THE 2 BIGGEST RISKS TO THE BULL MARKET
by ilene - August 30th, 2009 11:32 am
THE 2 BIGGEST RISKS TO THE BULL MARKET
Courtesy of The Pragmatic Capitalist
This is a re-post from an article we wrote for TheStreet.com:
The rally off the March 8th lows has been nothing but spectacular. In hindsight, it’s clear that investors overreacted to the downside, but as stocks surge more than 50% it’s time to begin pondering whether the current rally is a bit ahead of itself. Contrary to my bottom call on March 8th when I said it was time to invest in risky assets (a full history of my 2008/9 calls can be found here including our 2008 crash call and March 8 buy call), now is the time to put on your risk management cap on as a number of various threats begin to pop up across the market. I recently turned near-term bearish on stocks due to 2 primary reasons: sentiment & seasonality.
1) Sentiment – As I often say, psychology drives markets. After months of skepticism regarding the rally we are finally beginning to see an overwhelming amount of bullishness. This is a screaming contrarian indicator. The latest consumer confidence readings showed a marked jump to 54.1 and bullish sentiment among fund managers has soared to its highest level since 2003:
The latest Merrill Lynch fund managers survey shows an extraordinary jump in optimistic sentiment. The survey makes up the current psychology of 204 portfolio managers running over $550B in assets. The report shows a 63% jump in sentiment since July and the highest reading since November of 2003.
After months of short squeezes and failed market declines this optimistic sentiment has begun to eat into one of the fuels of this rally: short sellers. Recent short sales data shows the lowest readings since the market tanked in early February. As we lose the short sellers we lose an important driver of higher prices.
Perhaps most important has been the enormous shift in analyst estimates. After turning bearish in early June, I reversed the position in early July for one reason – earnings. My analysis led me to believe that estimates were far too low primarily due to the fact that analysts were not accounting for cost cuts. The estimates have been outrageously low, but now as the consensus begins to believe in a full blown recovery the