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Author Archives: The Weekly Commentary
The Markets This Week
Stocks suffered their fourth loss in five weeks, falling at times toward the threshold that marks the beginning of a new bear market. But the slide was interrupted by bouts of buying, suggesting that the market is groping hard to find a short-term bottom.
The violence between bulls and bears drove the Standard & Poor’s 500 down 6.7% Monday, up 4.7% Tuesday, down 4.4% Wednesday and up 4.6% Thursday—a record succession of daily moves exceeding 4%, each one in the opposite direction. That schizophrenic streak finally subsided—for now, at least—when stocks gained 0.5% Friday.
At one point, equities had skidded 17% in just 11 days, a sign that investors were quickly pricing in the increasing odds of a recession exacerbated by government belt-tightening in developed countries and credit-tightening in emerging economies. At their lows last week, big-cap stocks were 18% below their late-April highs, while small stocks had skidded 25% to fall below the 20% mark into conventional bear-market territory.
How much bad news are traders anticipating? The S&P 500 fell 26%, on average, from peak to trough over the past 11 recessions, notes one Wall Street, so stocks are already pricing in a roughly 60% chance of a typical U.S. recession. A very mild earnings recession, during which corporate profits fall just 8% or so, “appears to be fully priced in.”
There were other signs that the market has taken stock of much of the looming gloom, short of a pernicious recession. Money managers buying options to hedge their portfolios drove the VIX volatility index to its highest level since the financial crisis. Gold soared above $1,800 a troy ounce midweek, a record. The crop of stocks still holding above their 50-day averages shriveled to just 4% amidst broad heavy selling. At one point, frenetic bond buyers drove the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasuries below even the payout of the S&P 500, at about 2.18%. You don’t see this every day: Stocks offering a richer dividend than recently downgraded U.S. government bonds, in addition to potential capital appreciation, and still begging to find takers.
Further damage to shares probably is limited after this correction, but the longevity of any rebound still depends on how quickly the economy recovers. It helps that expectations are plummeting, and stocks had some help last week when companies including Cisco Systems (ticker: CSCO), Macy’s (M) and News Corp. (NWS) (which owns Barron’s) reported better-than-expected profits. The Fed also overcame some internal dissent and vowed to hold down borrowing costs well into 2013. Weekly mortgage applications jumped 22%, and the number of Americans filing jobless claims fell below 400,000 for the first time in four months.
But this good economic data could well prove fleeting, with financial conditions tightening in recent weeks, and with corporations and consumers alike shaken by Washington’s fiscal fight and the stock-market correction. A measure of consumer sentiment plunged to depths not seen since before Ronald Reagan was president, and Europe is still struggling to keep its debt crisis from exploding. Last week, the Old World sought to prevent panicked selling of French bank stocks by banning short-selling—never mind that a similar move here merely halted, momentarily, financial stocks’ 70% slide during the credit crisis. Banning short-selling, says Paul Hickey of Bespoke Investment Group, “will only prolong the ultimate adjustment to equilibrium.”
The Yo-Yo Market
The Standard & Poor’s 500 had a record run of four straight days of daily moves surpassing 4%, up or down, as the stock market struggled to find a bottom. Friday’s action was relatively mild—a mere 0.5% change.
Bulls, of course, have clung to the fact that corporations are still raking in record profits, even as the economy struggles. But it remains to be seen how long this happy “decoupling” between profits and economy can last. Michael Darda, MKM Partners’ chief economist and market strategist, notes how high-yield spreads have recently widened to 4.38 percentage points from 1.51 percentage points in February, and these precede earnings estimates for the S&P 500 by three to six months. If the high-yield market proves correct, there could be “more than 30% downside to analysts’ earnings expectations for the next year,” he says.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended last week down 176 points, or 1.5%, to 11269. The S&P 500 is down 12.4% over the past three weeks and 13.6% off its 2011 high. The Nasdaq Composite Index gave up 24, or 1%, to 2508, while the Russell 2000 lost 17, or 2.4%, to 698. Crude fell for a third straight week, while gold’s winning streak stretched to six (Source: Barrons Online).
The Numbers
Last week, US Stocks and Foreign Stocks decreased. Bonds increased. During the last 12 months, BONDS outperformed STOCKS. Returns through 8-12-2011 1-week Y-T-D 1-Year 3-Years 5-Years 10-Years Bonds- BarCap Aggregate Index .9 6.0 5.7 7.6 6.9 5.8 US Stocks-Standard & Poor’s 500 -1.6 -9.7 3.3 -6.3 -4.7 -.3 Foreign Stocks- MS EAFE Developed Countries -1.0 -9.6 3.2 – 6.9 -3.9 2.1 Source: Morningstar Workstation. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Three, five and ten year returns are annualized excluding dividends.
The Current Crisis
First, do not let emotions overwhelm your sense of reason- avoid panic. The market is encountering a crisis in confidence. This is not the same as a financial crisis or a recession, although, a prolonged crisis of confidence can lead to either if the crisis in confidence lasts long enough. The FED realizes this. The FED has stated several times in the past they will take measures to support the economy. I believe, more probably than not, that the FED will move to support the economy and its actions will be well coordinated with other central banks around the world. This action could be impressive and the stock market’s WOW factor may be big enough to ignite a substantial rebound in stock prices. I am confident you would not want to sell now and miss the rebound if and when the FED acts.
To be clear, the timing of a crisis of confidence and the actions by the FED are extremely difficult to forecast. I recommend that you do not attempt to time these events – avoid succumbing to the emotional drama put forth by the news media. Let’s wait to see what the FED announces at 2:15pm on Tuesday 8/9/2011 and observe their subsequent actions.
Let me know if you have any additional questions.
Motivational Quote of the Week
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
– Fanklin D. Roosevelt
“Your Financial Choices” is going ‘festing this week!
The show will be on vacation this week due to Musikfest – why not head down to Bethlehem and enjoy all that ” ‘fest ” has to offer?
Congratulations to our friends at 401! Creative for the amazing poster design for this year’s ‘fest! Here’s what they had to say about the project:
“Working with ArtsQuest on the Musikfest poster has been a career milestone for us as the annual poster is one of the biggest visual icons to be associated with in the Lehigh Valley. Our inspiration ranged from vintage album covers to Van Gogh paintings to modern comic books. By the time we were done six designers had their hands on the project at some point. In the end we just wanted to create a poster our kids would think is “Cool” when we take them to Musikfest years from now with our vintage mugs in hand.” – 4O1!
Personal Notes
My “60 on 60” golf score – 306 comprised of 14 Pars, 26 Bogeys, 16 Double-bogeys, and unfortunately 4 triples. Total of 60 holes played with the first swing at 6:45AM and the last putt at 6:45PM. It was a wonderful day. I could not have asked for better weather. At the end of the day, I was tired but still in great spirits. Still on top of the world.
Find Valley National on Facebook and Twitter!
The Markets This Week
Jin Lee/AP
Washington’s debilitating squabble over the nation’s debt ceiling may have ended, but the damage done to investor confidence helped drive stocks down more than 10% from their recent April peak, and to a conventional definition of a correction. The kicker: Late Friday Standard & Poor’s downgraded the U.S. credit rating to double-A plus from the triple-A rating it had for 70 years.
Capitol Hill and the White House had some help in undermining confidence from Europe, where bond yields in Italy and Spain climbed to decade highs as investors fled the government debt of those countries for the perceived safe harbors of gold, Swiss francs, and the Canadian and Australian dollars.
Stateside, lawmakers clinched a last-minute deal to raise our $14.3 trillion debt ceiling so Uncle Sam can keep borrowing enough to pay his bills and avoid a default. But while the $2.4 trillion in spending cuts proposed by Congress are heavily back-end-loaded—most won’t kick in until after 2017—that noisy show of government belt-tightening is unnerving a market still heavily reliant on government benevolence.
It didn’t help that economic momentum seems to be slowing. Last week’s ISM nonmanufacturing survey showed the service sector, which drives three-quarters of our economy, decelerating in July. Particularly alarming was the decline in export orders to a reading of 49 in July from 57 in June, which reinforced fears that the global economy is stalling as China tightens credit and Europe cuts spending.
Then on Friday, there was some good news. U.S. nonfarm payrolls data showed a gain of 117,000 jobs, better than expected, while the unemployment rate dipped to 9.1% last month from 9.2% in June, the Labor Department reported.
Still, the specter of slowing global growth drove investors toward Treasuries, despite the threat of a credit-rating downgrade sometime during the next few months. The yield on 10-year U.S. notes last week fell below 2.5% at one point Thursday, and is down sharply from 3.74% as recently as February. The Standard & Poor’s 500 dividend yield, at 2.13%, is the closest it’s been to the Treasury rate in quite a while.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended last week down almost 700 points, or 5.8%, to 11,444.61. The S&P 500 had its third loss in four weeks and fell 93 points to 1199.38. It marked the worst weekly loss in almost three years for the benchmark, which has pulled back 12% from its late-April peak. The Nasdaq Composite Index fell 8% to 2532.
At one point last week, the Dow had fallen for eight straight days before its rout was interrupted, briefly and barely, by a shallow 0.3% rebound Wednesday. Stocks are oversold and due for at least a technical bounce. But the selling momentum—last week’s trading volume was among this year’s heaviest—also means rallies might draw more sellers.
Ironically, the masses railing against government spending also can’t seem to wean themselves off it, and hopes quickly emerged that the closer the S&P 500 falls toward 1100, the more likely our central bank is to rescue the market with a third round of quantitative easing, or QE3.
Don Rissmiller, Strategas Research Partners’ chief economist, examined the four segments that could lead our flailing economic cycle. Households propelled our economy for decades, but without appreciating real estate or easy credit their swagger is now limited. “Businesses can certainly drive the business cycle, but it seems hard to ask a profit-maximizing corporation to leverage up just as the cycle is slowing down,” he writes. Foreign demand might goose U.S. growth, but exports alone can’t carry us unless the U.S. dollar falls significantly lower. That leaves the government, which he thinks can make “the biggest difference.”
Last week, Strategas raised the odds of a recession in 2012 to 35% from 20%, and in 2013 to 60% from 50%. Rissmiller argues we need “pro-growth fiscal policy,” and “not just the removal of anti-growth issues” like the debt ceiling. Forceful government support dragged our economy out of recession in 2009, but growth slowed to 1.3% last quarter, jobs are still scarce, and the government is running out of tricks. And as the debt-ceiling fiasco reminded us, relying on our government can be an uncomfortable proposition (Source: Barrons Online).
The Numbers
Last week, US Stocks and Foreign Stocks decreased. Bonds increased. During the last 12 months, BONDS outperformed STOCKS (this is a change and the first such change in over one year).
Returns through 8-5-2011 | 1-week | Y-T-D | 1-Year | 3-Years | 5-Years | 10-Years |
Bonds- BarCap Aggregate Index | .7 | 5.1 | 5.1 | 7.4 | 6.6 | 5.7 |
US Stocks-Standard & Poor’s 500 | -7.5 | -7.3 | 2.1 | -5.6 | -4.5 | 0.0 |
Foreign Stocks- MS EAFE Developed Countries | -9.9 | -8.8 | -.3 | – 6.8 | -4.0 | 1.9 |
Source: Morningstar Workstation. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested into directly. Three, five and ten year returns are annualized excluding dividends.