After today’s PPI release, I was amazed at the strength of the permabulls’ hold on this market. A CNBC guest commented that “Everyone knows now that the data stinks.” Did we just figure that out? Most economists, investors and portfolio managers were convinced by last week’s CPI data and I cannot remember anyone suggesting that there was even a one basis point error. Yet, when the PPI data does not follow the Goldilocks scenario - it gets slandered and largely discarded. As I have previously written, our market is data dumbpendent and on days like today, I really hoped we would decide to start weaning ourselves from this nonsense. But nope - the tactic was to just throw out the data and wait for the next piece that fits the bullish case. The PPI was painted as nothing more than a reversal of October and according to Steve Liesman, he saw nothing that would convince him that we have inflation or that housing will not continue to decline. Maybe we should just let economists draft the reports based upon what they think should be in there and save all the taxpayer money spent to collect and distribute government data. Santa’s rally sleigh is not being pulled by reindeer this year, but the flying bulls are doing a great job!