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November 16, 2015 at 10:47 AM
(Bloomberg) — Doug Ramsey, whose bearish research foreshadowed the U.S. stock market’s first correction since 2011, says the rebound that has lifted equities since August doesn’t mean the mispricings that drove the rout have gone away.
If anything they’re worse, according to the chief investment officer of Leuthold Weeden Capital Management LLC, who says valuations are higher than when the selloff began because of deteriorating revenue and profits. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index is trading for 1.8 times sales, about where it was in August, while industrial stocks last week were priced at 20 times earnings, the most in more than a decade.
This is no message from a permabear. Ramsey correctly called the broad rally in stocks that started in 2011. His call now that the S&P 500 will be 20 percent to 25 percent lower in 2016 from its record high in May underscores the concerns many have about the strength of the economy and the ability of companies to boost earnings, even with the unemployment rate having fallen to the lowest level since 2008.
“The correction didn’t really solve a whole lot,” Ramsey said in a phone interview. “You have all the same underlying market fissures in place, yet they will have lasted another six months.”
To be fair, it’s the same prediction Ramsey made on Aug. 23, and while the S&P 500 tumbled 3.9 percent the next day, it quickly rebounded and climbed as much as 13 percent in the next 12 weeks. That call was a rare misstep for the Minneapolis-based money manager in 2015 after he warned in early August that the “next big move in stocks should be down,” citing weakening breadth.
“I’m the wounded bear up in the north country,” said Ramsey, who until 2014 was one of the staunchest advocates for the 6 1/2-year old bull market. “But I still think the odds are very high that the top was in May. I still think we’re looking at a cyclical bear market.”
The S&P 500 slid 3.6 percent to 2,023.04 last week, its biggest drop since August, and is down 5.1 percent from its record close of 2,130.82 on May 21. Since March 2009, American shares have almost exactly tripled, though they’re down 1.7 percent in 2015. The benchmark index added 0.1 percent at 9:35 a.m. in New York.
Valuations that have been above historical averages for months are being pushed higher as revenue and profits decline, Ramsey said. After falling on a year-over-year basis in the first two quarters of 2015, revenue growth in the S&P 500 is forecast to contract 4.1 percent in the third quarter. Until the first quarter of this year, the measure hadn’t gone negative since 2012.
Profit expansion in the benchmark index has also ground to a halt. After earnings contracted 1.7 percent in the second quarter, third-quarter income for the S&P 500 is now expected by analysts to decrease 3.7 percent.
“Growth has been dismal this quarter, particularly when you look at revenue,” said Skip Aylesworth, a portfolio manager at Hennessy Funds in Boston, where he oversees $2 billion. “Underneath the surface, there are lingering concerns over the overall health of the economy. There’s still a lot of uncertainty out there.”
Forecasts for a plunge in equities run counter to the consensus view of Wall Street strategists. The median estimate of 21 surveyed by Bloomberg calls for the S&P 500 to reach 2,135 by year-end, up 5.5 percent from its close last week.
