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from Anatole Kaletsky:
Has a new long-term bull market begun?
Two months ago, when Wall Street first approached a record high, I warned about the dangers of “stock market vertigo” – a condition that combines the fear of buying shares at unsustainably high prices with the equal dread of not buying shares at prices that will never again be on offer if the market soars to permanently higher levels.
At that time the world’s most closely followed index, the Standard and Poor’s 500, was still bouncing along the top of a trading range that had held since the bursting of the Internet bubble in March 2000. There was no way to know whether the market's next big move would be a plunge back toward the middle of this 13-year range or a rise to new and significantly higher records. On one hand, improvements in the U.S. economic outlook and political situation at the end of last year suggested that a breakout was more likely than the last time the index came close to its 2000 peak ‑ in late 2007, when the subprime mortgage crisis was just starting and George W. Bush was still president. On the other hand, the European crisis looked as bad as ever, China seemed to be slowing, corporate profits were stalling and investors were well aware of the huge losses suffered by people who got sucked into the market when it hit similar levels in 2000 and 2007. There was no sure way to resolve this dilemma two months ago, and there still isn’t, since prices in financial markets are always balanced, by definition, between bullish and bearish expectations that are roughly equal in plausibility.
But the market’s behavior sometimes suggests an answer – and this week appears to present such a case. In the week since last Friday, when the United States reported much stronger than expected employment growth, the S&P 500 has moved more than 4 percent above the 13-year trading range defined by the 2000 and 2007 highs. This breakout has been confirmed by the Dow Jones industrial average and by broader Wall Street indexes, such as the Wilshire 5000 and the S&P equal-weighted index. And while share prices in most other countries are still far below their 2000 and 2007 levels, the Tokyo stock market has taken off like a rocket and Germany’s DAX has matched Wall Street’s ascent.
This bullish behavior does not mean that prices will keep rising – by definition, the next daily move in any actively traded market is as likely to be down as up. But the records that have been set do mean that the plausible upside to stock prices is no longer limited to just a few percent, as it was when Wall Street seemed to be trapped in a range that had held for 13 years. Now that this range has been broken, historical patterns suggest further big gains in the years ahead, while a relapse into the old range seems unlikely. I described this in detail two months ago, so here is just a brief reprise.
from Anatole Kaletsky:
Don’t worry about a stock market drop
A feeling of vertigo may seem natural as Wall Street approaches a record and stock markets around the world climb to their highest levels since 2007. With the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index now only 0.5 percent away from its 2007 high of 1565 and with the Dow Jones industrial average scaling new peaks almost daily, what will investors expect to see when they reach the mountaintop? The mountaineering analogy suggests, at best, a long descent and, at worst, a precipitous drop. But how literally should we take such metaphors?
Bearish analysts often claim that stock market peaks have always been followed by sharp falls, citing as evidence the record high of October 2007, which was quickly followed by a 57 percent collapse in 2008-09. They add that the previous peak, in March 2000, was followed by a 37 percent plunge and that last major high before that, in August 1987, preceded the biggest-ever market crash, in October 1987. These precedents, along with the even more vertiginous peaks of 1989 in Japan and 1929 on Wall Street, certainly sound scary, but they are meaningless.
from Expert Zone:
India Markets Weekahead: Beware the Ides of March
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author and not of Reuters)
Markets ended budget week below support levels of 5800/5840 and just when the six-month rally seemed over for good, it made a spirited V-shaped recovery to close at 5946 on Friday, with gains of 3.95 percent. The Street is divided with some expecting this to be the beginning of a new rally with the market scaling highs that it missed in February; others see it as a strong pullback which will fizzle out soon.
The government seems to be responding faster to allay investor fears. It was quick to respond to FII worries over proposed changes in tax residency certificates. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram has been assuring investors of continued policy measures, including the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) bill being introduced in the current parliament session.
from Anatole Kaletsky:
Is the current market optimism justified?
The U.S. economy has just suffered its first contraction since 2009, consumer confidence has plunged since November’s election and Americans’ paychecks are only just starting to reflect an increase in payroll taxes averaging $70 per month. Across the Atlantic, the euro zone and Britain seem to be sinking back into recession. And conditions in Japan have become so desperate that newly elected prime minister Shinzo Abe is openly devaluing the currency and threatening to take direct control of the central bank.
At the same time, stock markets around the world are approaching or exceeding records. Money is flowing into equity mutual funds at the fastest rate since the end of the last bull market in 2000. And business sentiment, as reported from Davos, seems to be more optimistic than at any time since the global financial crisis of 2008.
from Money on the markets:
No solution in sight for bipolar Indian stocks
(Any opinions expressed here are those of the author, and not necessarily those of Thomson Reuters)
As the end of 2012 approaches, investors will likely remember this as a bipolar year for Indian markets.
from India Insight:
Wary of stocks, Indians cling to safe havens
Sometimes people suspect that the grass is greener in the next field ... but they're not always right.
Consider this. India's gross domestic product has grown about 7 percent on an average per year for the past nine years. Its industrial growth has been steadily rising since then. Buoyed by economic growth, the country’s capital markets also offered itself as an attractive and inflation beating investment option.
from Anatole Kaletsky:
Europe has lost its ability to surprise
Last Friday global stock markets and the euro enjoyed their biggest one-day gains of the year. The S&P 500 jumped by 2.5 percent and the euro by 1.8 percent against the dollar. This Friday we will find out whether these moves were just a blip. Why this Friday? Because that is when the U.S. government publishes its monthly employment statistics – and these figures have more influence on global markets than anything that European leaders may or may not decide.
There are four reasons to believe this. The first is the very fact that Europe so dominates the news. Financial markets are not moved by events; they are moved by unexpected events. Once a story has appeared on newspaper front pages around the world every day for months, what are the chances that it will radically surprise? At this time last year, there was still widespread misunderstanding and complacency about the European crisis. The European Central Bank, for example, was so complacent that it was raising interest rates when it should have been cutting them. But today, investors and policymakers are obsessed with Europe’s grim prospects. A genuine surprise would have to be something much worse, or much better, than the scenarios market participants already know.
from Global Investing:
Oil falls. So does the Russian stock market
Russian equities have had their worst week since early-December, with losses of over 6 percent. But don't look too far for the reason -- world crude futures have fallen to three-month lows around $114 a barrel on worries that U.S. and world economic growth may not be picking up after all. They too have fallen 6 percent so far this week. Check out the following graphics showing how Russian stocks and its currency move in lock-step with oil prices:
If anything, the falls on Russian assets are outpacing the weakness on global crude oil markets in recent months, possibly because the jitters that caused last December's massive falls have not been entirely overcome. Anti-government demonstrators are no longer hitting the streets but with President-elect Vladimir Putin to be sworn in next week, fears are the Kremlin may prefer squeezing more cash from energy companies to implementing the reforms the economy desperately needs. Latest plans flagged on Thursday to raise oil and gas extraction taxes would seem to confirm these worries and are hitting energy sector shares -- half the Moscow index.
from Global Investing:
Discovering the pleasure of dividends in Russia
American financier J.D. Rockefeller said watching dividends rolling in was the only thing that gave him pleasure. But it is a pleasure which until now has largely bypassed shareholders in most big Russian companies. That might be about to change.
Russian firms, especially the big commodity producers, are generally seen as poor dividend payers. So dividend yields, the ratio of dividends to the share price, have been unattractive.
from Global Investing:
Solar activity and stock markets revisited
What can Galileo Galilei tell us about today's volatile financial markets?
In 1610, shortly after viewing the sun with his new telescope, Italian physicist Galileo Galilei made the first European observations of sunspots. The sunspot number is calculated by first counting the number of sunspot groups and then the number of individual sunspots.
According to NASA, monthly averages of the sunspot numbers show that the number of sunspots visible on the sun waxes and wanes with an approximate 11-year cycle.
