The rise in the market has seemed unstoppable. Despite the Federal Reserve continuing to hike interest rates and tightening monetary policy, geopolitical risks from North Korea to Iran, mass shootings, failure of legislative agenda and weak economic growth – the market’s rise has continued unabated.
Much of the recent rise, as discussed last week, has been based upon faulty assumptions about the effect of tax cuts and reforms. However, in the short-term, it is always the exuberance of market participants chasing returns as the “fear of missing out,” or FOMO, overrides the logic of fundamentals.
The problem for investors is that since fundamentals take an exceedingly long time to play out, as prices become detached “reality,” it becomes believed that somehow “this time is different.”
Unfortunately, it never is.
Our chart of the day is a long-term view of price measures of the market. The S&P 500 is derived from Dr. Robert Shiller’s inflation adjusted price data and is plotted on a QUARTERLY basis. From that quarterly data I have calculated:
Over the next several weeks, or even months, the markets can certainly extend the current deviations from long-term mean even further. But that is the nature of every bull market peak, and bubble, throughout history as the seeming impervious advance lures the last of the stock market “holdouts” back into the markets.
As Vitaliy Katsenelson penned last week:
“Our goal is to win a war, and to do that we may need to lose a few battles in the interim. Yes, we want to make money, but it is even more important not to lose it.
We are willing to lose a few battles, but those losses will be necessary to win the war. Timing the market is an impossible endeavor. We don’t know anyone who has done it successfully on a consistent and repeated basis. In the short run, stock market movements are completely random – as random as you’re trying to guess the next card at the blackjack table.”
