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Zero Hedge - Shooting The Shoots
Zero Hedge - Shooting The Shoots
Zero Hedge - Shooting The Shoots
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Friday, May 1, 2009 Shooting The Shoots
Posted by Tyler Durden at 2:36 PM
Must read from David Rosenberg, who is on fire today, even taking on
Larry Kudlow now.
We don’t really share the view that the recovery, if and when it
comes, will be sustained. We understand the historical record that
even in the face of monumental fiscal and monetary easing, it takes a
good four years for the economy to work through the aftershocks of a
collapse in credit and asset values. While most economists are now
waving the pom-poms, we find very few marketmakers who share their
enthusiasm.
Gaps get filled rapidly and the primary source of buying power seems
to be coming from a huge short-squeeze, and perhaps some pension fund
rebalancing, which always seems to happen after the market makes a new
low. To be sure, there is always the chance that the dry powder (money
on the sidelines) is put to work and investors chase this rally. And
nothing says that the S&P 500 cannot go as high as the 200-day moving
average of 970 over the near term. We have seen these kinds of rallies
in the past There were four of these kinds of rallies from 1929 to
1932; a half-dozen in the 19-year-old Japanese bear phase; and no
fewer than 40,000 rally points in the Nasdaq that were fun to play in
the 2000-2003 bear market – but the fundamental downtrend was
obviously still intact.
The stock market bottomed for good in the spring of 2003 because at
that time, we were on the cusp of a 4%+ real GDP growth rate over the
ensuing four quarters. The reason the rally of late 2001 to early 2002
failed was because the market realized the recovery would be delayed.
Let’s just say that a 21% rally in the S&P 500 from Sept 2001 to
January 2002 was not a bounce that was pricing in a 1.5% GDP growth
rate for the ensuing four quarters, which is what we ended up with.
We can look at the situation in reverse. Did the 20% slide in the S&P
500 in the summer accurately predict the 4-1/2% GDP growth trend we
were going to see the following year? No. And even in this cycle, the
equity market was peaking just as the recession started in the fourth
quarter of 2007. So, this notion that the equity market is telling us
anything meaningful about the economic outlook, as Larry Kudlow would
have us believe, is open for debate. The stock market’s track record
is just about as good as the economics community at predicting the
inflection points in the business cycle – and that’s not very good.
We are more impressed with solid roots than we are with green shoots.
The economy and the capital markets are being held together by tape
and glue, in our view. Private sector activity is contracting and will
continue to lose its share of GDP as the government’s influence rises
on a secular basis. Tax rates will inevitably rise, as they are
already doing at the state and local government level. The public
sector is now involved in the mortgage market, the insurance sector,
the banking industry, and of course, the automotive business.
Now let’s get to the economy and those fabled green shoots
To suggest that claims have stabilized above 600,000 and that this is
a good thing is ridiculous. It would mean that by this time next year,
the unemployment rate could potentially reach 15%. The reason is
because employment losses do not end until claims actually break below
400,000. No recession ever ended until claims broke below 600,000, and
on average, recessions only end once claims drop below 500,000 (when
the last recession ended in November 2001, as an example, claims were
450,000).
Job losses will not end until the end of the year
What really caught our eye is the fourth horseman of the recession
call – real organic personal income. This metric peaked in October
2007 and was early in predicting the official onset of the recession,
which began in December of that year. This measure of household income
– it nets out government benefits – slipped 0.5% in March and has
declined for five months in a row (and six of the past seven). Over
that stretch, it declined at over a 6% annual rate, which is
unprecedented (the data series go back to 1954).
Since August of last year, the consumer sector has lost $266 billion
of organic income (in nominal dollars at an annual rate) as job losses
mounted, hours worked cut back, and full-time positions shifted to
part-time. This lost income – not to mention $20 trillion of
evaporated net worth – will likely bring long lags in dampening
consumer discretionary spending. We realize that one of the bright
spots in the 1Q GDP report was the +2.2% print on real consumer
spending. But let’s face facts: The bounce was concentrated in January
after a record 30% plunge in retail sales (at an annual rate) in the
final three months of 2008. We already know that sales were down in
both February and March and that the statistical handoff with respect
to consumer spending is negative as we head into the second quarter.
In any event, the economy has certainly passed its worst point of the
cycle even if we do not yet see the bottom that many others do at this
time. And it may very well be that we overstayed our bearish call on
the equity market and that the lows were turned in on March 9. Many
pundits who have been around far longer seem to believe that, and they
could be right. But there is no sense crying over spilled milk, even
after a 30% run-up in the S&P 500 and a 100 basis point surge in the
10-year note yield from the lows. It just broke above its 200-day
moving average, and there is nothing but empty space on the chart to
3.8% – that is an observation, not a forecast, by the way.
Because the attention now has shifted to the green shoots, as was
likely the case after the 1932 low as well, we highly recommend that
investors focus on the big picture, which is that the aftershocks of a
credit collapse and an asset deflation of this magnitude last for
years, even with public sector support. Now go back to that June 1932
low in the S&P 500 (below 5) and the initial surge was breathtaking –
the market roared ahead by 75% in just the first three months. But
guess what? For buy-and-hold investors, by the end of 1941, the S&P
500 was at the same level as in the fall of 1932. Nine years of
nothing, unless you are the most astute trader around.
Folks who chased the rally after the market broke out of the gate
woefully underperformed those who stuck with their focus on generating
cash flows from the fixed-income market. The yield on long Treasuries
fell from 3.8% to 2.5% (Fall of 1932 to the end of 1941) while Baa
corporates did even better – rallying from 7.1% to 4.4%. So from this
point forward, unless you are comfortable that you have the discipline
as to when to get out, the lesson of the last post-credit crunch/asset
deflation/depression seven decades ago is to retain your focus on SIRP
– safety and yield at a reasonable price. Passive buy-and-hold
strategies are destined to fail, in our view.