The Dunning Kruger effect is clearly evident among many who comment on investment markets. Especially around equities, where social media and some random successes can transform an opinionated blowhard into a much-followed guru.
It is logical for the rational brain to be confused about the current resilience of global stock prices in the wake of numerous negative events. As usual, our partners at The Wall Street Journal dig deeper to explain this seeming contradiction. The piece republished below provides excellent context.
A hard rule of Investing 101 is that rising interest rates are bad for share prices. Yet, the WSJ’s research reveals that in modern times the impact of rates on equity markets usually takes months – and requires tighter money to actually trigger a recession before share prices take a proper smack.
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Market timing is a fool’s errand. Much better to follow Warren Buffett’s advice of pre-purchase homework; buying with a margin of safety; and applying an average holding period of ‘forever’. As Peter Thiel argued last week, Buffett may be very wrong on crypto currencies. Even he is sure to agree that in equity investing, Buffett’s advice (and record) is peerless.
More for you to read today:
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- States of Covid Performance. Comprehensive study compares outcomes of US states showing vast differences between those that locked down hard – and did not. Freedom-based Florida among best, NY and NJ worst.
- Ukraine, Russia Gear Up for Warâs Biggest Battles. Officials expect large-scale tank and artillery battles; it âwill remind you of the Second World War,â Ukraineâs foreign minister says.
- Scottie Scheffler Wins the Masters. The 25-year-old American and world No. 1 took his first major at Augusta National, riding a stretch that has established him as golfâs pre-eminent young star
Why Stocks Are Rallying in the Midst of a War and Soaring Inflation
The S&P 500 has rebounded 7.6% from its 2022 low in March, cutting its losses for the year to about 6%Â – here are the reasons why
By Gunjan Banerji and Caitlin McCabe of The Wall Street Journal
Investors are confronting one of the most uncertain periods of their lifetimes. Stocks are rallying anyway.
The S&P 500 has rebounded 7.6% from its 2022 low on March 8, cutting its losses for the year to about 6%âroughly half of what they were weeks ago. In many ways, investors say, the rebound has been as broad as it has been impressive, lifting everything from travel stocks to utilities to unprofitable technology companies.
A month ago, Russiaâs war in Ukraine was intensifying, sending oil prices surging to $130 a barrel and stocks sharply lower. Covid-19 cases began surging again in China. Inflation data showed that pricing pressures werenât abating. And in the midst of all of it, the Federal Reserve kicked off a rate-hiking cycle for the first time since 2018.
Not much has changed, except stocks are now back on the upswing. Many investors are trying to discern whether the rebound is the start of a sustainable rally or merely a temporary respite. The broad stock market index pulled back 1.3% last week, snapping a three-week winning streak that marked its best performance since November 2020.
Here are six reasons for the rebound.
1. History Suggests Stocks Have More Room to Run
The anticipation of the Fedâs March rate increase stirred volatility for months as investors braced for the unwinding of stimulus that helped turbocharge stocks. But history shows that stocks typically rise after the central bank starts raising interest rates.
In the five rate-hiking cycles since 1990, the S&P 500 tumbled a month after the first rate increase but typically recouped those gains to rally six months later. After one year, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were up 80% of the time, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
âThe early stages of Fed tightening should not be seen as a negative for stocks, as equities tended to make new highs after the initial volatility,â a team of JPMorgan Chase & Co. strategists led by Marko Kolanovic wrote in a note to clients Monday.
Still, recession fears are growing. Deutsche Bankâs chief U.S. economist warned about a recession this year, fueled by aggressive tightening from the Fed. Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of Boston money manager GMO LLC, said Wednesday that oil price spikes like the one this year âhave always preceded or triggered recession.âÂ
Yet some investors arenât willing to cash out of the market to time a downturn.
âThe market can go up a lot before you get to the recession,â said Mark Stoeckle, chief executive of investment firm Adams Funds. âThatâs a lot of risk that youâre taking on if youâre going to begin to reposition your portfolio for an impending recession.â
Mr. Stoeckle said that, so far, the economic data he has seen doesnât point to a recession in the near future.
To be sure, rate-hiking cycles donât always end well for stocks. According to Deutsche Bank analysts, eight of the 11 cycles over the past seven decades have resulted in recessions.
Take, for example, when the Fed began raising rates in the 1970s and the late 1990s. In both cases, major U.S. indexes largely finished the cycles with losses and, soon after, the economy tipped into a recession.
2. The Economy Is Still Strong
Consumers have been sending mixed signals on how they feel about the economy. Economic data suggest things arenât as bad as many fear.
U.S. job growth remains strong, with the March report showing employers added 431,000 jobs, the 11th straight month with an increase of more than 400,000. That marked the longest streak in records dating back to 1939.
Investors point to other encouraging signs: Wages continue to grow. In March, average hourly earnings for employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose 5.6% from a year before, Labor Department data show.
Meanwhile, American finances look healthy, which could help buoy the economy as inflation flares. Brian Rose, senior U.S. economist at UBS Global Wealth Management, estimates that consumers accumulated excess savings of about $2.5 trillion during the pandemic.
Still, some cracks are starting to emerge: U.S. consumer spending in February slowed sharply from the month before, as inflationâwhich jumped to an annual 7.9% rate in Februaryâweighed on households and chipped away at wage gains.
3. Real Yields Are Still Negative
Many investors say stocks are still being lifted by one closely watched bond-market metric: real yields.
Real yields are what investors receive on U.S. government bonds after accounting for inflation. Despite the sharp rise in Treasury yields this year, so-called real interest rates are still quite low. For now, investors say, that is providing support for the economy and an incentive for investors to seek returns in riskier assets.
The yield on five-year Treasury inflation-protected securitiesâa benchmark gauge of real interest rates over the next half-decadeâstood Friday at about minus 0.6%, according to Tradeweb. That was up from about minus 1.6% at the end of last year but still well below the 1% level it reached in 2018.
4. Individual Investors Buy the Dip
Individual investors have helped drive the recent surge in meme stocks and shares of unprofitable technology companies, data from Vanda Research show.
Last month, individual investors piled into shares of the ARK Innovation exchange-traded fund, purchasing a net $132 million in shares, the second-highest monthly total on record and nearly three times the monthly 2021 average, according to Vanda data. The fund, which is run by Cathie Wood and trades under the ticker ARKK, is heavily invested in buzzy companies, some of which struggle to turn a profit.
Meanwhile, demand for bullish call options that are âout-of-the-money,â or far from currently paying out, recently hit the highest level since early 2021, Vanda estimates. Bets on meme stocks and tech shares such as Nvidia Corp. , Twitter Inc., Tesla Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc. are particularly popular.
Goldman analysts said in a note to clients in late March that a bump in retail-trading activity helps explain the gains in stocks like nonprofitable technology companies that are typically sensitive to interest-rate increases.
âSentiment from the most speculative part of the retail community is becoming increasingly optimistic,â Vanda analysts wrote in an April research note.
The activity is in contrast to much of the quarter, when trading by the group subsided. Estimates from Bloomberg Intelligence show that individual investors accounted for about 17% of U.S. stock-trading activity in the first quarter, the lowest level since 2019, before the pandemic triggered a rush of activity.
5. Bets on Corporate Resiliency
First-quarter earnings season will kick off in earnest this week, and many investors expect another period of strong results.
Earnings among companies in the S&P 500 are expected to have increased 4.5% from the year before. Although that result would pale in comparison with the blockbuster growth of recent periods, it is generally in line with the median growth rate since the first quarter of 2012.
Analysts point to one particular bright spot: Many think U.S. companies will be able to navigate soaring inflation by raising prices. The estimated net profit margin for S&P 500 companies is 12.1% for the first quarter, higher than the five-year average of 11.2%, FactSet data show.
âAt the moment, there is this relative sweet spot for equities, whereby they feel comfortable with rising inflationâthey think that U.S. companies retain pricing power and that it wonât result in margin compression,â said Huw Roberts, head of analytics at Quant Insight.
6. A Technicals Snapback
There are technical factors driving the rebound, too. Many institutional investors appear to have aggressively dumped stocks to start the year, traders and analysts said.
âDuring the invasionâŚit felt like [the selloff] was all driven by de-risking,â said Glenn Koh, head of global equities trading at Bank of America.
For example, Bank of America analysts estimate that bearish stock positions among commodity trading advisers, computer-driven funds that try to make money betting on market trends and patterns, surged in March before pulling back on those bets. Recently, Mr. Koh said, some investors might have had to unwind bearish positions, helping drive a rally.
âIt felt like it was more short covering,â Mr. Koh said.
âSam Goldfarb contributed to this article.
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