Technically Speaking: Fed Goes All In. When’s The “Bear Market” Rally?

 | Mar 24, 2020 07:16AM ET

Let’s flashback to a time not so long ago, May 2019.

“It was interesting to see Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, during an address to the Fernandina Beach banking conference, channel Ben Bernanke during his speech on corporate ‘sub-prime’ debt (aka leveraged loans.)

‘Many commentators have observed with a sense of déjà vu the buildup of risky business debt over the past few years. The acronyms have changed a bit—’CLOs’ (collateralized loan obligations) instead of ‘CDOs’ (collateralized debt obligations), for example—but once again, we see a category of debt that is growing faster than the income of the borrowers even as lenders loosen underwriting standards. Likewise, much of the borrowing is financed opaquely, outside the banking system. Many are asking whether these developments pose a new threat to financial stability.

In public discussion of this issue, views seem to range from ‘This is a rerun of the subprime mortgage crisis’ to ‘Nothing to worry about here.’ At the moment, the truth is likely somewhere in the middle. To preview my conclusions, as of now, business debt does not present the kind of elevated risks to the stability of the financial system that would lead to broad harm to households and businesses should conditions deteriorate.’ – Jerome Powell, May 2019

In other words, corporate debt is ‘contained.’”

As we concluded at that time:

“Unfortunately, while Jerome Powell may be currently channeling Ben Bernanke to keep markets stabilized momentarily, the real risk is some unforeseen exogenous event, such as Deutsche Bank (DE:DBKGn) going bankrupt, that triggers a global credit contagion.”

While the “exogenous event” was a “virus,” it led to a “credit event” which has crippled markets globally, leading the Federal Reserve to throw everything possible at trying to stem the crisis. With the Fed’s balance sheet set to expand towards $10 Trillion, the Federal deficit to balloon to $4 trillion, it is “all hands on deck” to stop the next “Great Depression” before it takes hold.

However, this is what we have been warning about:

“Pay attention to the market. There action this year is very reminiscent of previous market topping processes. Tops are hard to identify during the process as ‘change happens slowly.’The mainstream media, economists, and Wall Street will dismiss pickup in volatility as simply a corrective process. But when the topping process completes, it will seem as if the change occurred ‘all at once.’

Get The News You Want
Read market moving news with a personalized feed of stocks you care about.
Get The App

The same media which told you ‘not to worry,’ will now tell you ‘no one could have seen it coming.’”

The only question which remains to be answered is whether the MORE debt and monetary stimulus can fix a debt and monetary stimulus bubble?

In other words, can the Fed inflate the fourth bubble to offset the implosion of the third?

Think about the insanity of that statement, but that is what the markets, and the economy, are banking on.

We do expect that with the flood of fiscal and monetary stimulus, a “bear market rally” becomes a real probability, at least in the short-term.

How big of a rally? What should you do? These are the important points in today’s missive.

h2 The One Thing/h2

The “ONE Thing” you need to do TODAY, right now, is “accept” where you are.

What you had, what was lost, and the mistakes you made, CAN NOT be corrected. They are in the past. However, by hanging on to those “emotions,” we lock ourselves out of the ability to take actions that will begin the corrective process.

Let me dispel some myths:

  • “Hope” is not an investment strategy. Hanging on to some stock you lost money in waiting for it to “get back to even,” costs you opportunity.
  • You aren’t a loser. Whatever happened previously is over, and it doesn’t make you a “loser.” However, staying in losing positions or strategies will continue to cost you.
  • Selling does NOT lock in losses. The losses have already occurred. Selling, however, gives you the ability to take advantage of “opportunity” to begin the recovery process.

Okay, now that we have the right “mindset,” let’s take an educated guess on what happens next.

The current bear market is exhibiting many of the same “technical traits” as seen in both the “Dot.com” and “Financial Crisis.”