by ilene - August 13th, 2009 2:16 pm
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In this article, Mish refers to a post by John Hussman reprinted here several days ago.
Courtesy of Mish
John Hussman is nearly always a great read and his post on Post-Crash Dynamics is no exception. Here are a few snips.
If you look carefully at the economic data that shows improvement, and correct for the impact of government outlays, it is difficult to find anything but continued deterioration in private demand and investment. What we do see is a government that has run what is now a trillion dollar deficit year-to-date, representing some 7% of GDP. That sort of tab will undoubtedly buy some amount of Cool-Aid, but it has been something of a disappointment to watch how eagerly investors have guzzled it down. This is like somebody borrowing money from their Uncle and then celebrating that their income has gone up.
Moreover, it might be enticing to look at a chart of the S&P 500 and envision a quick return to 2007 highs and beyond, but it is important to recognize that those highs were based on profit margins about 50% above historical norms, combined with an elevated P/E multiple of about 19 against those earnings. Even if the economy is poised for a sustained recovery here, the belief that those joint outliers will be quickly re-established goes against historical precedent.
Post-Crash Dynamics

click on chart for sharper image
When markets crashes are coupled with changes in the fundamentals that supported the preceding bubble – as we observed in the post-1929 market, the gold market of the 1980′s, and the post-1990 Japanese market, and currently observe in the deflation of the recent debt bubble – they typically do not recover quickly. Indeed, the hallmark of these post-crash markets is the very extended sideways adjustment that they experience, generally for many years.
The above chart shows the length of time stock markets may go nowhere following a crash. The annotations in bright red are mine, and the picture is not a pretty one. I have posted a similar chart of the Nikkei many times.
Two Lost Decades

The Japanese Stock Market is about 25% of what it was close to 20 years ago! Yes, I know, the US is not Japan, that deflation can’t happen
…

Tags: John Hussman, Post-Crash Dynamics, stock market crash
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by ilene - August 10th, 2009 7:14 pm
Courtesy of John P. Hussman, Ph.D.
The U.S. economy lost a quarter of a million jobs in July. Meanwhile, over 400,000 workers abandoned the labor force (and are therefore no longer counted among the unemployed), which prompted a slight decline in the unemployment rate despite the job losses. In the context of an economy still strained by high levels of consumer debt and still record delinquency and foreclosure rates, labor market conditions are still troublesome. Still, the pace of job losses and new unemployment claims has clearly softened from the pace we observed early in the year.
If we knew that this was a standard economic downturn, we might conclude that the recent improvements are durable. However, nothing convinces us that this is a standard economic downturn. As for market action, the major indices have generally been strong, as has breadth (as measured by advances versus declines), but the “investor sponsorship” evident from trading volume has been uncharacteristically dismal compared with initial advances of past bull markets. So here too, we have very strong concerns that the recent advance may not be as durable as investors appear to believe.
All of that said, we aren’t inclined to fight even what we view as errant analysis, and the Strategic Growth Fund has about 1% of assets allocated to near-the-money index call options – about enough to gradually close down about 40% of our hedge in the event that the market advances markedly higher from here, but without putting us at risk of much loss in the event of failure. With investors now anticipating and pricing in a sustained economic recovery, as well as a spectacular earnings rebound (see Bill Hester’s piece – Earnings Growth Forecasts May Require a Robust Economic Recovery – additional link below), a lot of things will have to go right from here in order to sustain higher prices than we currently observe.
Frankly, our call option allocation here is something of a paean to a notion – a sustained economic recovery and new bull market – that I have no belief in whatsoever. But at this point, the broad strength in the major indices, even lacking volume sponsorship or favorable valuation, requires that we allow for the possibility of additional investor speculation. Even if we do observe such an outcome, it’s difficult to envision that the S&P 500…

Tags: allocation, asset management, Economy, John P. Hussman, Post-Crash Dynamics, unemployment
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