Most Popular
1. Banking Crisis is Stocks Bull Market Buying Opportunity - Nadeem_Walayat
2.The Crypto Signal for the Precious Metals Market - P_Radomski_CFA
3. One Possible Outcome to a New World Order - Raymond_Matison
4.Nvidia Blow Off Top - Flying High like the Phoenix too Close to the Sun - Nadeem_Walayat
5. Apple AAPL Stock Trend and Earnings Analysis - Nadeem_Walayat
6.AI, Stocks, and Gold Stocks – Connected After All - P_Radomski_CFA
7.Stock Market CHEAT SHEET - - Nadeem_Walayat
8.US Debt Ceiling Crisis Smoke and Mirrors Circus - Nadeem_Walayat
9.Silver Price May Explode - Avi_Gilburt
10.More US Banks Could Collapse -- A Lot More- EWI
Last 7 days
Stock Market Volatility (VIX) - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Investor Sentiment - 25th Mar 24
The Federal Reserve Didn't Do Anything But It Had Plenty to Say - 25th Mar 24
Stock Market Breadth - 24th Mar 24
Stock Market Margin Debt Indicator - 24th Mar 24
It’s Easy to Scream Stocks Bubble! - 24th Mar 24
Stocks: What to Make of All This Insider Selling- 24th Mar 24
Money Supply Continues To Fall, Economy Worsens – Investors Don’t Care - 24th Mar 24
Get an Edge in the Crypto Market with Order Flow - 24th Mar 24
US Presidential Election Cycle and Recessions - 18th Mar 24
US Recession Already Happened in 2022! - 18th Mar 24
AI can now remember everything you say - 18th Mar 24
Bitcoin Crypto Mania 2024 - MicroStrategy MSTR Blow off Top! - 14th Mar 24
Bitcoin Gravy Train Trend Forecast 2024 - 11th Mar 24
Gold and the Long-Term Inflation Cycle - 11th Mar 24
Fed’s Next Intertest Rate Move might not align with popular consensus - 11th Mar 24
Two Reasons The Fed Manipulates Interest Rates - 11th Mar 24
US Dollar Trend 2024 - 9th Mar 2024
The Bond Trade and Interest Rates - 9th Mar 2024
Investors Don’t Believe the Gold Rally, Still Prefer General Stocks - 9th Mar 2024
Paper Gold Vs. Real Gold: It's Important to Know the Difference - 9th Mar 2024
Stocks: What This "Record Extreme" Indicator May Be Signaling - 9th Mar 2024
My 3 Favorite Trade Setups - Elliott Wave Course - 9th Mar 2024
Bitcoin Crypto Bubble Mania! - 4th Mar 2024
US Interest Rates - When WIll the Fed Pivot - 1st Mar 2024
S&P Stock Market Real Earnings Yield - 29th Feb 2024
US Unemployment is a Fake Statistic - 29th Feb 2024
U.S. financial market’s “Weimar phase” impact to your fiat and digital assets - 29th Feb 2024
What a Breakdown in Silver Mining Stocks! What an Opportunity! - 29th Feb 2024
Why AI will Soon become SA - Synthetic Intelligence - The Machine Learning Megatrend - 29th Feb 2024
Keep Calm and Carry on Buying Quantum AI Tech Stocks - 19th Feb 24

Market Oracle FREE Newsletter

How to Protect your Wealth by Investing in AI Tech Stocks

Top 8 Reasons to Find the Stock Market Emergency Exit Before this Fall

Stock-Markets / Stock Markets 2018 Apr 10, 2018 - 09:30 AM GMT

By: Michael_Pento

Stock-Markets

The stock market was trading at an all-time high valuation of 150% of GDP this January. That was indeed the bell rung at the very top. Stocks have since started to roll over, but valuations are still at 140% of the underlying economy. And that is, historically speaking, way off the chart. The average of this metric was around 45% throughout the decades of the 70’s thru the mid-1990’s. Therefore, the market is screaming for investors to hit the sell button now while there are still ample bids left. But, if your complacency and procrastination prevent you from realizing the truly dangerous bubble in equities right now, here are eight of the most salient reasons why you’ll definitely need to find the nearest emergency exit before this fall.


  1. If the Fed is going to be true to its word, there is now a fairly strong commitment for 2-3 more 25bp rate hikes to occur by the end of this year. The motivation behind the continued hiking campaign is that Jerome Powell is cut from the same Phillips Curve cloth as the rest of the Keynesian automatons that ran the Fed before him. The problem is that 50-75bps worth of rate increases should be enough to flatten the yield curve and could even cause it to invert. The spread between the 2 and 10-year Note is already at the narrowest point since 2007--just 50bps. Three more hikes would put the effective Fed Funds Rate (FFR) around 2.5%. And if the 2-Year Note yield maintains its current spread to the FFR that would invert the curve. An inverted yield curve is a condition where short-term rates are higher than long-term rates, and it has nearly always led to a recession because the credit channel gets turned off once this occurs.
  2. The London Interbank Offered Rate or LIBOR is used for the pricing of $370 trillion worth of loans and derivatives across the globe. It is basically an unsecured dollar loan rate between banks in Europe and is used as a gauge of distress inside the banking system. This rate has increased from 0.3% to 2.33% in just the last two and half years and has caused a significant move higher in borrowing costs, which continues to increase on a daily basis. Spiking debt service costs on the record level of global debt is a dangerous condition for a stock market bubble
  3. The repatriation of overseas earnings resulting from Trump’s tax reform package, which is primarily being used to buy back shares, should become exhausted by this fall. Corporations have a limited time to bring back overseas profits. This, in addition to the progressively increasing cost to borrow money, should greatly attenuate the amount of corporate buybacks before the end of the year.
  4. Year-Over-Year earnings growth on the S&P 500 will fall to flat—or even turn negative--from up 18% this year. The end of the Republicans’ other one-time steroid shot—a massive deficit-funded corporate tax cut—will run out of steam this fall. Wall Street’s nasty habit of making linear extrapolations on any good trend has caused them to price in earnings growth in the high teens in perpetuity. However, investors should not apply a once-in-a-generation corporate tax cut from 35% to 21%, which has temporarily boosted earnings growth this year, to next year’s earnings growth. 2019 will enjoy no such reduction in tax rates to dress up the profits picture. But rather, U.S. corporations have to deal with tariffs and a bond bubble implosion instead.
  5. The Fed’s Reverse QE program—effectively selling bonds to the public and destroying the proceeds in the process--rises to $50 billion per month, or $600 billion per year, from the current $30 billion per month. And, the ECB cuts its QE program in half, from €30 billion per month to €15 billion; and then should be completely out of QE by the end of the year. Investors would be very wise not to ignore this rational: Central banks are moving from a high of $180 billion worth per month of QE to a net of virtually zero by year’s end. Therefore, the major tailwind behind equity prices will come to a stop in just about three quarters from now.
  6. The U.S. Federal Budget Deficit will grow from $665 billion in fiscal 2017, to $1 trillion this fiscal year, before rising to $1.2 trillion in fiscal 2019 starting in October. Therefore, there will indeed be a crowding out of private capital in a huge way due to a doubling of deficits, which are going to be confronted this time around with central sales instead of massive purchases.
  7. The synchronized global growth narrative turns upside down as global PMIs fall sharply. Already, weakness from rising rates and potential trade wars are causing China, Japan Europe, and U.S. Purchasing Manager Indexes to begin rolling over, as well as many others. And this condition will only be exacerbated by the progression of Trump’s trade wars, along with the mounting intensity of rising debt service costs into the fall. Expect the full effect of tariffs and rising rates to significantly impact in a negative fashion global GDP growth by the third quarter of this year.
  8. There is a significant risk, at least according to the polls and recent election results, that the Mid-term elections will move the House back to Democrats’ control. This would put an abrupt end to Trump’s Wall Street-friendly agenda…and this also will occur in the fall.

Given the confluence of the above events occurring between now and this fall, it is imperative to watch yield curve dynamics and credit spreads as some of the indicators to get the timing right for when you should be completely and safely out of the door. Pento Portfolio Strategies has several other components to monitor inside the Inflation/Deflation model to help clients not only find a chair but maybe even a luxury coach once the music stops. And even better yet, to help our investors get properly positioned to capitalize on the third massive equity market crash since the year 2000.

Michael Pento produces the weekly podcast “The Mid-week Reality Check”, is the President and Founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies and Author of the book “The Coming Bond Market Collapse.”

Respectfully,

Michael Pento

President
Pento Portfolio Strategies
www.pentoport.com
mpento@pentoport.com

Twitter@ michaelpento1
(O) 732-203-1333
(M) 732- 213-1295

Michael Pento is the President and Founder of Pento Portfolio Strategies (PPS). PPS is a Registered Investment Advisory Firm that provides money management services and research for individual and institutional clients.

Michael is a well-established specialist in markets and economics and a regular guest on CNBC, CNN, Bloomberg, FOX Business News and other international media outlets. His market analysis can also be read in most major financial publications, including the Wall Street Journal. He also acts as a Financial Columnist for Forbes, Contributor to thestreet.com and is a blogger at the Huffington Post.
               
Prior to starting PPS, Michael served as a senior economist and vice president of the managed products division of Euro Pacific Capital. There, he also led an external sales division that marketed their managed products to outside broker-dealers and registered investment advisors. 
       
Additionally, Michael has worked at an investment advisory firm where he helped create ETFs and UITs that were sold throughout Wall Street.  Earlier in his career he spent two years on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.  He has carried series 7, 63, 65, 55 and Life and Health Insurance www.earthoflight.caLicenses. Michael Pento graduated from Rowan University in 1991.
       

© 2018 Copyright Michael Pento - All Rights Reserved
Disclaimer: The above is a matter of opinion provided for general information purposes only and is not intended as investment advice. Information and analysis above are derived from sources and utilising methods believed to be reliable, but we cannot accept responsibility for any losses you may incur as a result of this analysis. Individuals should consult with their personal financial advisors.

Michael Pento Archive

© 2005-2022 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication.


Post Comment

Only logged in users are allowed to post comments. Register/ Log in