Bear Market

Ben Bernanke and his cohort central bankers built a Brave New World (SOMA, SOMA, SOMA!) where central bank money printing would boost stock prices and the wealth created would trickle down to workers and cause a booming economy. If you doubted that, you are now seeing proof that maybe this world was a little bit of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland along with the Aldous Huxley.

It is not hard to see history repeating itself all over again. Just look at the Chinese central bank this week cutting interest rates, just like the Fed had to do in 2008-9.

Crash waves are notoriously volatile – several of the biggest one day rallies in history have occurred before and during crash waves. This makes short term forecasting even more of a coin flip than it normally is. However, we believe it is important not to lose sight of the forest for the trees; stock markets around the world have been in bubbles driven by extremely loose monetary policy, which ipso facto allows us to identify them as an example of artificial price distortion. Such bubbles always collapse sooner or later – unless the monetary authority decides to simply destroy the currency it issues, as has happened in Zimbabwe and is currently happening in countries like Venezuela and to a slightly lesser extent Argentina. We don’t expect the central banks of the developed nations to follow suit, at least not yet.

From both and fundamental and technical viewpoint, there is mounting evidence that the current decline might just be sending a signal that there is more going on here than just an "overdue correction in a bull market." While it is too soon to know for sure, there seems to be little risk in being more conservative within portfolio allocations currently until the market environment clears. However, the proverbial "elephant" is margin debt.

"Given the size of foreign holdings of Asian equity and debt, should foreigners reduce their portfolio holdings by 2-3% over the course of a month, it would broadly offset the region’s current account surpluses, leaving their external balances in a shakier position. During the 'taper tantrum' period, foreigners sold markedly more than 3% of their portfolio holdings through June and July 2013, highlighting the risk that portfolio outflows could cause further Asian currency weakness."

With EM in turmoil from Brazil to Malaysia, Bloomberg has mapped the carnage, showing just how many EM equity markets are in or closing in on bear market territory.

"It's not necessarily out of control yet. But if they do not provide some stability pretty soon it will begin to affect not only the markets over there, but - as we saw today and somewhat last week - it affects markets all around the world. Financial Markets are correlated. We learned that back in 2008 When the fall of Lehman spread all around the globe."

Yesterday's market tumble finally brought the S&P and Nasdaq alongside the Dow Jones into correction territory, send the broader index down 11% from its highs, even as a vast majority of S&P constituents already preceded the index and are either in correction or in bear market territory. And yet, following today's latest central bank intervention, this time in the long overdue Chinese interest rate cut (which will hardly have a lasting impact on either the economy or stock markets), the S&P correction may may prove to be short lived: S&P is poised to open about 4% higher, delivering the latest "Bullard" moment to the S&P, this time courtesy of China. Still, the question remains: was that it for the long overdue correction, and what comes next.

Home prices rose 4.97% YoY in June, according to Case-Shiller's 20-City index, missing expectations for the 3rd month in a row. Price appreciation has now been flat for 5 months - despite surging home sales - as bubblicious San Francisco saw price depreciation once again. Portland amd Denver saw the most appreciation in June. This is the second month in a row of sequential seasonally-adjusted declines in home prices, and along with TOL's dismal report this morning, suggests maybe another pillar of the 'strong' US economy meme is being kicked out... and Case-Shiller warn more than one rate hike by The Fed (or a stock market plunge) will stymie housing considerably.

Gold appears to have once again anticipated the crisis and is acting like a safe haven in recent days - just at the moment when western investors need a safe haven and wealth preservation most. 

News That Matters

The correction may soon morph into a full-fledged bear market if the Fed makes good on its supposed intentions to raise interest rates this year. Have no illusions, while most market observers are quick to blame the sell-off on China, this market was given life by the Fed, and the Fed is the only force that will keep it alive. Unfortunately for the Fed, it won't be able to get away with doing nothing for too much longer. Events may soon force it to show its hand. Then perhaps some may notice that the Fed is holding absolutely nothing and has been bluffing the entire time.

By starving investors of safe return, activist Fed policy has promoted repeated valuation bubbles, and inevitable collapses, in risky assets. On the basis of valuation measures having the strongest correlation with actual subsequent market returns, we fully expect the S&P 500 to decline by 40-55% over the completion of the current market cycle. The only uncertainty has been the triggers.

Are there any conditions now that are actually better than those of 2008? Or are conditions now less resilient, more fragile and more dependent on unprecedented central bank interventions?

We warned on Friday, after last week's China rout, that the market is getting ahead of itself with its expectation of a RRR-cut by China as large as 100 bps. "The risk is that there isn't one." We were spot on, because not only was there no RRR cut, but Chinese stocks plunged, with the composite tumbling as much a 9% at one point, the most since 1996 when it dropped 9.4% in a single session. The session, as profile overnight was brutal, with about 2000 stocks trading by the -10% limit down, and other markets not doing any better: CSI 300 -8.8%, ChiNext -8.1%, Shenzhen Composite -7.7%. This was the biggest Chinese rout since 2007.