After years of steadily upward grinding markets, we have suddenly seen three stock market shakeouts of more than 10% over the past six months.
The Volatility Index (VIX) has spiked over $50 once and $30 on three separate occasions during the same time period.
What gives?
Is the bull market over? Is it time to don your hard hat and hide out in a bunker? Should we start stockpiling canned food, water, and ammo once again?
Hardly.
Those of us who have been around for a handful of decades have seen all this before. After several years, markets just get tired of going up.
Traders look at their S&P 500 (SPX) charts and think, ?holy moly, the index has just tripled off its $667 bottom! SELL!?
Investors look at their charts and think ?Wow, markets have been going up for seven years now! Isn?t this where a recession usually kicks in? SELL!?
In fact, markets can go down for no other reason than they have been going up for too long, earnings be damned. The bear market becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
The problem is that these days, high frequency traders, complex derivatives enabling massive leverage, the rise of ETF?s, the disappearance of intermediaries, and scaredy cat day traders put a turbocharger on every single move.
However, this year we seem to have more than the usual numbers of things to worry about.
I will list them in order of importance. Caution: you may not have heard of several of these.
1) The retirement of 85 million baby boomers is still the biggest drag on risk assets everywhere. Retirement brings a shift in investment preferences away from equities and towards fixed income, and a major downsizing of consumption. They are a huge drag on the economy. This will continue for six more years.
2) The Federal Reserve?s monetary policy of quantitative easing gave us all free money to buy everything, especially stocks. Since it ended in October, 2014 stocks have flat lined within a broad range. Expect this to continue until the next real recession, which could be years off.
3) The hangover of the 2008 crash is still with us. People are so nervous about a return of the bad old days that they are saving more than usual. This is why consumers aren?t spending their gas savings. It?s also why the housing recovery got such a late start. An entire generation of Millennials has deferred family formation and consumption by about five years. Many people will NEVER buy stocks again, similar to what their ancestors did after the 1929 crash.
4) America is almost alone around the world with a reasonably growing economy. The rest of the planet, including Europe, Japan, China, the Middle East, and emerging nations, are all suffering from a slowdown. This acts as a big drag on the US economy, as the demand for our exports shrink.
5) Since this is an election year, some $8 billion will be spent to convince you how terrible economic conditions are. Never mind that the claims are largely false. This IS having a negative effect on investor sentiment. When this onslaught runs out of money in the fall, expect to start hearing about the ?Clinton Rally? that will take stocks to new all time highs. You heard it here first. Oh, and by the way, Donald Trump scares the living daylights out of the entire business and investment community.
6) Have you noticed that sub $2.00 gas at the pump lately? Well, the people who sell us the oil that made that gas don?t have as much money as they used to. How much money? Oh, about $1 trillion. And what do they have to sell to cover their newfound deficits? US stocks, especially bank and technology shares, and of course Apple (AAPL).
7) OK, so you?re one of those people who absolutely HAS to have something to worry about. There is a catch all category of Syria/ISIS/Iran/Libya/Yemen/Somalia that will keep you awake at night and out of the stock market. As a person who is in near weekly contact with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I can assure you that the existential threat to the US from this source is zero. Blame it all on the failure of the Ottoman Empire to reform during the 19th century.
8) Want more reasons to toss and turn at night? You could obsess about the rise of China and a newly aggressive Russia. But do you really think one of these countries is inclined to blow up their largest source of earnings and technology? I don?t think so.
9) A giant asteroid will destroy the earth. Don?t worry, the next big one isn?t due until 2032, by which time I will be retired, and entirely in cash.
