Thursday, May 21, 2009

The Bottom of Top Stocks Market...?

Euphoria managed to out-run swine flu a few weeks ago, as the epidemic- du-jour, with "consumer" confidence jumping and the top bank stocks nudging up. The H1N1 virus fizzled for now, at least in terms of kill ratio, though we're warned it might boomerang in the fall with a vengeance. No one was surprised to see Chrysler roll over like a possum on a county highway, but the memory of their muscle cars will linger on like a California surfing song. Here in the northeast, where Sundays are not spent at the NASCAR oval, the spring foliage reached the tenderly explosive stage and it was hard to feel bad about anything.

For now, the "bottom" is in - that is, the bottom of this society's ability to process reality. It may continue for a month or so, but events are underway that are beyond the command of personalities. We're done "doing business" in all the ways that we've been used to, but we just can't get with the new program. Let's count the ways:

1. The revolving credit economy is over. It's over because we can't increase energy inputs to the system, which is one way of saying "peak oil." Of course hardly anybody believes this right now because the price of oil crashed nine months ago, along with global manufacturing and trade. But nothing has changed on the peak oil scene - except perhaps that ever more new oil projects have been cancelled for lack of financing, which will boomerang on us (even if swine flu doesn't) in the form of much lower future oil production. In any case, the credit fiesta is over, and the "consumer" economy with it, because industrial growth as we have known it is over. It's over globally, too, though all regions of the world will not experience its demise the same way at the same rate.

The Asian nations may swap things around a while longer but China is basically up the creek without a paddle. They have less oil left than we have (which is saying, not much at all) and they won't corner the rest of the global oil market without starting World War Three. Meanwhile, they're running out of water and food. Good luck becoming the next global hegemon. Oh, and Japan imports 90 percent of its energy; India over 80 percent. Fuggeddabowdit.

Credit will not vanish everywhere overnight - even in the U.S.A. - because it is not distributed equally everywhere. But it will vanish in layers, and here in the U.S.A. a very broad layer of the lower and middle classes are now losing their access to it in one way or another - personally, in small business - and they will never get it back. Anyone who intends to thrive in the years just ahead had better plan on doing it on the basis of accounts receivable - and what they receive might not even necessarily come in the form of U.S. dollars. It may come in the form of gold or silver or in the promise of reciprocal services rendered.
 
Top Stocks Market For 2010

This has enormous implications for two of the items in which our credit-dispensing operations are most deeply vested: houses and cars. Unfortunately, these are exactly the things that economic life has been based on for decades in our nation, which leads to the next categories:

2. The suburban living arrangement is over, along with all its accessories and furnishings. Taken as "all of a piece," the suburban expansion was one sixty-year-long culmination of hypertrophy. We did it because we could. We won a world war and threw a party. We had lots of cheap land and cheap oil. It made lots of people lots of money and all its usufructs have become embedded in our national identity to the dangerous degree that the loss of them will provoke a kind of national psychotic breakdown. In fact, it already has. The completely unrealistic expectation that we can resume this way of life is proof of it.

The immediate problem is that we can't build anymore of it. The next problem will be the failure of the stuff that already exists. The first stage of that is now palpable in the mortgage foreclosure fiasco and, just beginning now, the tanking of malls, strip centers, office parks and other commercial property investments. The latter will accelerate and become visible very quickly as retail tenants bug out and weeds start growing where the Chryslers and Pontiacs once parked. The next stage, which involves large demographic shifts in how we inhabit the landscape, has not quite gotten underway.

3. The Happy Motoring fiesta is over. You'd think that with Chrysler crawling into the bankruptcy court, and GM just weeks away from the same terminal ceremony, the news media would begin to suspect that the foundation of everyday life in this country was cracking. Instead, all we hear is blather about "market share" shifting to Toyota. News flash: not only will we make fewer automobiles in the U.S.A., but Americans will buy far fewer cars made anywhere. We'll keep the current fleet moving a while longer, but when it's too beat to repair, we won't be changing it out for a new fleet - despite all the fantasies about hybrids, plug-and-drive electrics, and so on. The masses will be too broke to buy these things. What's more, they will be very resentful of the shrinking economic "elite" who can afford them. And, anyway, our roads and highways are destined to fall apart very quickly because there is no way we can sustain the necessary rate of normal maintenance. Meanwhile, we remain completely un-serious about public transit - even about fixing the vestiges that still exist. The airline industry, of course, will be toast inside of five years.

4. Our food production system is approaching crisis. There's no way we can continue the petro-agriculture system of farming and the Cheez Doodle and Pepsi Cola diet that it services. The public is absolutely zombified in the face of this problem - perhaps a result of the diet itself. President Obama and Ag Secretary Vilsack have not given a hint that they understand the gravity of the situation. It is probably one of those unfortunate events of history that can only impress a society in the form of a crisis. It also happens to be one of the few problems we face that public policy could affect sharply and broadly - if we underwrote the reactivation of smaller, local farm operations instead of shoveling money to giant "agribusiness" (or Citibank, or Goldman Sachs, or AIG...). I maintain that this may be the year that the crisis gets our attention, because capital is suddenly harder to get than fossil-fuel-based fertilizer.

All these epochal discontinuities present themselves, for the moment, as a season of muted "hope" and general apathy. The days are suddenly mild. We've resumed old and happy habits of grilling meat outdoors and motoring to those remaining places that were not blanketed with franchised food huts and discount malls. We have a new, charming president with an appealing family. Newly-minted dollars are flowing to the "shovel-ready." The new bad news is less bad than the old bad news (or seems to be). And the year just past has been such a bummer that our hard-wired human nature tells us that good things must be just around the corner.

Personally, I think a lot of good things await us, but not the ones we're expecting - not a return to buying Slurpees on credit cards. It will be very salutary to leave behind the junk empire we've accumulated and move into an epoch of quality and purpose. For the moment, though, our hopes reside elsewhere.
 

When Will the Rebound of Stocks Market End?

Hey...the rally is on!

Yesterday, the Dow rose 235 points. And the public's mood is at an 8- month high.

"Look, things seem a lot better now than they did back in October," said a lawyer we spoke with yesterday. "I think we really hit bottom towards the end of last year."

Our friend's view is probably the dominant one. Things are looking up. Not that the news is good...but it just seems "less bad" than it was...or even less bad than was expected.

Foreclosure filings are at a record high. But "most homeowners think bottom reached," said a news item on the internet.

"Bank crisis in US could last to 2013," adds a headline from Reuters. Yet, most people think the banks are on the mend. They don't expect any further major bank failures. They think the financial sector will come back...maybe slowly, but more or less steadily and satisfactorily.

The average bear market bounce in the top stocks market lasts only 2 months. By that measure the current rebound should be at an end. It began on March 9th. Since then, top stocks for 2010 have recovered 30% to 40% - all over the world. But this rebound doesn't seem to be ending. Why?

Well, it might last longer than most because the crash that preceded it was stronger than most. Or, it might last longer than most because the feds are fighting this downturn far more than they usually do. We're trying to remember the figures...but the total response is at least 10 times greater than normal.

So, it wouldn't be totally surprising if the rebound were robust. But if it's what we think it is - a bear market bounce, not a genuine new bull market - the government's support is pernicious. It helps disguise what it really going on...and draws even more investors into the trap. And the longer it goes on, the more investors will come to believe that this is bull market is for real. As it continues, they'll commit more and more of their money to it...

When the market was still falling last autumn, we looked at other bear market rallies and guessed that there would be an "Obama Bounce" coming. We thought it would begin after the election...and then, when there was only a weak ricochet after the election, we thought the bounce would come after the inauguration. Instead, it didn't really get underway until March. Since then, it has been following the usual path.

How far could it go? Who knows? But it wouldn't be extraordinary if it took the Dow back to 10,000. And it would not be unusual at all if people stopped talking about the 'green shoots' and began noticing entire fields of clover.

So, let's take a minute to try to remember why we think this is only a bear market trap...

The problem is debt. It built up over a quarter of a century to levels that even President Obama says are "unsustainable." People have too much debt - student debt, credit card debt, private equity debt, mortgage debt, and every other kind of debt you can imagine. As long as the economy is expanding...and the credit markets are offering more debt...the problem is not critical. One debt is paid by taking on another, greater, debt. Houses are refinanced, for example, at higher prices...but lower interest rates.

Then, the cycle turns. Instead of continuing to expand, credit begins to contract. When people go to refinance, they discover that their collateral is worth less than it was before, real interest rates are higher, and the lenders don't want to lend any money anyway.

Bummer...

And then, all that debt that they built up over the last quarter century is a problem. It has to be paid down to the point where it isn't a problem. And that means the obvious thing - people have to cut back on their spending. As long as the amount of debt is contracting...as long as interest rates are rising...as long as asset prices are falling...and as long as people have more debt than they feel comfortable carrying - sales, profits, and top stocks prices 2010 are going to be depressed. No reason for a new bull market.

This process should last a long time. Why? Because it takes a lot longer to pay off debt than it does to run it up. People have to earn the money to pay down their debts. And it's harder to earn money in a declining economy than it is when the economy is booming. People have to make changes...they have a lot to figure out...and a lot to reorganize. It could take two years...4 years...10 years or more.

We'll continue below, but first, let's check in with Ian...

"We're confused this morning..." writes Ian for The 5 Min. Forecast. "Help us understand this mess.

"Initial construction of new homes in the U.S. fell to the lowest level on record last month, the Commerce Department announced early today. Housing starts in April fell 12.8%, to an annual rate of 458,000, the worst since at least 1959, when the government started keeping track. Applications for building permits fell to a record low as well.

"Here's what we don't get: The market hates this. Futures were aiming for another day in the black early this morning, and then reversed seconds after the numbers were announced.

"But we see the housing starts number as an encouraging development. In the worst housing crisis of our lifetimes - with a 9.8-month supply of existing homes on the market and a record 342,000 homes in foreclosure in April alone - who in their right mind is starting construction on a new house?

"If the biggest hurdles in ending the housing crisis are price discovery and clearing supply, and if true recovery is a curtailment of home price expectations and a return to living within our means... why are record low housing starts a bad thing?

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"At this stage, isn't the best possible housing start number... 0?"

Every business day Ian Mathias writes for The 5 Min Forecast, an executive series e-letter that provides a quick and dirty analysis of economic and financial developments - in five minutes or less.

It's a service available free only to Agora Financial's paid publication subscribers. One such newsletter, Wayne Burritt's Easy Money Options, offers a "bread and butter" technique for discovering the most lucrative gains around...like 150% plus in as little as two weeks. Click here to learn more.

And now back to Bill right here in Baltimore...

But wait a minute. What about all this government bailout money? What about the biggest government program since WWII - the fight against capitalism? What about the most expensive financial commitment every made? Bigger than the pyramids, more expensive than Alexandria and Babylon put together, more colossal than the Colossus itself...

About $15 trillion has been earmarked for the big bailout/stimulus program. Surely, it will short-circuit the correction and get the economy going faster...won't it?

No, it won't. You can't wait for it to happen either. You must develop your own "personal bailout" strategy, and here's how.

Because you can't correct financial mistakes by subsidizing them. You can't erase bad investments by putting more money in them. You can't turn bad businesses into good businesses by giving them money. And you can't cure the problem of too much debt by borrowing more money.

Instead of forcing people to correct the mistakes of the bubble era, the government is doing all it can to keep bad investments in the money, brain dead firms alive and keep zombie banks in business. The more money the feds put to the task, the less quickly the economy corrects errors and adjusts to the new realities.

Still, all that money has to go somewhere, doesn't it? Won't a lot of it go into 2010 top stocks prices?

The answer is 'maybe.'

But this money that might go into top stocks 2010, where does it come from? Ah, dear reader, there's the glitch...there's the fly in the ointment...there's the rub.

Every dollar that goes to prop up Wall Street, for example, must come from somewhere else. A headline we saw yesterday reported that the "Rich get richer on Wall Street." Of course they do. Instead of going broke and getting fired - as they should have - the government steps in with more money. Not only do the banks stay in business, they're able to pay their managers even bigger bonuses.

The government borrows from the private economy - money that might have been lent to a developer...or to a bakery...or to a homeowner - and puts it to work. Now, it's true that in a credit contraction, borrowing seems to go down. But it does so for a good reason. The economy is not working properly. People don't know what projects will work and what ones won't. Besides, asset prices - which tend to support lending - are falling. Who wants to take a chance on lending money when the collateral might be disappearing? So, new lending tends to freeze up...until the period of shock, adjustment and restructuring is over.

The feds' theory is that they are merely putting idle resources to work...and getting the economy going again. What they are really doing is taking resources out of safe idleness, and wasting them on active projects that don't pay off. That is not the basis for a genuine new bull market. It is the basis for a big disappointment.

And it's adding nearly $2 trillion of new debt to the federal balance sheet each year.

But wait again...the government is not just borrowing money, it's also creating money 'out of thin air.' Surely, THAT will light a fire under the economy, no?

Well, yes and no. But it's too big a subject for this morning...

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