This post was published at World Alternative Media
Tag: Stock Market
“Q1 Stock Market Outlook: We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Slide”
Submitted by FFWiley
If 2018 rings in a bear market, it could look something like the Kennedy Slide of 1962.
That was my conclusion in ‘Riding the Slide,’ published in early September, where I showed that the Kennedy Slide was unique among bear markets of the last eighty years. It was the only bear that wasn’t obviously provoked by rising inflation, tightening monetary policy, deteriorating credit markets or, less commonly, world war or depression.
Moreover, market conditions leading up to the Slide should be familiar – they’re not too far from market conditions since Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. In the first year after Kennedy’s election, as in the first year after Trump’s election, inflation seemed under control, interest rates were low, credit spreads were tight, and the economy was growing. And, in both cases, the stock market was booming.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Sat, 12/30/2017 –.
Stock Markets Hyper-Risky 2
The US stock markets enjoyed an extraordinary surge in 2017, shattering all kinds of records. This was fueled by hopes for big tax cuts soon since Republicans regained control of the US government. But such relentless rallying has catapulted complacency, euphoria, and valuations to dangerous bull-slaying extremes. This has left today’s beloved and lofty stock markets hyper-risky, with serious selloffs looming large.
History proves that stock markets are forever cyclical, no trend lasts forever. Great bulls and bears alike eventually run their courses and give up their ghosts. Sooner or later every secular trend yields to extreme sentiment peaking, then the markets inevitably reverse. Popular greed late in bulls, and fear late in bears, ultimately hits unsustainable climaxes. All near-term buyers or sellers are sucked in, killing the trend.
This mighty stock bull born way back in March 2009 has proven exceptional in countless ways. As of mid-December, the flagship S&P 500 broad-market stock index (SPX) has powered 297.6% higher over 8.8 years! Investors take this for granted, but it’s far from normal. That makes this bull the third-largest and second-longest in US stock-market history. And the superior bull specimens vividly highlight market cyclicality.
The SPX’s biggest and longest bull on record soared 417% higher between October 1990 and March 2000. After it peaked in epic bubble-grade euphoria, the SPX soon yielded to a brutal 49% bear market over the next 2.6 years. The SPX wouldn’t decisively power above those bull-topping levels until 12.9 years later in early 2013, thanks to the Fed’s unprecedented QE3 campaign! The greatest bull ended in tears.
This post was published at ZEAL LLC on December 29, 2017.
The Ghosts of Crashes Past, Recent, and Future as they Appeared on this Blog
It’s not boasting to state plainly that you were right if you are equally direct about your errors. I have until now rightly predicted all of the stock market’s major downturns, starting with the one in 2007 that gave us the Great Recession. The first of those led to the writing of this blog. The next two were predicted and recorded as they happened on this blog, and the latest, whether it proves right or wrong, waits shortly in the future. Each time I made such a prediction here, I bet my blog on it. The blog is still here, but will it continue to be?
I am using the term ‘crash’ loosely in this article because one time I clearly stated the impending plunge would not technically amount to a crash (a sudden drop of more than 20%) but it would be much more significant than just a correction (a decline of 10%) because of how drastically it would change the nature of the market. I’ll show here how it did. The next time, I predicted a ‘crash’ that did not quite turn out as significant as I claimed it would be, but it was an historic event in that the Dow fell further in January than it had ever done in its entire history, and it did so exactly the timing (to the day) that I laid out in advance.
I let myself off easy on that one as being both a hit and a miss because, after all, getting timing of a major plunge right to the exact day as well as the counter-intuitive manner by which it would start on that day is not something one typically sees.
Now we are about to see whether I will survive the prediction I made many months ago for January 2018.
The ghost of crashes past
On September 3rd, 2014, I wrote an article titled ‘Will There be a 2014 Stock Market Crash?’ In that article I predicted something big and wicked appeared to be coming right around the corner:
This post was published at GoldSeek on 28 December 2017.
Even the Government Knows the Stock Market Is a Huge Bubble
Last month, we reported on a Bank of America survey that indicated the mainstream has started to acknowledge that the stock market is a big, fat, ugly bubble.
The latest fund-manager survey by Bank of America Merrill Lynch found that a record 48% of investors say the US stock market is overvalued. Meanwhile, 16% of investors say they are taking on above-normal risk. BoA chief investment strategist Michael Hartnett called this ‘an indicator of irrational exuberance.’
Now, even the government has taken notice, acknowledging asset prices are floating in dangerous bubble territory.
The Office of Financial Research (OFR) recently released its 2017 Annual Report. According to its analysis, market risk is flashing red, with stock market valuations at historic highs based on several metrics.
This post was published at Schiffgold on DECEMBER 28, 2017.
2017: A Record Smooth Ride For Stocks
As measured by the VIX, stocks have never enjoyed a less volatile year than 2017.
Undoubtedly the most notable phenomenon of 2017 was the extremely smooth ride enjoyed by U. S. stocks – unprecedented, in fact. One way to measure just how smooth (or volatile) the market was is by looking at the readings of stock volatility expectations, in this case the S&P 500 Volatility Index, aka, the VIX. And based on VIX readings, 2017 was the least volatile year ever in the stock market.
Specifically, the average daily closing price of the VIX in 2017 was 11.10 (through 12/26/17).
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Thu, 12/28/2017 –.
Peak Good Times? Stock Market Risk Spikes to New High
Leverage, the great accelerator on the way up and on the way down.
Margin debt is the embodiment of stock market risk. As reported by the New York Stock Exchange today, it jumped 3.5%, or $19.5 billion, in November from October, to a new record of $580.9 billion. After having jumped from one record to the next, it is now up 16% from a year ago.
Even on an inflation-adjusted basis, the surge in margin debt has been breath-taking: The chart by Advisor Perspectives compares margin debt (red line) and the S&P 500 index (blue line), both adjusted for inflation (in today’s dollars). Note how margin debt spiked into March 2000, the month when the dotcom crash began, how it spiked into July 2007, three months before the Financial-Crisis crash began, and how it bottomed out in February 2009, a month before the great stock market rally began:
This post was published at Wolf Street on Dec 27, 2017.
The Dark Power Behind the Financial Asset Bubbles – Whose Fool Are You?
“While everyone enjoys an economic party the long-term costs of a bubble to the economy and society are potentially great. They include a reduction in the long-term saving rate, a seemingly random distribution of wealth, and the diversion of financial human capital into the acquisition of wealth.
As in the United States in the late 1920s and Japan in the late 1980s, the case for a central bank ultimately to burst that bubble becomes overwhelming. I think it is far better that we do so while the bubble still resembles surface froth and before the bubble carries the economy to stratospheric heights. Whenever we do it, it is going to be painful, however.’
Larry Lindsey, Federal Reserve Governor, September 24, 1996 FOMC Minutes
‘I recognise that there is a stock market bubble problem at this point, and I agree with Governor Lindsey that this is a problem that we should keep an eye on…. We do have the possibility of raising major concerns by increasing margin requirements. I guarantee that if you want to get rid of the bubble, whatever it is, that will do it.’
Alan Greenspan, September 24, 1996 FOMC Minutes
“Where a bubble becomes so large as to pose a threat the entire economic system, the central bank may appropriately decide to use monetary policy to counteract a bubble, notwithstanding the effects that monetary tightening might have elsewhere in the economy.
But how do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values, which then become subject to unexpected and prolonged contractions as they have in Japan over the past decade? And how do we factor that assessment into monetary policy? We as central bankers need not be concerned if a collapsing financi
This post was published at Jesses Crossroads Cafe on 27 DECEMBER 2017.
The Ghost Of W.D.Gann: Another Crash Is Coming
Authored by Philip Soos & Lindsay David via RenegadeInc.com,
The original wizard of Wall Street, W. D Gann was a finance trader and wealthy speculator that spent decades investigating cyclical trends in equity market patterns and found that prices could be predicted long in advance. He successfully predicted the crashes in the 1929 and Dot-Com stock market bubbles. And according to his analysis, the US stock market is due for another crash in 2020.
***
Every movement in the market is the result of a natural law and of a Cause which exists long before the Effect takes place and can be determined years in advance. The future is but a repetition of the past, as the Bible plainly states…
After suffering through the worst economic and financial crisis since the 1930s depression when the real estate and stock markets crashed in 2007, the United States’ bubble economy is back into full swing. Residential and commercial real estate prices are growing strongly, along with equities.
This post was published at Zero Hedge on Dec 27, 2017.
Hysertianomics: S&P 500 Index UP 25% Since Trump Election As Fed Keeps Raising Rates (Krugman Said Markets Would Never Recover)
This is a syndicated repost courtesy of Snake Hole Lounge. To view original, click here. Reposted with permission.
Nobel Laureate Economist Paul Krugman said on November 8, 2016 that markets will never recover from the stock market decline that occurred on November 7th, the day before the Presidential election.
This post was published at Wall Street Examiner by Anthony B Sanders ‘ December 26, 2017.
Stockman: US Fiscal Path Will Rattle the Rafters of the Casino
As we’ve reported, the US government is spending money like a drunken sailor. But nobody really seems to care.
Since Nov. 8, the US national debt has risen $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the Russell 2000 (a small-cap stock market index) has risen by 30%. Former Reagan budget director David Stockman said this makes no sense in a rational world, and he thinks the FY 2019 is going to sink the casino.
In a rational world operating with honest financial markets those two results would not be found in even remotely the same zip code; and especially not in month #102 of a tired economic expansion and at the inception of an epochal pivot by the Fed to QT (quantitative tightening) on a scale never before imagined.’
Stockman is referring to economic tightening recently launched by the Federal Reserve. It’s not only the increasing interest rates. By next April the Fed will be shrinking its balance sheet at an annual rate of $360 billion and by $600 billion per year as of next October. By the end of 2020, the Fed will have dumped $2 trillion of bonds from its books. Stockman puts this into perspective.
This post was published at Schiffgold on DECEMBER 26, 2017.
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