Market Cycles

If you thought that Baupost's Seth Klarman would be the next to join twitter, #timestamp his minute-holding trades, ignore the money-losing ones, trumpet his winners, always make money, scream at all those who don't agree with his "strategy", and otherwise become what is known these days as a (momentum) investor, we have some bad news: it's not happening. Here's why.

One of the simplest, most overused and popular assertions is that claim that stocks must rise because interest rates are so low.  In fact, you cannot get through an hour of financial television without hearing someone discuss the premise of the Fed Model which is earnings yield versus bond yields. The idea here, once formalized as the "Fed Model," is that stocks' "earnings yield" (reported or forecast operating earnings for the S&P 500, divided by the index level) should tend to track the Treasury yield in some fashion. This simply doesn't hold up in theory or practice.

First it was thousands of dead pigs floating in the Shanghai water supply (at last estimate over 16,000), then a thousand dead ducks were pulled from a river in the Sichuan province, and now, pushing the meme beyond even its most grotesque boundaries, we learn that five black swans were found floating lifeless on the pond of Anhui University’s old campus in Hefei, traditionally inhabited by a bevy of black swans. From Danwei: "The latest instance of floating dead animals in China – first pigs, then ducks, and now black swans – these mere five black swans became an object of heated discussion on the Internet right after the announcement was made. How did they die? Was it a natural disaster or another man-made one? As Star News tells us today, upon hearing of the news yesterday it immediately sent a journalist to the scene to find out exactly what happened. What he found was just one more filthy pond filled with oily water and garbage."

As the markets once again approach historic highs - the overly exuberant tone, extreme complacency and weakness in the economic data, bring to mind Bob Farrell's 10 investment rules.  These rules should be a staple for any long term successful investor.  These rules are often quoted yet rarely heeded - just as they are now. Farrell became a pioneer in sentiment studies and market psychology. His 10 rules on investing stem from personal experience with dull markets, bull markets, bear markets, crashes and bubbles. In short, Farrell has seen it all and lived to tell about it. Despite endless warnings, repeated suggestions and outright recommendations - getting investors to sell, take profits and manage your portfolio risks is nearly a lost cause as long as the markets are rising.  Unfortunately, by the time the fear, desperation or panic stages are reached it is far too late to act and we will only be able to say that we warned you.

Typically, we humans will anchor on the most recent patterns - especially if they conform to our anchored inherently optimistic bias. It seems, once again, that just as in previous euphoric stages of equity market cycles, we are doing the same again. There are plenty of market movements that remove any hope for the 'who could have seen it coming?' herd: European stock and bond markets 'breaking' their positive contagion trends (core and periphery); US credit markets seeing very disturbing trends of selling pressure and technical outflows; and US equity valuations reaching multi-month highs in the face of declining earning, declining macro fundamentals, and declining GDP expectations. With US stocks at highs against a plunging US macro background and EU stocks slumping against a rising EU macro background, it appears good is bad and bad is good and while we do not know what catalyst stalls the can-kicking hope in the short-term, the longer the divergence from reality lasts, the bigger the fall to come.

There have been several articles as of late discussing that the next great secular bull market has arrived. However, the reality is that this cycle is currently unlike anything that we have potentially witnessed in the past.  With massive central bank interventions, artificially suppressed interest rates, sub-par economic growth, high unemployment and elevated stock market prices it is likely that the current secular bear market may be longer than the historical average. No matter how you slice the data - the simple fact is that we are still years away from the end of the current secular bear market. The mistake that analysts, economists and the media continue to make is that the current ebbs and flows of the economy are part of a natural, and organic, economic cycle. If this was the case then there would be no need for continued injections of liquidity into the system in an ongoing attempt to artificially suppress interest rates, boost housing or inflate asset markets. From market-to-GDP ratios, cyclical P/Es, misconstrued earnings yields, and the analogs to previous Fed-blow bubbles, we appear near levels more consistent with cyclical bull market peaks rather than where secular bear markets have ended.

There has been an burst of exuberance as of late as the market, after four arduous years, got back to its pre-crisis levels.  Much has been attributed to the recent burst of optimism in the financial markets from: better than expected earnings, stronger economic growth ahead, the end of the bond bubble is near, the long term outlook is getting better, valuations are cheap, and the great rotation is here - all of which have egregious holes. However, with the markets fully inflated, we have reached the point that where even a small exogenous shock will likely have an exaggerated effect on the markets.  There are times that investors can safely "buy and hold" investments - this likely isn't one of them.

Edson Gould, deceased author of the once-famous Findings & Forecasts investment newsletter often said that "History always repeats, only the details change". This insight, a handful of carefully chosen technical indicators, and a deep understanding of crowd psychology enabled him to make some remarkable calls during his career. The graphic below, courtesy of Addogram, plots Gould's "Sentimeter" ("the market price of $1 of dividends") the inverse of the US 10-year Treasury yield, the gold price and an index of commodity prices. Needless to say he was quite right; "History always repeats, only the details change".

While we have looked in the past at the incredible dominance of FOMC days when it comes to stock market performance, recent intraday performance of the major equity indices has had a somewhat repetitive and rhythmic structure. We know volumes surge, pause, and surge; Tradestation has dug one step deeper into the actual performance structure intraday and found some fascinating trends. From the extremely clear final-hour ramp to the oscillating bull-bear opening moves (and the European close positive bias) across almost 30 years of price behavior in bull and bear markets. The afternoons dominate market performance in bull markets and the morning session dominates the weakness in bear markets - so fade the opening rally, buy the dip, cover half into Europe, hope into the close appears the 'empirical route of least resistance' - for now. And this tidbit, if stocks close higher on average into the 3 p.m. hour, their probability of moving higher into the 4 p.m. close is 70%.

In this interview we had a chance to discuss Paul Krugman’s  latest bearish article on China, the linkage between the European crisis and Chinese and Japanese bubbles.  We revisited sideways markets, profit margins (I picked a bone with Apple’s high margins), and concluded with Microsoft.

Hark - either the end is nigh, or we are about to see one of the biggest market melt-ups in history: the man who conceived, developed, and distributed the Birinyi Ruler to a Comcast financial comedy cable channel near you, and to late night comedy in financial circles everywhere, is no longer a Bull. He is merely a bull, which is the also the first word one may apply to another very appropriate word to describe his predictions from early on in the year. For those who have their ultrasound babel fish on, here it is: "The S&P 500 has been perilously close to a 20 per cent decline in recent weeks which would, by definition, terminate the bull market which began in March 2009. Given the economic circumstances and the continuing political turmoil on both sides of the Atlantic, most commentators believe it is only a matter of time before such a landmark is reached. Having been bullish, I am – as expected – disappointed but not undaunted. I remain bullish if only now with a lower case “b”. Some months ago I conceded that making market forecasts was increasingly difficult as they entailed an understanding of American politics, Chinese monetary and financial policy, Greek and Italian attitudes, German elections in addition to the usual economics, corporate developments and actions and comments by the Federal Reserve Board." Obviously, all these are superfluous 'things' that a man of Birinyi's intellect should not need to be concerned by. After all, what is good is the 'ruler' for if not to predict the future? But before you go ahead and pledge a 4th lien on your 3rd born to go all in stocks, here is the Notorious BIGGS, who bottom ticked the market a few weeks back with laser-like precision : "Barton Biggs Increases Bullish Bets in Traxis Macro Fund to 65%." Needless to say, every time Biggs has done something, the market has done the opposite. So for all those confused what they should do when two of the market's most hilarious permabulls say the opposite things, fear not - i) you are not alone, and ii) just buy a collocated vacuum tube-based algo, and watch as the High Frontrunning Trading algo makes you rich beyond your wildest dreams.

In his typically anti-prosaic manner UBS' Art Cashin draws the parallels between Caesar's political alliances & apolitical dalliances and the refreshing honesty of Dallas Fed's Fisher with the hope of a new spirit of cooperation blossoming among European leaders and how we lost some belief yesterday afternoon.

While we have recently seen various fundamentally driven predictions for the S&P going back to its 1994 level of ~400 (most recently from Albert Edwards and Russell Napier), few charts predict a comparable major retracement in the key equity index. And while it is not quite a variant of the Kondratieff Wave chart familiar to most, this chart courtesy of Sean Corrigan shows the historical 33 year peak to trough frequency of the S&P, emphasizing the cyclical periodicity observed in market cycles. The chart predicts the next 33 year low to occur some time in late 2015, taking the S&P to the proverbial 400 level. As Corrigan observes: "A third, post-94 Bubble-era decline of -50% would unwind all of that move and half the log rise of the Great Bull Market (something the '49-'68 move did) and return to both the mid-1960's highs and Fib retrace the whole post - WWII move. Doing this by late 2015 would preserve the 33 year span."

John Mauldin, who wrote a wonderful foreword to my Little Book of Sideways Markets, published an excerpt from the Little Book in his latest newsletter, so here it is:

With many once again believing that a rate hike is just around the corner (as has been the case for the past 2 years... the same with expectations that NFPs will finally push higher any month now), here is a reminder of what happened the last time there was a concerted effort by the Fed to contract liquidity. And this is just hiking rates. Never before has the US stock market had to ween itself off $125 billion in QE-related monthly liquidity. All in all, no matter how long Bernanke tries to delay the end of QE2, the outcome will become a self-fulfilling prophecy which will slam stocks, and by the Chairman's definition, the economy, making a QE3 episode inevitable (not to mention the $2 trillion in debt each year that has to be monetized). We are on the same side of the Peter Shiff bet who has given Steve Liesman 5 to 1 odds for $10,000 that QE3 is imminent. FX Concepts' John Taylor explains: "What happens if the Fed hikes rates? Even with a tiny hike, the good times are over...Although we think of the 1990's as great equity years, stocks were down almost everywhere and in some cases dramatically in the 6 to 9 months after the February surprise. The government bond market was a total shambles and portfolios suffered their worst year since Volker had taken control in 1979. Currencies went every which-way, but those that had a need for offshore capital were crushed as inflows quickly became outflows...With the sharp reversal in liquidity, 1994 burst a lot of hopeful balloons and was a terrible year for asset managers."