The Cliff
by John P. Hussman, Ph.D., Hussman Funds
Last week, the return/risk profiles that we estimate for stocks, bonds and even gold declined abruptly, based on the metrics we track. We don't know how long this shift will persist, but at present, investment risk appears to have spiked considerably, and our estimates of prospective market returns have deteriorated. The abruptness of the shift in market conditions is exemplified by the weakness observed in Irish, Greek and Spanish debt, as well as the plunge in municipal bonds (particularly, as Barry Ritholtz observes, in CA issues - see the chart below), which was steep enough to erase nearly a full year of progress in just three days.
On the NYSE, hundreds of stocks achieved new 52-week highs, but ended down on the week, with technical evidence suggesting a uniform reversal from a "high pole" buying climax. The percentage of bullish investment advisors reached 48.4% - the highest since the April peak, while the AAII sentiment poll shot to 57.6% bulls - the highest since 2007. Our bond market measures shifted to an unfavorable status for yield pressures, putting the stock market in an overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising-yields conformation despite QE2, which as anticipated, has been met with fairly eager offers from bondholders.
Whenever one evaluates market conditions, the entire context matters. Various economic and market indicators provide only partial views - much like the group of blind men who identified an elephant as a snake, a spear, a fan, a tree, a wall, and a rope, depending which part they touched. While various positive indicators can be identified, what matters to us is the full context. In stocks, we have overvalued, overbought, overbullish, rising yield conditions. In bonds, we have unfavorable yield levels and now unfavorable yield pressures. In precious metals, conditions are mixed, so the negative overall conditions in that market at present are somewhat more subtle and may be short-lived.
I don't want to make a fanfare of these concerns. They are simply the average implications we observe based on historical market relationships - even in post-war data. Longer-term, based on our standard methodology, we estimate that the S&P 500 is priced to achieve sub-5% returns, albeit with significant risk, for every horizon out to a decade. Treasury securities are clearly priced to deliver similarly low returns. It's possible that internals will improve sufficiently to shift the expected return/risk profiles we observe in stocks, bonds and precious metals. For now, we are tightly defensive.
The Cliff
I've reviewed the valuation conditions of the stock market extensively in recent months, emphasizing that stocks are not a claim on a single year's earnings, but rather on a whole stream of future cash flows that will be delivered to investors over time. At present, investors and analysts who focus on simple price/earnings multiples (rather than modeling the entire stream of cash flows) are placing themselves at tremendous risk, because simple P/E multiples are being distorted by unusually wide profit margins. Part of this can be traced to weak employment conditions, which have held down wages and salaries. But there is more to the story - the rebound in profit margins also reflects a heavy contribution from financials (which may be more indicative of accounting factors than sustainable earnings), as well as the tail-end of stimulus spending.
