Dow Jones Industrial Average

Nic Colas, of ConvergEx, waxes nostalgic at the dreadful deja-vu he sees in his monthly review of the Street’s revenue expectations for the companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Finding that while markets may be in rally mode, analysts are still fretful about near term sales momentum at these large multinationals. Currently, they expect the average Dow company to post only a 3.6% sales “Comp” in Q1 2012 versus last year, or 5.0% for the non-financial companies in the index.  That is the lowest expected growth rate for the current quarter since we started keeping tabs on what the analysts had in their models a year ago. They don’t have to bump numbers to pound the table on their favorite names.  The current rally has been more about valuation than revenue and earnings momentum – our revenue expectation data is all the proof you need on that score.  So why raise numbers if your “Buy” rated names are rallying without the need to put yourself on that limb? All of this sets up market psychology on a razor’s edge for Q1 earnings reports. And what about ‘Sell in May and go away?'  Only 31 trading days left until May 1st. 

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A certain flavor of econometric model dominates conventional portfolio management and financial analysis. This model can be paraphrased thusly: seasonally adjusted economic data such as the unemployment rate and financially derived data such as forward earnings and price-earnings ratios are reliable guides to future economic growth and future stock prices....If this model is so accurate and reliable, why did it fail so completely in 2008 when a visibly imploding debt-bubble brought down the entire global economy and crashed stock valuations? Of the tens of thousands of fund managers and financial analysts who made their living off various iterations of this econometric model, how many correctly called the implosion in the economy and stock prices? How many articles in Barrons, BusinessWeek, The Economist or the Wall Street Journal correctly predicted the rollover of stocks and how low they would fall? Of the tens of thousands of managers and analysts, perhaps a few dozen got it right (and that is a guess--it may have been more like a handful). In any event, the number who got it right using any econometric model was statistical noise, i.e. random flecks of accuracy. The entire econometric model of relying on P-E ratios, forward earnings, the unemployment rate, etc. to predict future economic trends and future stock valuations was proven catastrophically inadequate. The problem is these models are detached from the actual drivers of growth and stock valuations.

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The Chairman of the Fermentation Committee takes the fizz out of the market once again.

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The real outlook of Monetary Easing vs Treasury Yields