4 Harbingers Of Stock Market Doom That Foreshadowed The 2008 Crash Are Flashing Red Again

Hourglass - Public DomainSo many of the exact same patterns that we witnessed just before the stock market crash of 2008 are playing out once again right before our eyes.  Most of the time, a stock market crash doesn’t just come out of nowhere.  Normally there are specific leading indicators that we can look for that will tell us if major trouble is on the horizon.  One of these leading indicators is the junk bond market.  Right now, a closely watched high yield bond ETF known as JNK is sitting at 35.77.  If it falls below 35, that will be a major red flag, and it will be the first time that it has done so since 2009.  As you can see from this chart, JNK started crashing in June and July of 2008 – well before equities started crashing later that year.  A crash in junk bonds almost always precedes a major crash in stocks, and so this is something that I am watching carefully.

And there is a reason why junk bonds are crashing.  In 2015 we have seen the most corporate bond downgrades since the last financial crisis, and corporate debt defaults are absolutely skyrocketing.  The following comes from a recent piece by Porter Stansberry

So far this year, nearly 300 U.S. corporations have seen their bonds downgraded. That’s the most downgrades per year since the financial crisis of 2008-2009. The year isn’t over yet. Neither are the downgrades. More worrisome, the 12-month default rate on high-yield corporate debt has doubled this year. This suggests we are well into the next major debt-default cycle.

Another thing that I am watching closely is the price of oil.

A massive crash in the price of oil preceded the stock market crash of 2008, and over the past year we have seen another dramatic crash in the price of oil.

Many had been expecting the price of oil to bounce back, but instead we are seeing new downward momentum.  In fact, according to Business Insider the price of U.S. oil briefly dipped below $43 a barrel on Wednesday…

Crude oil was down nearly 3% in morning trade on Wednesday.

West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures in New York dropped to as low as $42.97 per barrel. Futures touched a $42-handle in the last week of October, but last traded near those levels for a considerable period in August.

Another thing that I am watching is the ongoing crash of other industrial commodities.  This is something that also preceded the stock market crash of 2008, and it is a clear sign that global economic activity is really slowing down.

Prices for industrial commodities such as aluminum, tin, iron ore and coal are all crashing.  But the commodity that has me most alarmed personally is copper.

Economists commonly refer to it as “Dr. Copper”, and there is a very good reason for that.  Looking back over history, the price of copper often makes a significant move in one direction or the other before the overall economy does.  And the price of copper almost always starts declining before stocks do.

As I write this, the price of copper has fallen to $2.21, and it is already lower than at any point since the last financial crisis.  To get a better perspective regarding what I am talking about, just check out this chart.  This is one signal that is absolutely screaming that a major financial crisis is imminent.

One more harbinger of financial doom on the horizon is the surging U.S. dollar.  The U.S. dollar surged just before the financial crisis of 2008, and now it is happening again.

Most Americans don’t understand this, but the truth is that a rising U.S. dollar puts an incredible amount of stress on emerging markets all around the globe.  Since the last financial crisis, many of these emerging markets have been on a massive debt binge, and much of that debt was denominated in U.S. dollars.  Now that the dollar has increased in value, emerging market borrowers are finding that it takes much more of their own local currencies to service and pay back those debts.  Defaults are rapidly rising, and emerging market economies all over the world (such as Brazil) have already plunged into recession.

If the Fed does follow through with an interest rate hike in December, that is going to make things even worse.  The U.S. dollar will surge even more, and emerging markets will be in even more trouble.

At the same time that the dollar is getting stronger, the euro is getting weaker.  An article that was posted by CNBC on Wednesday went so far as to state that “it is now looking like the euro reaching parity with the greenback is all but guaranteed”…

The prospect of the Fed hiking interest rates in December has pushed the dollar higher, and it is now looking like the euro reaching parity with the greenback is all but guaranteed.

Strategists, however, disagree on how quickly that will happen and how much more the dollar can appreciate in the near term. That depends, they say, on the Fed, and how fast it will raise interest rates in a world where other central banks are moving in the opposite direction toward easier policy.

Goldman Sachs analysts this week reiterated that they expect euro parity with the dollar by year-end though other strategists expect the decline in the common currency against the dollar to take longer.

Let’s see, who has been warning that this would happen for more than a year?  Here are just a few examples…

July 19th: “For a long time, I have been repeating my prediction that the euro would fall to parity with the U.S. dollar.”

June 28th: “As I have warned repeatedly, the euro is heading for parity with the U.S. dollar, and at some point it will drop below parity.”

May 25th: “As I have warned so many times before, the euro is headed for parity with the U.S. dollar, and then it is going to go below parity.”

In August 2014, just a little bit over a year ago, the EUR/USD was sitting above 1.30.  At that time very few people out there would have ever imagined we would be talking about parity just a little more than a year later.

This is just the beginning of a time of great financial volatility.  The things that we are going to witness in the months and years to come are going to be absolutely unprecedented.  A massive global debt super-cycle is coming to an end, and the pain that this is going to mean for the global economy is almost too great to put into words.

Two More Harbingers Of Financial Doom That Mirror The Crisis Of 2008

Harbingers - Public DomainThe stock market continues to flirt with new record highs, but the signs that we could be on the precipice of the next major financial crisis continue to mount.  A couple of days ago, I discussed the fact that the U.S. dollar is experiencing a tremendous surge in value just like it did in the months prior to the financial crisis of 2008.  And previously, I have detailed how the price of oil has collapsed, prices for industrial commodities are tanking and market behavior is becoming extremely choppy.  All of these are things that we witnessed just before the last market crash as well.  It is also important to note that orders for durable goods are declining and the Baltic Dry Index has dropped to the lowest level on record.  So does all of this mean that the stock market is guaranteed to crash in 2015?  No, of course not.  But what we are looking for are probabilities.  We are looking for patterns.  There are multiple warning signs that have popped up repeatedly just prior to previous financial crashes, and many of those same warning signs are now appearing once again.

One of these warning signs that I have not discussed previously is the wholesale inventories to sales ratio.  When economic activity starts to slow down, inventory tends to get backed up.  And that is precisely what is happening right now.  In fact, as Wolf Richter recently wrote about, the wholesale inventories to sales ratio has now hit a level that we have not seen since the last recession…

In December, the wholesale inventory/sales ratio reached 1.22, after rising consistently since July last year, when it was 1.17. It is now at the highest – and worst – level since September 2009, as the financial crisis was winding down:

Wolf Richter

Rising sales gives merchants the optimism to stock more. But because sales are rising in that rosy scenario, the inventory/sales ratio, depicting rising inventories and rising sales, would not suddenly jump. But in the current scenario, sales are not keeping up with inventory growth.

Another sign that I find extremely interesting is the behavior of the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasury notes.  As Jeff Clark recently explained, we usually see a spike in the 10 year Treasury yield about the time the market is peaking before a crash…

The 10-year Treasury note yield bottomed on January 30 at 1.65%. Today, it’s at 2%. That’s a 35-basis-point spike – a jump of 21% – in less than two weeks.

And it’s the first sign of an impending stock market crash.

10 Year Yield - Stansberry

As I explained last September, the 10-year Treasury note yield has ALWAYS spiked higher prior to an important top in the stock market.

For example, the 10-year yield was just 4.5% in January 1999. One year later, it was 6.75% – a spike of 50%. The dot-com bubble popped two months later.

In 2007, rates bottomed in March at 4.5%. By July, they had risen to 5.5% – a 22% increase. The stock market peaked in September.

Let’s be clear… not every spike in Treasury rates leads to an important top in the stock market. But there has always been a sharp spike in rates a few months before the top.

Once again, just because something has happened in the past does not mean that it will happen in the future.

But the fact that so many red flags are appearing all at once has got to give any rational person reason for concern.

Yes, the Dow gained more than 100 points on Thursday.  But on Thursday we also learned that retail sales dropped again in January.  Overall, this has been the worst two month drop in retail sales since 2009

Following last month’s narrative-crushing drop in retail sales, despite all that low interest rate low gas price stimulus, January was more of the same as hopeful expectations for a modest rebound were denied. Falling 0.8% (against a 0.9% drop in Dec), missing expectations of -0.4%, this is the worst back-to-back drop in retail sales since Oct 2009. Retail sales declined in 6 of the 13 categories.

And economic activity is rapidly slowing down on the other side of the planet as well.

For example, Chinese imports and exports both fell dramatically in January…

Chinese imports collapsed 19.9% YoY in January, missing expectations of a modest 3.2% drop by the most since Lehman. This is the biggest YoY drop since May 2009 and worst January since the peak of the financial crisis. Exports tumbled 3.3% YoY (missing expectations of 5.9% surge) for the worst January since 2009. Combined this led to a $60.03 billion trade surplus in January – the largest ever. But apart from these massive imbalances, everything is awesome in the global economy (oh apart from The Baltic Dry at record lows, Iron Ore near record lows, oil prices crashed, and the other engine of the world economy – USA USA USA – imploding).

In light of so much bad economic data, it boggles my mind that stocks have been doing so well.

But this is typical bubble behavior.  Financial bubbles tend to be very irrational and they tend to go on a lot longer than most people think they will.  When they do finally burst, the consequences are often quite horrifying.

It may not seem like it to most people, but we are right on track for a major financial catastrophe.  It is playing out right in front of our eyes in textbook fashion.  But it is going to take a little while to unfold.

Unfortunately, most people these days do not have the patience to watch long-term trends develop.  Instead, we have been trained by the mainstream media to have the attention spans of toddlers.  We bounce from one 48-hour news cycle to the next, eagerly looking forward to the next “scandal” that is going to break.

And when the next financial crash does strike, the mainstream media is going to talk about what a “surprise” it is.  But for those that are watching the long-term trends, it is not going to be a surprise at all.  We will have seen it coming a mile away.