Here’s my brain dump on the recent market action and how I’m approaching things:
- Since stocks started to slide in October, I’ve been seeing signals that only appear during bear markets so I’ve been operating under that assumption by reducing exposure to higher risk assets (stocks, corporate bonds, etc.) on bounces.
- We’re now very oversold, seeing positive divergences and due for another big bounce. However, I do not think we see any major events (China trade deal, change of Fed policy, etc.) accompany it so I will continue to view it as a bear market bounce and will look to sell it/hedge with options.
- A bounce should take the S&P 500 back up to test the 2650 to 2700 area (~6% to 10% bounce) and possibly a little higher.
- I still think we have lower levels to test though, with the 2375 and 2200 areas being the next area of longer timeframe support. That is where I’ll look to do some buying.
- I’m becoming very excited about the opportunity to buy stock of some companies I’ve followed for years but I surprisingly haven’t done much buying yet. Most of the stocks on my shopping list still have not dropped enough for me to pull the trigger, but we’re close… This adds to my belief that the broad indexes still have some more downside to go (probably in the first half of 2019).
- The stock market diving 4 days in a row going into the Fed announcement yesterday is the market’s way of testing the Fed, saying “ you better get the message and quit tightening.” Jerome Powell and the Fed responded by saying “you’re on your own.”
- I respect Powell for not bending over backwards to please the stock market at any sign of volatility like Bernanke and Yellen did. However, I don’t think the Fed understands the bigger issues in the market right now. Or they do and they’re purposely unwinding the excesses of the past policies which would be long-term positive but would involve a painful short-term adjustment (as we’re seeing). Either way, the Fed did nothing to change the course of the markets and things only look worse now. Rate curves continue to flatten/invert and spreads continue to widen. The dollar is weakening a little against the developed market currencies but the Australian and Canadian dollars continue to weaken with commodities. This is continues to signal “risk off.”
- The increase in short-term rates by another 0.25% is not the issue. The Fed’s balance sheet runoff (Quantitative Tightening or “QT”) is the issue. The Fed is currently letting $50 billion of bonds per month runoff from their balance sheet. That has the effect of draining an additional $600 billion per year of liquidity from the markets by “crowding out” other investments like corporate bonds and stocks at the same time that the government is running $1 trillion deficits. During yesterday’s press conference, as soon as Powell said that they have no plans of changing QT and will basically let it continue to runoff on autopilot, that’s when the stock market started to slide. It will be interesting to see at what point that the Fed blinks and reverses course…. And make no mistake about it, they will. I think we will eventually be monetizing the deficits in full, as Japan and Europe are doing.
- Liquidity is always the key to investment markets and liquidity still looks to be tightening. I don’t think we see things ease until the second half of 2019 so, as I’ve been saying for the last 6 months (see here, here, here and here), I still expect the markets to remain volatile in 2019.
- The stocks getting trounced the most are the ones with the most debt as defaults start to become a concern. GE let the debt genie out of the bottle and now the market is spooked. There are a lot of BBB rated bonds that aren’t actual BBB quality, thanks to the same rating agency shenanigans we went through with the housing crisis, making all those investment grade corporate bond indexes a lot riskier than people think. I don’t think we’ll see a wave of downgrades because it would absolutely crush the high yield bond market as it can’t absorb that much paper, so the real risk is defaults if credit markets continue to tighten and don’t allow companies to roll.
- The collapse of oil prices over the last 10 weeks is going to bring down inflation dramatically (positive for the consumer but very negative for industrial production as energy production is now a major part of the US economy). This should keep a lid on longer term yields and is a big reason why yield sensitive sectors like Utilities and REITs have been outperforming. I believe there’s a good chance we do not see another rate increase by the Fed this cycle. The eurodollar curve has already started to price in rate cuts.
- If the dollar starts to weaken as the market prices in fewer rates increases, we should see a bounce in emerging markets. However, I still think there’s more trouble here in 2019 as well so I’m not getting aggressive yet.
- We’re still pretty early in the downturn of this cycle. We will ultimately get some REALLY great buying opportunities in all higher yielding, higher risk asset classes like corporate bonds, high yield, stocks, emerging markets, real estate, etc. but preservation is the name of the game right now. This is when risk management is so absolutely critical. This is what my clients pay me for. It’s all about minimizing losses as much as possible and then stepping in full force once things are bombed out and look to be turning up.
Stay nimble out there and remember to match your investment decisions with your timeframe. Meaning, for your long-term retirement investments, big drops are long-term buying opportunities, not a time to panic and sell.
Thanks for following!
-Nick