When Jim Bullard Talks, Markets Listen

Picking up from the A.M. Update, just because I find the timing so incredibly ironic, more on Jim Bullard this morning.

 James Bullard, President of the St. Louis F_E_D (photo:Wikipedia)

 The last spate of comments from Jim, except using the Dow.

From our perspective because all of the comments were seared in to my mind being we were already at expected pivot points when the comments came, using the SPY...

 This is the period in which he was most active in moving the market and for the purpose of Context, this was before around and after the October 2014 end of QE3, just to put the comments in to some context and show how flip-floppy they were. First that the F_E_D should be willing to remove accommodation, aka QE3 at the time when this was on a meeting by meeting basis as well.

Then at the October lows, one of the more spectacular sell-offs, he flip flops and says that it is reasonable to delay the end of QE3, just about a month after saying it was time to remove this kind of accommodation and then just after, I think it was barely more than a month, the economy is in good shape, we don't need QE and inflation expectations have rebounded, which was such a short period that any inflation data over that period would have been considered statistical noise, not an inflationary trend change.

As to the VERY specific moments of his comments, it was September 2014, we had put in a classic Igloo/Chimney top and right at the top of the Chimney head fake move came Bullard's hawkish comments which were aligned with the sell off to October lows, although we had already been expecting a strong move down.

Days before we hit the October lows we had already seen accumulation and were expecting a move higher, in fact a strong move higher and just days later Bullard delivers Dovish comments this time which were the low of that move and the market rallied from there. Then his last comments have seen the market move sideways pretty much since through most of 2015 and this morning he's out with more hawkish comments.

Bullard outs probabilities of a September rate hike above 50% 

ADDING: PRUDENT TO RAISE RATES OFF ZERO; ECONOMY DOESN'T NEED EMERGENCY POLICY SETTING ANY MORE, GREECE, CHINESE STOCK MARKET MOVES WON'T HURT U.S.

The timing just couldn't be more ironic.