No. of Recommendations: 36
But CNN's fear/greed indicators would appear to be signaling a bounce soonish?
Eminently plausible.
My gut feel (probably not even positively correlated with reality) is a bounce, but a very much deeper bear yet to come.
The reasons for a likely bounce:
Short term panic signals like mine and CNN's have been firing. And it is not long since a fresh market high, so the usual rule is that true despair takes some time to sink in--drops which are both deep and lasting are vanishingly rare soon after a high. Plus, the weekend will soften the edges of the panic a bit.
But every economic indicator in the world is being revised down as fast as the economists and CEOs can type, and that will have an effect eventually.
Even after the drop of the last couple of days (US equity market value fall equates to $58000 per US household, if they owned 'em all), US valuations are still really stretched, plus the present value of all future earnings really has fallen, and not because of discount rates. The global economy simply won't produce nearly as much stuff in the next 20 years as it would have without recent developments.
I sold about 96% of my US stocks a couple of weeks ago, and sold all the US dollars too. It's a personal thing, but I would not visit the US if you paid me. Everyone I know has cut back their patronage of US retailers and goods by, say, 30-50% or more. My point is that it seems likely that I and my acquaintances are not the only ones in the world with that stance, and it seems unlikely to change within a decade. From a macro point of view, what are the possible consequences for US equity prices? Never rule anything out.
Jim
