"You try to reach a vital part of me My attention span is dropping rapidly It's all excuses baby all a stall We just don't get excited Don't get excited" – Graham Parker   What are we, children? First we endure two weeks of Fed speakers saying they think they might want to hike rates by 0.75% and then we treat Powell like our savior because he says 0.75% rate hikes are off the table – BUT 0.5 rate hikes are likely for each of the next two meetings.  I'm pretty sure that 0.5% + 0.5% + 0.5% is more than 0.75% – twice as much, actually, yet the market reacted like the Fed just CUT rates.  Powell is certainly the master of managing expectations… Meanwhile, in reality world, the the BoE is experiencing everything the Fed fears:  A divided policy decision (+0.25), Upside Inflation Risks, Downside Growth Risks, Inflation at 10.2%, GDP contracting in 2023.  That timid rate decision sent the Pound plunging 1.5% this morning – the World's worst-performing currency – including Rubles. With $32.5Tn in debt and a $2.2Tn deficit, the Dollar is the World's best-performing currency this year and that doesn't mean the Dollar is great – it just means the rest of the World is an even bigger disaster than we are.  So yay US, I guess… We were thrilled to see our Long-Term Portfolio (LTP) gain 10% on Powell's speech but then we gained another 5% into the close and that was just silly.  Not that we're complaining, thank you Mr. Powell, but we do know that this rally was based on BS and the volume (140M on SPY) was not at all impressive after 1.1M shares traded on the way down from 447 on the 20th to yesterday's 417 open (6.66%).  Now we're back to 429 – half recovered and, as we expected in yesterday morning's report , now we'll have to wait to see what…