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August 29, 2017 at 08:27 PM
Are you managing money naked? There is an old adage on Wall Street — never go home long and naked. Traders either need to close their positions by the end of the day or fully hedge the risk of maintaining their long position overnight. Now is a critical time to not manage money naked. Let me explain.
We are in the midst of the second-longest bull market run in history that’s approaching its ninth year. For those who pay close attention, there are warning signs that a recession could be imminent. Protecting clients’ capital from large losses is the most important responsibility a financial advisor has. Right now, because markets have been rising for a long period of time, some investors have come to believe that “this time may just be different” — that the market can avoid bear market declines forever. Unfortunately, it’s never different; the bear market rampage just hasn’t begun yet.
Warning signs started flashing after Q4 2014, Q1 2015, and Q2 2015 all showed negative corporate earnings and revenue trends. Considering that four consecutive negative quarters can trigger a bear market, signs of a weakening economy were evident when the S&P 500 fell 10% in the first half hour of trading on Aug. 24, 2015. However, the Federal Reserve intervened, keeping the asset bubble intact so the carefully nurtured “wealth effect” endured and consumer spending continued.
Markets rallied until a second attempt at a bear market decline on Jan. 8, 2016. Again, the Fed intervened, and over the past year or so, the markets have climbed higher despite the clear evidence that the economy is weak. This false sense of economic stability is dangerous for investors, and as advisors we need to take the higher road to protect our clients’ capital.
What’s made matters worse is the proliferation of assets crowding into passive index funds. This has created one of the most potentially dangerous liquidity traps yet, reminiscent of the crowd into technology stocks in the late 1990s, just before the dot-com bubble burst and shred investor capital with 70% and 50% declines in the Nasdaq and S&P 500 respectively. I fear the current bull market cycle has dulled investors’ memory of the battering losses they incurred during the dot-com market crash and the 2008 financial crisis. Furthermore, the Federal Reserve’s zero interest-rate policy and quantitative easing have lulled investors into a hopeless state of denial about today’s elevated risk factors and the high probability of a dramatic pullback in equity markets over the next few quarters. With markets already historically overvalued and continuing to rise, it is important not to “go naked” — it’s time to mitigate risk now.
A bright spot over the past few quarters has been the resurgence of earnings and revenue growth. Earnings and revenue trends turned positive in Q3 of 2016 and have been posting significant earnings beats on year-over-year comparisons. And while second-quarter 2017 earnings look strong, let’s keep in mind, they are against last year’s easy-to-beat negative-trend earnings.
