Beware Bottom Callers

I'm sure you heard many, and will hear many more.

Let me point out a few facts:

1. The stock market typically turns around about six months before the economy does.  If you believe we are at or near a bottom, you must believe the economy will turn around no later than May or June of next year.  Carefully think that one though, ok?
2. Bottoms are not made off "V"s.  Historically, it simply doesn't work that way.  Go back and look at 2000-03.  There were three separate tests, the first of which failed, and the entire process took nearly a year.  Many people bought the first recovery and got it in both eye sockets when that rally failed, only to watch the spike just barely go lower and reverse - they not only bought the top on the rebound but then sold the bottom!  Yikes!
3. The 13/34 EMA (or 20/50SMA) on a weekly basis is widening.  It is, in fact, at the widest it has been during this bear market.  Let's talk about the possibility this bear is ending when the 13 EMA (or 20SMA) is pointing upward or at least has flattened, ok?  These signals are not perfect but they do work.
4. If you are still in the market long, you're gambling no matter what you do.  I have gotten a lot of emails asking me "what do I do now?" from people with portfolios that are still invested.  Never mind that I'm not a registered investment professional and thus can't (and won't) give specific advice, the fact remains that you sat through a nearly 50% decline and now on a 10% bounce you want to know what's next.  There is no correct answer at this juncture.  The right time to exit long was (at the latest) at the end of December of 2007.  Any choice you make is a pure gamble on an outcome that neither I or anyone else can predict.
5. The 2000-03 bear market was accompanied by a business recession brought about by the popping of the Internet bubble.  At no time did consumer spending go in the tank during that recession; it never posted a decline!  This time we're just starting to see real consumer spending declines, and this is a consumer-led recession - the ugly sort that happened back in the 1970s and early 1980s.
6. The market lost nearly half its value in the 2000-03 recession without any consumer spending declines.  The move from 1995-2000 was a credit-bubble led move.  So was this one, but this one nailed both consumers and businesses.  If we remove that excess credit and leverage this suggests we could retrace all the way to 450 on the SPX!
7. On a technical basis this is a clear 8-year separated double-top.  Basic chart analysis suggests that when such a pattern is confirmed, as this one has been, you are likely to lose the entire move to the first top.  That also targets 450 on the SPX.
8. The 2000-03 decline required two full years to reach close to the bottom.  It also "counts" on a monthly chart as five waves of decline, in accordance with Elliott Wave Theory.  This decline only counts as three waves thus far on a monthly chart, suggesting that not only may (III) down not be complete, but even if it is, you still have (IV) and (V) to come!  This also strongly suggests that 760ish, the 00-03 bear market bottom, will not hold.  In addition this "bear market" is less than a year old at this point, having initiated in November or December of last year, and thus is less than halfway over on a historical time perspective compared to 2000-03.  If you look at consumer-recession associated Bear Markets of the past (think 1970s) you will find that those are far more vicious than the 00-03 Bear, and the losses heavier.  Thus, expecting the 00-03 experience to be the "end point" is, in my opinion, hopelessly naive.

In short there is absolutely nothing in the past history of the market to support a "bottom" call here.  Remember that CNBC's mouth-breathers along with virtually every commentator called a bottom in March and then again in July.  How has that worked out?

Is it possible we have bottomed here?  Sure.  Anything is possible.  I could win the lotto this coming weekend, if I buy a ticket.

But hope is not an investment strategy and there is a difference between trading a bear market rally (and, if we have in fact finished (III) down, we're due for one that might last a couple of months) and investing for the long term.

If this bear is not over, then the 13/34 EMA and 20/50 SMA (on a weekly chart) will not cross back over.  If you are a conservative investor you should have gone to cash in December of 2007 at the latest. 

If you did not and are now paying attention to the bottom callers you are engaged in "investment by prayer", which is a horrible strategy and has been the ruin of many people in the market.

If you did go to cash back in 2007 based on a long-term timing signal and are now engaged in going back into the market "long", one has to ask - why would you be doing that when those same long-term timing signals are in fact still diverging - that is, showing deteriorating rather than improving conditions?

Finally, analyze your investment thesis based on what you think the economy is going to do.  If you can come up with a cogent belief that the economy - the consumer portion of the economy - will in fact turn around by June of 2009, then you have an argument for trying to scale into investment positions for the long haul at this time.

Personally, I don't see it. 

Yesterday's rally was an abberation that was kicked off by massive intervention in the Yen, whether the Bank of Japan admits it or not.  That chart action was not natural and did not occur on its own.

Neither was the action in VW and the DAX.  People ought to go to prison for that stunt.  Of course they won't because "it made prices go up", but in my opinion what happened with Porsche and VW, along with the various banks involved, is nothing short of a criminal conspiracy and everyone involved in that should be getting a 20 year date with Bubba.  The DAX is heavily-correlated with our markets (always has been - look at some charts) and when it closed out with all those hedgies facing an angry margin clerk they came over here and bought paper like nobody's business.  I was listening to the pit audio feed today and magically there were large paper buyers who suddenly showed up shortly after Europe closed.  Once the daily range was broken that was all it took as there were a lot of people caught offsides who were forced to cover and whammo - up goes the stock market like a rocket ship.

Coincidence?  I think not.

Sustainable?  A sign of a bottom? 

Like hell - panic'd short-covering isn't a sign of anything except panic, and bull markets are marked by the absence of panic - they're euphoric events if anything - the opposite of panic.

Further, there is a cogent argument that a good part of this move was driven by technical rebalancing of so-called "balanced funds"; the moves in both bonds and stocks in the last month has required a quarterly rebalancing that would force buying of stocks and selling of bonds in fairly significant amounts due to the violence of the move.  I suspect these funds were trying to scale these moves, but when that violent spike began yesterday this materially added to the panic factor, as the managers suddenly saw the potential for +2000 on the DOW over a couple of days - and their horizon, at this point, expires Friday. That will stand your hair up when you need to move several billion dollars and the last thing you want to do is buy the top on the last day!

If you bought this rally in a mutual fund or otherwise I predict you're going to be crying in your beer within days to weeks.  The FOMC rate decision is today and then we have GDP on Thursday, with the latter virtually guaranteed to suck.  Either or both of those could easily erase those gains as fast as they went on, with interest, and if that happens you will hear lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth.  I remind you that on the 13th of October a similar spike higher occurred and the ensuing couple of weeks were not good for your account balance if you bought that rally, never mind that it appeared in the morning that we were going to get the mother and father of all follow-throughs.

I see the following on the horizon for the consumer portion of the economy and the stock market:

1. Obama is virtually certain to be President of the United States.  He will raise taxes and spend until the bond market forces him to stop through radically higher interest rates and/or a grossly devalued currency.  Either of these events will further damage your standard of living and credit availability.  Even if by some miracle McCain was to win, he would be little better in this regard with a majority Democrat Congress both in the House and Senate, which is assured.  Either way business and personal economic conditions will deteriorate further for a significant period of time.
2. The credit excesses have not been wrung out of the system.  They have instead been intentionally and, in my opinion, criminally hidden. Neither political party has done a damn thing about the real problems, instead choosing to shift them onto the public's balance sheet.  As noted this will eventually lead to a bond-market revolt or a radical currency devaluation.  We have as a nation made critical errors in handling this crisis going back to the summer of 2007 and we must pay for those sins before the economy will turn around.
3. For a good example of what happens when you hide the truth instead of forcing it into the open see Japan's Nikkei Index.  It was almost 40,000 in 1990.  Nearly 20 years later, it has never been materially over 20,000 again, and now is under 10,000.  This is a direct consequence of Japan's government choosing to hide the speculative excesses of Japan's credit and real estate bubbles of the 1980s when they burst in 1990, rather than forcing them into the open and dealing with them.  Despite 20 years of trying, Japan has been unable to create material amounts of inflation, being stuck in a deflationary to flat monetary environment for nearly twenty years.  We are headed for - at best - this scenario if we do not change our political and monetary courses of action.  At worst we are headed for a full-on economic Depression.
4. Earnings estimates are still too high.  In the first quarter of 07 the SPX estimate was for about $100 of earnings.  It still is over $60.  That 2009 number is fanciful.  The original number was "juiced" by leverage-enhanced bets.
5. Previous Bear Markets have ended when the P/E multiple has been in the single digits.  With the leverage out of the system forward earnings on the S&P 500 is likely around $40-50.  This puts the Bear Market bottom target around 450-500 once again, simply using historical price/earnings multiples and previous bear market bottoms.

I will believe we will see a sustainable recovery in the stock market when I see Ben Bernanke hung by his toenails outside the Federal Reserve, Henry Paulson in the stocks being pelted with rotten tomatoes served by angry citizens, and the bankers and other institutions who have lied about their solvency either out of business or behind bars - all of them.

Absent that I believe we are at best headed for a Japan-style scenario, and at worst, a Greater Depression.

Oh, and if the government wanted to "stimulate lending", it could have set up a Federal Bank of The United States with that $700 billion (or a bunch of banks to provide competition) and created $7 trillion in new credit, while allowing all the existing banks who made bad bets to twist on their own rope until dead.  They didn't, which tells you immediately that actually improving lending conditions into the real economy was not their intention - the EESA was in fact designed by Paulson and Bernanke to rip you off and by doing so has and will materially prolong the economic misery we are in today.

You do what you want with your money. 

I have no intention of losing mine.