Bear Market

As of this moment the S&P is soaring and is set for the 8th best gain in 2015. Why? Here is one reason, from the latest Gartman letter: "Essentially repeating what we said here yesterday, there are still many who deny that this is a bear market, we fear that it has a good distance to the downside yet to travel. Merely to get to “The Box” shall take the S&P to 1420? 1550! Rallies are to be sold."

It takes ignorance on an almost unbelievable level to try to claim that “nothing is happening” in the financial world right now.

The S&P 500 is now only about 1% off Black Monday lows. Have the market internals deteriorated as much as the headline price index has?

For investors, the markets have been sending a fairly clear warning signal. Market topping processes take time to develop fully and, unfortunately, are only fully recognized in hindsight. The problem in waiting for "recognition" is that the destruction of capital is already far larger than previously expected. This leads to a series of "psychological" responses that exacerbate the problem such as "hoping to get back to even." The last point is critically important. In the world of investing, "hope" has never been an investment strategy that one could profit by. It likely won't be successful this time either.

When you tell people in self denial the market could drop 40% in a few months, they think you are crazy. They declare this could never happen. They would get out of the market before it would fall vertically. Their memories are conveniently short as their normalcy bias and cognitive dissonance blind them to what happened over three months in 2008/2009. We wonder how many willfully ignorant investors can handle a 50% to 70% haircut in their 401k, especially if they are over 50 years old. We wonder how much angrier the populace will become when the current recession results in more job losses, bankruptcies and revelations of Wall Street malfeasance. Beware of the bear.

Forget China, Volkswagen, Glencore, Noble, and pretty much everything else. The only catalyst that matters for today's price action has just been revealed. Earlier today, Dennis Gartman, whose flop-flip-flop-flipping calls on stocks, commodities and everything else have become a blur, just went mega bearish, and is predicting that the S&P has some 400 points of imminent downside.

This is an important story and shows how China and Russia are increasingly close and strong allies who are flexing their muscles and asserting themselves as rival superpowers to the U.S.

What has always separated successful professional gamblers from the "weekend sucker" is knowing when to step away from the table.

Absent some entirely magical economic developments, Janet Yellen looks set to be an unlucky Fed chairman. There is a growing risk that the fabric of the financial system may start to unravel during her tenure. Today’s investors are not exactly a lucky generation. Assuming they’ve survived two precipitous declines in stock markets in the course of a decade, they’re now faced with overpriced stocks, overpriced bonds, overpriced everything.

With Biotechs in a bear market, and Nasdaq having dropped back into negative territory for 2015, the year's leading equity index has now joined the rest of the majors and completed its "death cross."

It was all about China once again, where following a report of a historic layoff in which China's second biggest coal producer Longmay Group fired an unprecedented 100,000 or 40% of its workforce, overnight we got the latest industrial profits figure which plunging -8.8% Y/Y was the biggest drop since at least 2011, and which the National Bureau of Statistics attributed to "exchange rate losses, weak stock markets, falling industrial goods prices as well as a bigger rise in costs than increases in revenue." In not so many words: a "hard-landing."

High stakes poker, winner takes all. Traders better have their trade plans ready: The next 3 weeks will likely determine whether we enter a lengthy bear market or whether bulls can use coming positive seasonality to avert a major market break one more time. As the following charts show, by the end of October we shall have confirmation one way or the other...

The current surge in dis-inflationary pressures is not just due to the recent fall in oil prices, but rather a global epidemic of slowing economic growth. While Janet Yellen addressed this "disinflationary" wave during her post-meeting press conference, the Fed still maintains the illusion of confidence that economic growth will return shortly. Unfortunately, this has been the Fed's "Unicorn" since 2011 as annual hopes of economic recovery have failed to materialize. However, it is these ongoing views of optimism that have collided with economic realities.

1. Peak in liquidity
2. Deflationary recovery
3. Manufacturing recession
4. Capitulation of the "strong $" & "TINA" trades

Not surprisingly, the failure of the Federal Reserve to hike overnight lending rates sent a clear message to the markets that the economy was simply not strong enough to withstand tighter monetary policy. While Chairwoman Janet Yellen did her best to pass off the recent disinflationary trends as transient due to the decline in oil prices, the discussion of the potential for negative rates sent a very different message. The failure at overhead resistance, combined with a continued weak technical backdrop of momentum and relative strength, suggests that a retest of lows in the weeks ahead is a likely probability.