Dodd-Frank law that restricted derivative trading and the use of depositor money for Wall Street gamblers.

What that means is bankers can use depositor money and if or when the markets blows up and the banks are in trouble again, depositors (checking and savings accounts, along with trust funds, and pensions) will be on the hook for trillions of bad bets by the Too Big To Fail (TBTF) banks.

There are 5 TBTF banks in the United States that each have more than $40 trillion in exposure to derivatives of various types. They are as follows:

JPMorgan Chase

Total Assets: $2,476,986,000,000 (about $2.5 trillion)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $67,951,190,000,000 (more than $67 trillion)

Goldman Sachs

Total Assets: $915,705,000,000 (less than a trillion dollars)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $54,564,516,000,000 (more than $54 trillion)

Bank Of America

Total Assets: $2,152,533,000,000 (a bit more than $2.1 trillion)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $54,457,605,000,000 (more than $54 trillion)

Morgan Stanley

Total Assets: $831,381,000,000 (less than $1 trillion)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $44,946,153,000,000 (more than $44 trillion)

Citibank

Total Assets: $1,894,736,000,000 (almost $1.9 trillion)

Total Exposure To Derivatives: $59,944,502,000,000 (nearly $60 trillion)

Citigroup was the driving force behind recent legislation to use taxpayer money to insure banks against losses in the risky derivatives market. Citigroup has increased the amount of derivatives on its books by 69% since 2007. Americans already bailed out Citigroup during the financial crisis to the tune of $45 billion, plus $2 trillion in emergency loans!

Oil Derivative Contracts and Bailouts (and Bail-ins)

Former Assistant Treasury Secretary Paul Craig Roberts stated that he thinks that the legislation was passed because of the trouble that has been brewing from the oil derivatives, which is now estimated to be nearly $300 trillion in future derivative losses! Why else would Citigroup be pushing this bailout to Congress in such a hurry? Simple, because the TBTF banks have placed some very bad bets on oil derivative contracts and are going to need another massive bailout, or rather I should say a “bail-in”, when they come due in the coming months ahead. Keep in mind that the recent bill was a bad deal for Main Street when both Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren and Republican Senator Ted Cruz – who are total polar opposites in the political spectrum – but not on this issue, voted against it. About 40 Senators also voted against it from both parties, but it was not enough to stop it from going to the President’s desk to be signed into law. Below is the 2015 planetary transit multi-blackbox forecast to the five TBTF banks in America: If we look further into the longer planetary cycles that are now in operative over the forth-coming months ahead we can see heading for another global crisis. Barbault Planetary Cyclic Index Before we proceed, lets review quickly what the Barbault Planetary Cyclic Index is. The Cyclic Index (the graph above), is the sum of all the angular distances between the pairs of the outer planets, Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto. The Cyclic Index has proven to be one of the most accurate predictive tools for mundane astrologers for determining economic growth and political relations among nations. According to astrologer Andre Barbault, the sum waxing phase (ascending line) of each planetary pair are considered periods of stability and evolution (constructive growth, development, expansive, progressive with optimism and diplomacy ) while the waning phase (descending line) are periods of crises and involution (contraction, decay, recession, pessimism, war and destruction). The next and final Uranus-Pluto square alignment will occur on March 16th 2015. During this period, Mars will enter Aries and conjunct Uranus and square Pluto. This highly dangerous and volatile planetary combination that augurs powerful shocks to the system, drastic changes in financial position, titanic power plays and attempted takeovers, accelerating market volatility, major market corrections, currency crisis, bank panics, and often unexpected and sudden large-scale economic failure. Since 2008 the United States has wallowed in slowly degrading financial conditions, hidden by bogus economic statistics, suppressed interest rates, reckless monetary policy, and artificial stimulus (TARP/QE – central banks pumping cheap money into the financial system), in an attempt to prop up and manipulate stock prices and equities markets in an attempt to prevent a deflationary depression. Projecting forward, the final Uranus-Pluto alignment in the Winter of 2015 occurs during which time the Cyclic Index makes its precipitous downward plunge, descending 497 points from its peak in May 2014 at 996 to 456 in March 2022, indicating that we are heading into a perilous period where the damage control that was put in place in 2008-09 by the central banks and government will begin to wear-off. The excessive rationalization and applied perception management on the part of the government pontificated by the mainstream media will begin to lose credibility with the general populace as day-to-day uncertainty fraught with “high strangeness” increases, as “volcanic shocks” to the global system continue to intensify. Today we have the greatest debt bubble in history. And we also have the greatest asset bubble in history that includes stocks, commodities, and real estate. The last time an asset bubble burst was in 2008 because of the subprime crises, due to a small tranche of loans that went bad, which triggered a financial panic and a debt crisis to follow. Now have a similar scenario which is very likely to occur again and mundane astrological portents augur major trouble ahead as geopolitical and financial shock-waves continue to accelerate and intensify with tremendous pressure on oil derivatives along with the debt underpinning the energy sector. This will likely trigger major turmoil and trouble in the derivatives markets as oil and energy derivative contracts come up short and invoke expected margin calls that will trigger the next global crisis.

Prediction:

Things will quickly unravel as we enter 2015, and the populace will soon forget much of the recent propaganda that the U.S. economy is growing strongly and that job creation is robust, for the world has NEVER been in a more precarious economic, financial, and geopolitical situation that it’s in right now. As those Derivatives go bad, it will exert massive and insurmountable losses in the Credit Default Swap (CDS) markets, which in turn will take out the major banks. For it is clear we are about to undergo a period of pain, change, and crisis as we witness radical events of collapsing global currencies along with the breakdown and collapse of unsustainable, obsolete, and untenable systems of finance and banking.