I think of all the economic data to watch
I am most keen on following the ability to service debt at all levels, from household/personal to corporate/sovereign.
https://www.jpmorgan.com/global/research/10-years-after-crisis
Some key takeaways here include:
Corporate debt levels are very high across the board, rising interest rates and scared investors might mean an inability for corporations to tap into enough new debt to keep the ball rolling, this problem is already rearing its head in foreign markets like China.
80% of new home loans are not serviced by banks, banks being so scared of lending should be an indicator to us that they think that no amount of lending risk is worth the small profits to be made from servicing a long loan over its lifetime.
Flash crashes are on the menu, automated trading systems are designed to withdraw bids in times of heavy losses so crashes are fast and bloody, already we see a market environment where green days are low volume and red days are high volume which will certainly be a problem when the perception of economic growth in the US changes.
The funny thing is that usually banks just say things that benefit them but I agree with many of the conclusions they draw here since it's mostly just pointing out the facts. I don't agree with them when they basically conclude that banks are well enough capitalized and unassailable if things go bad this time around, but I do think that shorting US banks may be less profitable than shorting, say, US tech or REITs.
These are just my opinions and not financial advice, please don't open up huge short positions on short time windows and blame me when an immediate 20% drop in the market doesn't materialize. :D
Edit: Wow am I glad I converted my steem to sbd on the market.
This article better visualizes just how much debt corporations have taken on in recent years.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.