chart

We’re not sure how much stock to put into correlations such as this one — especially since LOTS of charts have this dual-hump pattern over the last several years — but this is still some interesting commentary from Gluskin-Sheff’s David Rosenberg on the connection between monetary velocity and the stock market.

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Chart 1 maps out the S&P 500 with money velocity (GDP/M1 ratio).  There is a
90% correlation between the two.  It is one thing to have the Fed pump liquidity
into the system but it is quite another for the liquidity to be re-leveraged into credit
and recycled into the economy.   

The Fed’s easing program is over two years old and the rampant Fed balance
sheet expansion 15 months old, and still to this day, what the commercial banks
have done (to Obama’s wrath) with all that liquidity is to keep it as cash on their
balance sheet to the tune of $1.2 trillion.  We’re not sure why Obama is as rankled
as he is because the banks are in fact lending out a good chunk of that Fed-
induced liquidity — right back to Uncle Sam (the banks now own a record $1.3
trillion of government securities).  

Back to the chart — there is obviously a close connection between money turnover
and the stock market.  But we can get periodic divergences as we did in the first
leg of the rally in 2003.  But the carry-through from 2004 to 2007 hinged critically
on that multi-year acceleration in money velocity.  If we don’t see the banks begin
to extend credit in 2010, it is hard to see the 2009 bounce from oversold lows as
being sustained in the coming year.