I received an interesting response to yesterday's updated comparison of today's market and the Great Depression. Hayden Knox is an artist with a background in business graphics that led him, as he explains, "to looking at charts and discovering how hypnotic they are, like an artist drawing in real time, always unpredictable."

Hayden's email is worth quoting.

Market prices don't bear a close connection to the state of an economy. Today's market suggests that things are hunky-dory, and just around the corner the economy will be booming again even though the evidence for such a scenario is non-existent.

So if markets are not a solid measure of an economy, then what these charts are showing is closer to psychiatrists measuring how fast Patient A and Patient B can run when they are still as loony as ever, and their running speed has nothing to do with their illness.

Today we learned that Existing Home Sales Plunge to Record Low and the Consumer Metrics Institute's Growth Index continues to contract (data now updated through August 22 here).

The market is down about 13% from the interim high set in April. But it is still significantly overvalued by the indicators I track.