We’re almost there: in just 4 trading days, the S&P 500 “bull market” which has purchased by central banks with trillions in liquidity and by companies with even more trillions in buybacks, will become longest of all-time.
And yet away from the S&P, BofA’s Michael Hartnett notes that “there have been so many grizzly bond, commodity & equity market returns this year”: for example, global bonds are annualizing their worst price return (-3.5% local currency) since 1999; 11 of 21 commodity markets have experienced “bear” markets; 1254 ACWI constituents out of a universe of 2273 are in bear markets (i.e. down >20%).
Just as ironically, less than a month after the record bull run anniversary comes September 15th, which marks the 10-year anniversary of Lehman bankruptcy & Global Financial Crisis; what happened next is precisely why the bull market is about to be longest in history:
central banks immediately adopted extreme & unprecedented monetary policies (705 rate cuts, $12.4tn QE, lowest global rates in 5000 years) successfully preventing debt default & deflation, reflating Wall St…catalyzing one of the greatest credit & equity bull markets in history.
Meanwhile, just as fascinating are all the assets that 10 years later actually remain below their Sept 14th, 2008 levels…oil, industrial metals, equity markets in Italy, Spain, Russia, Brazil, Turkey, global equity sectors such as energy & utilities, and most glaring of all, the European & the Japanese banks; the central banks prevented debt deflation, but they did not inflate indebted assets.
And while the S&P has so far been spared, “the end of the excess liquidity regime in 2018 has been the main factor behind the grizzly bond, commodity & equity market returns this year” (with the very conspicuous exception of the US dollar, the NASDAQ & the S&P500):
