This blog died because I quit trading. And I quit trading because this rally made–and makes–me ill. That’s the short version.

But tonight I realized just why it has bothered me so much more than mere regret (I have none, actually–I have years and years to make money, and it’s just money anyway) or simple frustration with the failure of mean reversion, economic and financial fundamentals, etc. would. Am I pissed off at the “success” of American companies at the expense of our earnng and purchasing power, not to mention their former employees? Yup. Am I furious at the lack of actual Hope or Change from a “government” that promised nothing but? You bet. Is our investment and/or banking sector the biggest boondoggle clusterfuck since our 19th-Century railroad industry? Oh my sweet heavens YES.

But that ain’t it.

Here’s the problem, freshly discovered: when I decided to start trading full-time, 16 or so months back, I made a compromise with myself. Even though measuring what I share with Yer Avg Trader from a political point of view would make a teaspoon feel roomy, when I started trading, I agreed to abide by Yer Rules. I agreed that I would not shout down every half-cooked, mouthbreathingly-adolescentishly-Ayn-Randian, loutish notion about the power of free markets to benefit everyone, the universally and historically unchecked goodness of capitalism, yada yada yada. I would take the so-called principles of finance at so-called face value. It was about trading, about markets, about business; it was not about how Yer Avg Trader or I looked at life outside the market.

The thing is, said Yer Avg Traders have done a subtle, glaring about-face. It’s pretty widely agreed that this rally is about the non-failure of the financial system (thank you world government bailouts), the ubiquity of cheap money (thank you world government interest rates), and the lack of substantial new regulations (oh gosh I’m flushed with sycophantic joy, thanks guys once again!) that would “hamper” “21st-Century” “free-market” “capitalism”.

When you add all that up, you get outright pinko commie socialist fellatio. Not of the individual variety, mind you; American citizens got six weeks of cheap cars, a half-open window of “mortgage” renegotiation, an unaccountably vague viagra shot of stimulus to the package, and a tax credit or two, all of which sucked up untold months of demand down the line, solved no problems, and left in its wake massive disgruntlement, mucho confuzione, and a generally lowered standard of living (at least, below a certain standard of living). A pittance, however, compared to the shit-ton of jobs and equity and life’s savings and even savings-account interest we lost, not to mention, oh and here’s the big kicker, the huge-ass bill we and our children and grandchildren were handed–here comes that “socialism” part–to subsidize the failure of “21st-Century” “free-market” “capitalism” and its eventual foray back into the exact same motherfucking territory.

The accurate free-market response to all of this would have been an up-high, out-loud, heard-the-world-round FUCK. YOU. All this government meddling would have destroyed a real market, and the level of revulsion would match the greatest troughs in history. Oh and you traders, you said it, didn’t you? You keep on saying it.

But your credibility is shot. Anyone who’s been an active bull trader in the last nine months is a socialist in deed, pure and simple. An anti-free-marketeer. A welfare mom. Forget the endless blathering about “the government fucks up this and that”, “the Fed is our enemy blah blah blah”, because the courage of your conviction has been to drive this “market” ever higher, not on the basis of real free-market recovery, but of government-sponsored, unfree-market “recovery”. Talk is cheap; trading in an economy that has ground to a generational halt should be very, very expensive, but you two-faced profiteers have made it as cheap and useless as your doublespeak.

So on behalf of the free-market philosophy I embraced nine hours a day for months and months: Fuck you, socialist bulls. You go ahead and trade your handouts. I came to trade business. Call me when you drop the pull-ups and the training wheels. Call me when your words and your actions close the indefensibly yawning gap they’ve come to straddle.