Nouriel Roubini - The Latest Bear Market Sucker’s Rally is Losing Its Steam as an Onslaught of Awful Macro and Earnings News Takes Its Toll - Jan 14, 2009
I have been predicting for a while that the most recent bear market sucker’s rally would lose its steam and – like the previous bear market rallies in the last 18 months – US and global equities prices would head again towards new lows.
Let me now explain why…
As my work and the one of our research team at RGE Monitor predicts (we will publish later this week our 2009 Global Economic Outlook, a 75 page research piece for our clients and we recently published our US outlook) this will be the worst US recession in the last 50 years and the worst synchronized global recession in decades.
For a few weeks since late November equity markets ignored the onslaught of much worse than expected macro news (and all the new were really worse than awful) and had a nice 25% bear market sucker’s rally. But the drumbeat of terrible – and worse than expected - macro news and earnings news and financial news has finally taken a toll on the delusional market belief that the worst was over for financial markets and for equity markets and that the US and global economy would recover in the second half of 2009. So equity prices have already reversed more than half of their most recent bear market rally as the lousy macro news have finally shocked in the last week the wishful thinkers.
Indeed, the retail sales figures published today confirmed a shopped-out, saving-less and debt-burdened US consumer is now faltering as job losses, income losses, fall in home wealth, fall in equity wealth, high and rising debt and debt servicing ratios and a severe credit crunch take a severe toll on the ability of consumers to spend. And reduction in spending and deleveraging of the US consumer will take years to rebuild the savings rate of a household sector now hit by a severe shock to its net worth (as equity and home values fall while debts have been rising) and shocked in its ability to generate income as job losses mount and the unemployment rate surges.
Our research at RGE Monitor suggests that the US and global recession will continue at least all the way until Q4 of 2009 (a nasty 24 months U-shaped recession) and that the recovery in 2010-11 will be very weak with growth in the 1% range that is well below a potential of 2.75%. And we cannot rule out that a more severe L-shaped stag-deflation (as in Japan in the 1990s) will take hold. Indeed, as I argued recently:
While the odds of a systemic financial meltdown have been reduced by the actions of the Group of Seven and other economies, severe vulnerabilities remain.
The credit crunch will persist and spread beyond mortgages. Deleveraging will continue, as thousands of hedge funds -- many of which will go bust -- and other leveraged players are forced to sell assets into illiquid and distressed markets, thus causing price declines and driving more insolvent financial institutions out of business. Credit losses will mount as the recession deepens. And a few emerging-market economies will certainly enter a full-blown financial crisis.
So 2009 will be a painful year of global recession and further financial stresses, losses and bankruptcies. Currently, the probability of an L-shaped, stag-deflation is now rising to a third, while the probability of a severe U-shaped recession is two-thirds. Only aggressive, coordinated and effective policy actions by advanced and emerging-market countries can ensure that the global economy starts to recover -- however slowly --in 2010, rather than entering a more protracted period of economic stagnation.
So while our benchmark scenarios sees a severe U-shaped global recession with very weak growth recovery in 2010 we cannot exclude the possibility of a worse outcome, i.e. an L-shaped recession that – in our view – has at least a one third probability. So the worst is ahead of us rather than behind us for the real economy and for financial markets. With my forecast of 2009 earnings per share for S&P500 firms being in the 50 to 60 dollars range and with P/E ratio likely to be in the 10 to 12 range given a severe global recession the S&P500 could bottom – at some point in 2009 – at best at a level of 720 and, in a worse scenario, as low as 500 or 600. So, the worst is indeed still ahead of us.
George.
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