Those that declare a bear market are reckless to do so, their hollow predictions no matter how confident and no matter how eloquently expressed, are little more than attention-grabbing guesswork, and somewhat irresponsible. But financial market commentators know that "calling the crash", no matter how unfounded, attracts attention. It gets hits to run against the herd and invoke fear, it gets hits to suggest everything is going to hell, so someone will always want to do it.
Despite that, an independent, agenda-less viewpoint, delivered without fear, is always interesting and of value, even when wrong. This is how commentators like Marc Faber and Nouriel Roubini have survived for so long despite being so repetitively wrong, because they are independent, free speakers and, of course, just occasionally, when the market tips over, they can claim the high ground and shout “I told you so”. Someone has to sit at the bearish end of the market’s bell curve of opinion and someone has to provide the devil’s viewpoint. It is a good space to occupy because there are not a lot of people there, so you stand out more easily.
But you can’t sit there if you’re trying to sell a financial product in the finance industry. Boom sells, not gloom and doom, meaning that financial market negativity is for people selling subscriptions not financial products. Which is why the bears are in the minority, because it serves nobody’s commercial purpose unless you are selling a newsletter that gorges on fear.
But this week, one of the major brokers, an institution permanently prone to optimism for commercial purposes, crossed the line. The mainstream getting bearish is another sign, when the institutions that are commercially biased to promote greed, move towards fear.
This week, Morgan Stanley’s chief US equity strategist wrote that the market is in the midst of a “rolling bear market” across all global risk assets caused by the drain in liquidity (the end of quantitative easing) and peaking growth (ending of the Trump tax sugar hit for corporate earnings). He says “with growth, tech and discretionary stocks, having now begun to underperform, the S&P 500, the final holdout of the ‘rolling bear market’, will eventually succumb, and probably soon”. The implication is that “the rebound last week was nothing but a dead cat bounce and the correction is not done yet”.
In times of flux, when volatility is high and everybody fears what will happen next, the herd can obsess over the irrelevant. It is doing so at the moment. The focus is on the S&P500, which has dropped below the 200-day moving average (again). Morgan Stanley says, “we look for confirmation [of a bear market] with a definitive break of the S&P 500 through its 200-day moving average”. Below the 200-day moving average is another sign.
Another bear market indicator is something called the Hindenburg Omen. It is a technical indicator that compares the number of 52-week highs to the number of 52-week lows on the New York Stock Exchange and purports to predict the likelihood of a market crash. It was named after Germany’s Hindenburg airship, which crashed in 1937. The Hindenberg Omen Indicator was developed by a chap called Jim Miekka, a blind mathematician, based on a series of criteria. All the criteria for a Hindenburg Omen were met on September 11 this year by the New York Stock Exchange.
Does it matter? Not really. The Hindenburg Omen is not a great indicator, it has a record of false alarms, but more interestingly perhaps is the fact it always triggers before any major market sell-off as it did in 1987 and 2008. Not every Hindenburg Omen signals a market top, but every market top sees the Hindenburg Omen triggered. It is another sign.
The signs, they are gathering.
- Source, ET Markets
