Shrieking Puppets.

It was an up and down day for the shrieking orange puppet who occupies the Oval Office. There was a health care “fix”, another unfavorable decision on the travel ban, some news on NAFTA, and just the usual schizophrenia.

One fun highlight was when someone reminded Tsipras that he once called Trump “evil”:

Pres. Trump, on comments about him previously made by Greek Prime Minister: "I wish I knew that before my speech." pic.twitter.com/ljzO3lD9W0

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) October 17, 2017

Stocks ended flat, but the Dow touched 23,000 at one point. As Bloomberg notes, that’s “the sixth 1,000-point milestone reached in the past 12 months and the fifth since Donald Trump was elected president in November.”

Trump is watching and he’s super-excited:

Remember, according to the President’s ground-breaking new theory, the higher the market goes, the lower the national debt…

Even though it’s the most overcrowded trade on the planet Earth…

…you should buy the Nasdaq because a couple of the shrieking puppets on CNBC think it’s a no-brainer and you know, what could go wrong with that? Oh, right…

“Buy, buy, buy”…

The peso had its best day since June 5, rallying late in the session after NAFTA negotiators deemed the 4th round of talks “a success” (go ahead an laugh) and agreed to extend the negotiations past the year-end deadline.

The broad dollar was up, presumably on speculation about John Taylor’s Fed prospects. Here’s some perspective incorporating the CPI miss into the frame:

Here’s a “Game of Thrones” chart on this using the BBDXY:

Remember, when it comes to rules, the inputs matter…

Gold’s moving lower on the same thing (i.e. expectations about a possible hawkish shift at the Fed):

Oil fell when news hit that the Peshmerga had agreed to roll back the borders clock by about a decade and a half. Basically, there were signs that the situation is deescalating and there was plenty of jawboning about how the flow of crude won’t be adversely affected. “This is a pretty strong indicator that the conflict is not going to continue, that some of the temporary loss of production is going to come back,” James Williams, president of energy researcher WTRG Economics, told Bloomberg, adding that “it’s certainly in Iraq’s interest to keep the Kirkuk-area oil fields going.” Well, yeah.

Ultimately, prices rebounded, underscoring the fact that no one really knows what’s going on, especially given all of the other factors at play for crude:

Hospital and insurer stocks jumped after lawmakers struck a short-term deal to resurrect Obamacare subsidies – those would be the ones Trump killed last week. Headlines hit at (13:58):

Now let’s see if Trump tries to take credit for the rally just like he did for the “plunge”:

Matt Drudge (another shrieking puppet who has definitely never been called a “hot mess” by anyone), is furious:

The Nikkei was up – again. That’s 11 straight days now.

And it’s the longest winning streak since June 2015. Elections on Sunday aren’t expected to change much in terms of the outlook, so there’s no telling how far this could end up running. The Topix is sitting at its highest since July of 2007.

Finally, if you’re sick of the global rally in risk assets, that’s too damn bad, because…..