Thoughts {04.26.17}

China just launched its first domestically built aircraft carrier.-Business Insider.

We're starting to see some of of President Trump's tax plan.  A 15% corporate rate and a 10% tax on repatriated corporate earnings abroad are the main highlight.  Markets are flat ahead of this news but then they have also just seen a monster rally in the past two days so maybe that's not so surprising.  Regarding overall tax reform go read Ben Carlson over at Bloomberg View, "How Markets Respond to Tax Reform".

And speaking of that two day rally, it caught a lot of people by surprise.  Maybe it shouldn't have.  Markets were short-term oversold courtesy of the French election worries.  When that didn't pan out folks jumped back in the pool.  Markets have a bit of momentum right now but have also again in the shortest time frames we measure moved back to overbought status.

According to the Almanac Trader, "May is historically a solid month in post-election years".

Pope Francis just gave a TED speech.  Here's TED's brief description on what he said:

"A single individual is enough for hope to exist, and that individual can be you, says His Holiness Pope Francis in this searing TED Talk delivered directly from Vatican City. In a hopeful message to people of all faiths, to those who have power as well as those who don't, the spiritual leader provides illuminating commentary on the world as we currently find it and calls for equality, solidarity and tenderness to prevail. "Let us help each other, all together, to remember that the 'other' is not a statistic, or a number," he says. 'We all need each other.'"