Stock Market History

So many top professionals in the financial industry are sounding the alarm about a coming stock market crash right now. And there certainly have been rumblings in 2018 – not too long ago we had a three day stretch that was called “the tech bloodbath”, and during that time Facebook had the worst day for a single company in stock market history. But we haven’t seen the really big “crash” yet. Many have been waiting for it to happen for several years, and some people out there are convinced that it is never going to come at all. Of course the truth is that we are in perhaps the largest stock market bubble that our nation has ever seen, and all other large stock market bubbles have always ended with a major price collapse. So whether it happens immediately or it takes a little while longer, it is inevitable that stock prices will eventually return to their long-term averages.

Doug Ramsey, the chief investment officer at Leuthold Group, is one of those that is sounding the alarm. Unlike price to earnings ratios, price to sales ratios are very hard to manipulate, and he has pointed out that price to sales ratios are higher than we have ever witnessed before.

In particular, when you look at the median stock price to sales ratio, it is the highest that it has ever been and it is twice as high as it was in February 2000…

He also shared a chart which he claims is “unfit for a family-friendly publication” that shows how in terms of median price to sales ratio, the S&P 500 is twice as expensive as it was in 2000.

“Overvaluation in 2000 was highly concentrated; today it is pervasive, with the median S&P 500 Price/Sales ratio of 2.63 times more than double the 1.23 times prevailing in February 2000.

To me, that number is absolutely stunning, and it shows that we have a long, long way to fall.

As I have said before, stock prices need to fall by 40 or 50 percent just to get into a neighborhood where they will begin to make sense again.

And something else that Ramsey has pointed out is that in 2018 stocks are behaving very much like they did just before the dotcom bubble crashed…

Ramsey admits that history isn’t the best guide for the future but the S&P 500’s performance since it touched its peak on Jan. 26 is closely mirroring what happened 18 years ago.

“In the earlier case, a volatile five-month upswing that began in mid-April ultimately fell just a half-percent short of the March 24th high by early September. This year, a similarly choppy, six-month rebound has taken the S&P 500 to within 1% of its January 26th high,” Ramsey said.

Another major indicator that is “flashing red” is correlation.

Just prior to the last two stock market crashes, stock prices began to wildly diverge. While some stocks were still going up, others were cratering big time. This lack of uniformity is often a sign that big trouble is on the horizon. The following comes from CNBC…

In January 2001, before tech went bust, stocks diverged as growth flourished. Everything named dotcom boomed, but old line industries puttered.

There hasn’t been such a divergence between stocks in the overall market since then, not even during the Great Recession.

Well, guess what is happening right now?

James Paulsen, also with the Leuthold Group, is warning that correlation “is at one of the lowest levels in the post-War era”…

“Correlation is at one of the lowest levels in the post-War era,” said James Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Group. “The combination is damaging. We now have record low correlation at the same time we have high valuations, and the combination is bad for the market.”

“When you have this situation of the lowest quintile correlation against the highest quintile valuation since 1952, you have 10 percent declines on average,” said Paulsen.

When the stock market finally crashes, a lot of people are going to complain that nobody warned them in advance that it was coming, but in reality anybody that cannot see it coming from a mile away must be blind.

There is no question that it is coming. The only question is how soon it will get here.

And it certainly doesn’t help that a trade war has erupted which is greatly disrupting global commerce.

For example, a giant cargo ship carrying 20 million dollars worth of soybeans has been circling in the ocean off the coast of China for over a month because it missed the tariff deadline by just a few hours…

The Peak Pegasus, which is owned by JPMorgan Asset Management, left Seattle on June 8 on a monthlong voyage to the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian. The trade war between the US and China was erupting just as it left, with President Donald Trump imposing tariffs on billions of dollars’ worth of Chinese imports.

The US ship was due to deliver its 70,000-tonne cargo on July 6, The Guardian reported, but missed the tariff deadline. The Peak Pegasus arrived about five hours after China imposed retaliatory tariffs on US goods including soybeans.

Somebody is going to lose a tremendous amount of money in that deal.

If you take an honest look at the numbers, there is no debate that we are in far worse shape than we were just before the financial crisis of 2008. Our debt levels are much higher, stock prices are way more inflated, and financial institutions have become even more reckless. None of the long-term problems that plagued us back in 2008 have been fixed. Instead, the current system was patched up and all of the bubbles were re-inflated. Unfortunately, our attention spans are so short these days, and for most people 2008 seems like ancient history at this point.

But without a doubt a much worse crisis than 2008 is on the way, and most people are going to be absolutely blind-sided by it.

Michael Snyder is a nationally syndicated writer, media personality and political activist. He is publisher of The Most Important News and the author of four books including The Beginning Of The End and Living A Life That Really Matters.

When the stock market starts to behave like a roller coaster, that is a sign that a major move to the downside is right around the corner. As I have stated repeatedly, when the market is very calm it tends to go up. But when the waters start getting really choppy, that is a clear indication that stocks are about to plummet. In early 2015, volatility has returned to Wall Street in a big way. At one point on Tuesday, the Dow was up more than 300 points. But then the bottom dropped out. From the peak on Tuesday, the Dow plunged nearly 700 points in less than 30 hours before recovering more than 100 points at the end of the day. The Dow has now experienced the longest losing streak that we have seen in 3 months, but that is not that big of a deal. Of much greater concern is the huge price swings that we have been seeing. Remember, the three largest single day stock market increases in history were right in the middle of the financial crisis of 2008. So if stocks go up 400 points tomorrow that is NOT a good sign. What we really need is a string of days when stocks move less than 100 points in either direction. If stocks keep making dramatic moves up and dramatic moves down, history tells us that it is only a matter of time before they collapse. Any student of stock market history knows that what we are witnessing right now is exactly how markets behave right before they crash.

Examine the chart below very carefully. It is a chart of the CBOE Volatility Index from 2006 to 2008. As you can see, volatility was very low as stocks soared during 2006. Then things started to get a bit choppy in 2007, and investors should have recognized this as a warning sign. Finally, you can see that the VIX absolutely skyrocketed during the financial crisis of 2008…

Looking back, it seems so obvious.

So why aren’t more people alarmed this time around?

As CNN is reporting, the VIX is up almost 20 percent so far in 2015…

Volatility has returned with a vengeance this January. The Dow has been moving up or down by at least 100 points nearly every day this year.

CNNMoney’s Fear & Greed Index is showing signs of Extreme Fear again. And a volatility gauge known as the VIX, which is one of the components in our index, is up nearly 20% so far this year.

Meanwhile, there are lots of other signs of trouble on the horizon as well.

For example, the price of copper got absolutely hammered on Wednesday. As I write this, it has fallen more than 5 percent and it has not been this low in more than five years.

In financial circles, it is referred to as “Dr. Copper” because it is such a valuable indicator regarding where the global economy is heading next.

For example, in 2008 the price of copper was close to $4.00 before plummeting to below $1.50 by the end of that year as the global financial system fell apart.

Now the price of copper is plunging again, and many analysts are becoming extremely concerned…

One growing global worry is the steep decline in copper, which is used in many products and is often viewed as good gauge on how China is doing. The price of copper hit its lowest price since 2009 on Wednesday at $2.46. Copper is down nearly 7% this week alone.

Meanwhile, the recession (some call it a depression) in Europe continues to get even worse, and the euro continues to plunge.

On Wednesday, the euro declined to the lowest level that we have seen in nine years, and Goldman Sachs is now saying that the euro and the U.S. dollar could be at parity by the end of next year.

That is amazing considering the fact that it took $1.60 to get one euro back in July 2008.

Personally, I am fully convinced that Goldman Sachs is right on this one. I believe that the euro is going to all-time lows that we have never seen before, and this is going to create massive problems for the eurozone.

With all of these signs of trouble out there, the smart money is rapidly pulling their money out of stocks and putting it into government bonds. This usually happens when a crisis is looming. It is called a “flight to safety”, and it pushes government bond yields down.

On Wednesday, the yield on 10 year U.S. Treasuries fell beneath the important 1.8 percent barrier. We will probably see it go even lower in the months ahead.

As the rest of the world economy crumbles, the remainder of the globe is looking to America to be the rock in the storm. For example, the following quote that I found today comes from a British news source…

‘The global economy is running on a single engine… the American one,’ the World Bank’s chief economist, Kaushik Basu, said. ‘This does not make for a rosy outlook for the world.’

Well, they may not want to rely on us too much, because there are plenty of signs that our economy is slowing down too. For example, we learned today that December retail sales were down 0.9% from a year ago, and this is being called “an unmitigated disaster“. Americans were supposed to be taking the money that they were saving on gasoline and spending it, but that apparently is not happening.

Back on October 29th, I wrote an article entitled “From This Day Forward, We Will Watch How The Stock Market Performs Without The Fed’s Monetary Heroin“. In that article, I warned that the end of quantitative easing could have dire consequences for the financial system as bubbles created by the Fed began to burst.

And that is precisely what is happening. In fact, many analysts are now pinpointing the end of QE as the exact moment when our current troubles began. For instance, check out this excerpt from a CNBC article that was published on Wednesday…

“Stuff happens when QE ends,” said Peter Boockvar, chief market analyst at The Lindsey Group. “It’s no coincidence that the market started going into a higher volatility mode, it’s no coincidence that the decline in commodity prices accelerated, it’s no coincidence that the yield curve started flattening when QE ended.”

Indeed, the increase in volatility and its effect on prices across the capital market spectrum was closely tied to the Fed ending the third round of QE in October.

We are moving into a time of great danger for Wall Street and for the global economy as a whole.

If we continue to see a tremendous amount of volatility, history tells us that it is only a matter of time before the markets implode.

Hopefully you will be ready when that happens.

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