SOME WARNING SIGNS FOR MR. MARKET
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
Courtesy of David Rosenberg:
SOME WARNING SIGNS FOR MR. MARKET
• The market has gone nowhere over the last three trading days despite what was being construed on bubblevision as unrelenting good news (home prices, house sales, consumer confidence, durable goods orders, Bernanke’s reappointment) — any other time in the last five months, these “green shoots’ would have turned the equity screens green. Could be a sign that a lot of good news is already being discounted.
• While it is often reported that over 70% of S&P 500 companies beat their 2Q earnings estimates, only 46% did so meaningfully. Not only that, but only 23% significantly beat their top-line revenue projections. See page C2 of the WSJ (The Rally Revenue Forgot).
• Leading stocks have been seeing reduced trading volumes of late.
• VIX futures and the put/call ratio on the S&P 500 have shot upwards in the past few sessions.
• The ECRI leading economic indicator fell 0.4% in the latest week, the first decline in six weeks and only the second falloff in the past eighteen.
• Sentiment is far too bullish — to an extreme level. A sentiment index quoted in today’s NYT business section is now 89% bullish, the same as it was in October 2007; at the March lows, it was sitting at 2%. See Some Once-Bullish Analysts See an End to Market Rally on page B1 of the Monday NYT.
• Corporate insiders sold nearly 31 times more stock than they bought in August (TrimTabs data) — the long run average is 7x and it was 2x at the lows (apparently a heck of a buying opportunity at that time).
• Small-cap stocks are down for back-to-back weeks and Chinese equities are on a four-week losing streak. Finally, the market has turned in the precise same 50% advance over the same 117 time period that it enjoyed coming off the 1929 lows — that rally ended despite all the hype at the time and the market lost more than 50% in the ensuing year.
• Of course, there are the negative seasonals too — since 1950, the S&P 500 is down 1% in September, on average, and has declined twice as often as it has rallied during the month.
• The H1N1 flu is a clear obstacle. This is a time when psychology becomes a factor — a USA Today/Gallup poll shows that over one-third of adults are now worried about an outbreak, doubling since May.
• Commercial real estate defaults loom very large on the outlook and have emerged as a top priority now for the Fed.
• Protectionist sentiment is another and you may want to circle September 17 on your calendar because that is the deadline for Obama’s first true test on this score — to rule on the ITC’s recommendation that the White House slap on a 55% tariff on imports of Chinese-made tires.
Source: Gluskin Sheff
