Saturday, May 31, 2014

Bulls and Bears are divided

The tittle was This Chart may make you less worried about US stocks from Market Watch

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-chart-may-make-you-less-worried-about-us-stocks-2014-05-30


There are 9 bull runs and 8 bear markets since 1900. 4 of the bull runs exceeded 100 months while 5 of below 100 months. Of 8 bear markets 4 of them with 40% drop and the remaining experiencing  between 20 to 30%.

Bullish camp thinks we are going to have long boom. Their reasons? Statistically they think  the odds are good. They also think liquidity is ample and cheap and many yet to enter stock markets, global economy is still ok with no financial crisis in sights.

Trusting statistics without understandings in my view is over-simplistic. Post 1929, US gained the status of superpower and growing middle class powered the world economy for almost 100 years. In 80s, many of the US companies regained their competitiveness by doing a lot of restructuring. In the 90s, the IT revolution and globalization created a lot of productivity gains and global prosperity. Post Dot.com burst, despite of increasingly weaker advanced countries, the rise of emerging economies led by China lending a strong boost.

The way I see it now, every heavyweight economy has their own problems - US consumer is deleveraging and middle class struggles with stagnant  income growth. China engineered a slower economy growth, reining shadow banking threats and putting a lid over-heated property market, etc.....Japan is running of arrows and the rest of emerging economies are struggling due to lower demand from advanced countries, commodities and etc......In short, I just don't see any catalysts that can powered the rally into 100 months and beyond. I believe the bull run is really getting more and more aging rather than more and more raging!

1 comment:

yauwenchin said...

Crash or No Crash, one has to take a position. You have short sell ETFs on S&P 500 or Long S&P500.

I guess, if you have investments of RM950k, you should hedge against the crash, say RM50k on short selling the S&P either with gearing or without gearing.