You can’t predict when markets bottom out, so do not try to read the markets. But corrections or bear market always come to an end. Once caught in a down-spiralling market, it feels like it won’t stop, but someday it will. Right now, it is difficult to create a positive view: Global growth is slowing, Brexit drags on, a trade war rages, stimulus of all types is being yanked and the yield curve is flirting with an inversion. Still, as bad as it feels, at some point things get priced in.
The market today is oversold. Does it mean it won’t go lower?
It is true that valuations for US equities now look much more reasonable than they did a few weeks ago, but it’s even true for global equity markets where buyers have remained scarce. The best that can be said at present is that the current wave of liquidation looks likely to exhaust itself in the near term. If it doesn’t, what looms below is a full-blown bear market, at 2,345 on the S&P 500.
At least statistics paint a slightly rosier picture. At 16%, the plunge exceeds the average decline of the past 27 corrections since 1945 that didn’t turn into bear markets.
But that’s a big condition to accept as stocks swerve from one awful day to the next. As of now, the S&P 500 is down 16% from its September record and only needs to drop 130 more points to meet the 20 percent threshold. This decline has also been faster than usual. It’s been 91 days of pain since the top. That’s about three quarters of the length of a typical correction.
Cyclical bear markets that have not overlapped with recessions have been shorter and less severe than bear markets that have. Supporting this view is the absence of economic data pointing to a decline in gross domestic product. Everything from hiring to profits to factories are booming.
It could mark the first time since 2010 that the economy grew by over 3% but the S&P fell at least 10% in the same period and just the 7th time since 1969.
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