Stay invested and keep a healt

4
Comment
Favorite

derekpang
2021-09-03

Stay invested and keep a healthy cash reserve for the rainy days…

5 Reasons The Next Stock Bear Market And Recession Could Be The Worst Since The 1930s

Summary The first reason we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be the worst sinc

5 Reasons The Next Stock Bear Market And Recession Could Be The Worst Since The 1930s

Disclaimer: Investing carries risk. This is not financial advice. The above content should not be regarded as an offer, recommendation, or solicitation on acquiring or disposing of any financial products, any associated discussions, comments, or posts by author or other users should not be considered as such either. It is solely for general information purpose only, which does not consider your own investment objectives, financial situations or needs. TTM assumes no responsibility or warranty for the accuracy and completeness of the information, investors should do their own research and may seek professional advice before investing.

Report

Comment

Top
Latest

No comments yet

Most Discussed

Terms and Conditions·Privacy Policy

Company: TTMF Limited. Tech supported by Xiangshang Yixin.

Email：uservice@ttm.financial

{"i18n":{"language":"en_US"},"data":{"magic":2,"id":812460970,"tweetId":"812460970","gmtCreate":1630605991390,"gmtModify":1676530354860,"author":{"id":3566967390819236,"idStr":"3566967390819236","authorId":3566967390819236,"authorIdStr":"3566967390819236","name":"derekpang","avatar":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/ef889f8f4ac570ff909727ffe3dbbb44","vip":1,"userType":1,"introduction":"","boolIsFan":false,"boolIsHead":false,"crmLevel":4,"crmLevelSwitch":0,"currentWearingBadge":{"badgeId":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493-2","templateUuid":"1026c425416b44e0aac28c11a0848493","name":"Senior Tiger","description":"Join the tiger community for 1000 days","bigImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/0063fb68ea29c9ae6858c58630e182d5","smallImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/96c699a93be4214d4b49aea6a5a5d1a4","grayImgUrl":"https://static.tigerbbs.com/35b0e542a9ff77046ed69ef602bc105d","redirectLinkEnabled":0,"hasAllocated":1,"isWearing":1,"stampPosition":0,"hasStamp":0,"allocationCount":1,"allocatedDate":"2023.07.26","individualDisplayEnabled":0},"individualDisplayBadges":[],"fanSize":6,"starInvestorFlag":false},"themes":[],"images":[],"coverImages":[],"extraTitle":"","html":"<html><head></head><body>Stay invested and keep a healthy cash reserve for the rainy days…</body></html>","htmlText":"<html><head></head><body>Stay invested and keep a healthy cash reserve for the rainy days…</body></html>","text":"Stay invested and keep a healthy cash reserve for the rainy days…","highlighted":1,"essential":1,"paper":1,"likeSize":4,"commentSize":0,"repostSize":0,"favoriteSize":0,"link":"https://ttm.financial/post/812460970","repostId":1146170136,"repostType":4,"repost":{"id":"1146170136","pubTimestamp":1630576860,"share":"https://www.laohu8.com/m/news/1146170136?lang=&edition=full","pubTime":"2021-09-02 18:01","market":"us","language":"en","title":"5 Reasons The Next Stock Bear Market And Recession Could Be The Worst Since The 1930s","url":"https://stock-news.laohu8.com/highlight/detail?id=1146170136","media":"seekingalpha","summary":"Summary\n\nThe first reason we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be the worst sinc","content":"Summary\n<ul>\n <li>The first reason we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be the worst since the 1930s is due to extremely high asset valuations.</li>\n <li>The second reason is due to extraordinarily bullish investor sentiment.</li>\n <li>The third reason is due to weak economic fundamentals.</li>\n <li>The fourth reason is due to excessive debt levels.</li>\n <li>The fifth reason is due to limited policy options.</li>\n</ul>\nWith the S&amp;P 500 (SPY) at all-time highs and seemingly endless “free liquidity” being provided by the Fed, the last thing most investors can envision right now is a major bear market or recession - particularly ones that will be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s!\nBut the facts we will detail in this article show that is&nbsp;highly likely&nbsp;to be the case. This is an extraordinary statement, but we are living in extraordinary times! Investors need to understand the risks they are facing now in order to prepare and profit from them in the future.\nHere are the five key reasons we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be worse than the Great Recession of 2008-2009 (when the S&amp;P 500 fell 58% and it took about six years to recover), which will make it the worst since the 1930s (when the S&amp;P 500 fell 86% and it took about 25 years to recover):\n1. Extremely High Asset Valuations\nInformed investors know that we are currently in an “Everything Bubble” driven by massive and persistent central bank money creation. Virtually every major financial asset is overvalued and priced to deliver low - or even negative - long-term returns.\nFor example, the Shiller P/E Ratio shown below is 30% higher than it was at the 1929 peak and is nearly as high as the all-time high in 2000. TheShiller P/E Ratiowas created by economist Robert Shiller and is calculated as the price of the S&amp;P 500 divided by the average past 10 years of earnings, adjusted for inflation. It attempts to smooth the cyclicality of earnings. Historically, high Shiller P/E Ratios have led to below-average long-term returns.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/66f9a3f8fedee54d3a30a15b70138ab5\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"344\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofShiller PE Ratio, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nWarren Buffett’s favorite valuation measure- and the one that best predicts future long-term stock market returns - is the Stock Market Capitalization To GDP Ratio, which is shown below. Based on this measure, stocks are trading 30% higher than the prior all-time high at the Tech Bubble peak of 2000! Stocks would have to fall over 60% for this ratio to return to the levels it reached at the stock market bottom in March 2009.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/d270087f9958674d30bed139425fe08e\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"264\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nIt is not just stocks that are priced to deliver poor returns. US Treasury bills and bonds are trading at historically low interest rates not far above zero (and some countries have negative interest rates), assuring very low returns until maturity. Also, corporate bond yields relative to Treasury bond yields are at historically low levels.\nReal estate is also expensive, with REITs trading at historically low dividend yields. And as shown in the chart below of theS&amp;P/Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, home prices are currently 27% higher than they were at the housing bubble peak of 2006!\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/c011c579b31844dd761b260b1adb7600\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"281\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nImportantly, not only do high valuations lead to low long-term returns but they also usually lead to devastating bear markets on the path to those low long-term returns.\n2. Extraordinarily Bullish Investor Sentiment\nAlong with high asset valuations, investor sentiment is at sky-high levels of bullishness. When investors are very bullish, that is a bearish contrarian indicator.\nThe best investor sentiment indicators show where investors are actually putting their hard-earned money in anticipation of making a profit, not just what they say their “mood” is. For sentiment, we focus on investoractions, notwords.\nOne excellent sentiment indicator is the Equity Put/Call Ratio. When investors are bearish, they buy Put options in anticipation of profiting from a fall in stock prices. When they are bullish, they buy Call options in anticipation of profiting from a rise in stock prices. When the ratio of Puts to Calls is very high, that shows investors are very bearish, which is a bullish contrarian indicator. Conversely, when the ratio of Puts to Calls is very low, that shows investors are very bullish, which is a bearish contrarian indicator.\nThe chart below shows the Equity Put/Call Ratio, using the 100-day moving average to reduce short-term noise in this indicator. Over the past year, it has fallen to extremely low levels - well below those seen at the stock market peak in 2007.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/1f4ac510219add2cccd009014b44162b\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofStockCharts.com, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nThe next chart is the Rydex Asset Ratio, which is the ratio of investor assets in all Rydex bear and money market funds (bearish positioning) compared to investor assets in all Rydex bull funds (bullish positioning). As you can see, investors have been very bullishly positioned in US stocks for over seven years! The last time investors approached this level of bullishness was around the Tech Bubble peak of 2000.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/30902a5fd01f363fd7dc95147f34735a\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"382\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofStockCharts.com, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nWhen the majority of investors are already very bullish and “all in”, there is no one left to buy and lots of potential sellers when something changes, as it always does. Most investors will be shocked when their bullish expectations meet the harsh reality of a major bear market.\n3. Weak Economic Fundamentals\nThe US economy is not as strong as it used to be. That is certainly true in the wake of the Covid pandemic, but it has also been true for the past two decades. All of the taxes, regulations and other government interventions in the economy in recent decades have created a weaker and more fragile economy that will make the next recession even worse.\nThe chart below of Industrial Production shows it is only 8% higher than at the 2000 peak and is 1% lower than at the 2007 peak. It has nearly flatlined over the past two decades. That is much weaker than the 3.9% annual growth in Industrial Production from 1920 to 2000.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/b3b30a4514e3707d1aaaf03a81dd5d3d\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"276\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nTotal Nonfarm Employment, shown below, grew at a 2.5% annual rate from 1940 to 2000. Similar to Industrial Production, Employment has nearly flatlined over the past two decades. It has increased only 10% since the 2000 peak and only 6% since the 2007 peak. Sadly, it is still nearly 4% below the February 2020 peak.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/5c7778bd8479e8800718b3abdcdf0dfb\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"275\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\n4. Excessive Debt Levels\nThe chart below shows the US Total Debt To GDP Ratio is near recent all-time highs at 3.8 times (or 380%), even higher than the high levels preceding the Great Recession. Global Debt To GDP is also at record high levels over 300%, as is US Federal Debt To GDP at 125%.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/563808ddc51f6a6b821f4abde5f62d17\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"242\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nExcessive debt has been the problem with every financial crisis in history, due to prior money creation out of thin air. So the next one promises to be one for the history books given these unprecedented high debt levels. Debt liquidation and defaults will lead to deflation, particularly for asset prices, as we saw in the Great Recession and even more so in the Great Depression.\n5. Limited Policy Options\nThe primary “bull case” for the stock market and economy over the past 12 years since the Great Recession ended has been “free liquidity” provided in seemingly endless amounts by the Federal Reserve. It is almost as though money really does grow on trees!\nBut money created out of thin air does not create new goods and services that improve living standards. If it did, a place likeZimbabwewould be the wealthiest country in the world. However, newly created money can flow into financial assets, which helps explain why valuation levels are so high.\nThe graph below shows “Austrian” Money Supply (AMS), the best measure of money supply that is consistent withthis Austrian School of Economics definition(although it no longer includes traveler’s checks, which have been discontinued in the Fed’s database due to limited use these days). AMS is up 40% since February 2020 and is up an astounding 225% since the Great Recession ended in June 2009!\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/3844fc699c58ff48effcc5918378bfcd\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"261\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nThis is well above the money supply growth that drove the Roaring ‘20s and ultimately led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as detailed in economist Murray N. Rothbard’s definitive history of that period in his bookAmerica’s Great Depression. In this book, heexplained the cause of the boom and bust business cycle:\nThe “boom-bust” cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business…[B]ank credit expansion sets into motion the business cycle in all its phases: the inflationary boom, marked by expansion of the money supply and by malinvestment; the crisis, which arrives when credit expansion ceases and malinvestments become evident; and the depression recovery, the necessary adjustment process by which the economy returns to the most efficient ways of satisfying consumer desires.\nAll this money creation has enabled the Fed to target theFederal Funds Rateat only 0.1%, as shown below. While that is above the negative interest rates prevailing in some countries, it doesn’t leave much room for the Fed to cut rates to try to prevent a recession, particularly with inflation at over 5% now. And as the chart shows, the Fed cut rates throughout the prior three recessions and bear markets and was not able to stop them, since the market is bigger than the Fed. This leaves the stock market and economy very vulnerable in the next downturn, with potentially no “safety nets” to protect them.\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/62449341ea09ce506389102e838a6cf4\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"262\" referrerpolicy=\"no-referrer\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nLastly, for the Keynesian economists who still believe the dogma that Federal budget deficits can prevent a recession - despite any evidence or logical theory to support it - the current Federal Budget Surplus/Deficit To GDP Ratio of -15% is the worst since World War II, as shown below. Given record-high government debt levels and deficits, how much more deficit spending will bond investors be willing to finance? And what good will it do, since deficits did not prevent the Great Recession?\n<img src=\"https://static.tigerbbs.com/26c9f09598045b1c92a037cc0e326f86\" tg-width=\"640\" tg-height=\"275\" width=\"100%\" height=\"auto\">Source: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nImplications For Investors\nThere is much more that can be said to prove our case, but hopefully, the facts provided in this article are sufficient for investors to understand the current risks in financial assets and the economy.\nWhile the exact timing of the next bear market and recession is unknown and there are currently no signs of it with stocks at all-time highs, now is the time for investors to seek out information on how to identify the tell-tale signs of bear markets and how to profit from them, rather than being decimated by them, as the majority of investors, unfortunately, will be.","source":"seekingalpha","collect":0,"html":"<!DOCTYPE html>\n<html>\n<head>\n<meta http-equiv=\"Content-Type\" content=\"text/html; charset=utf-8\" />\n<meta name=\"viewport\" content=\"width=device-width,initial-scale=1.0,minimum-scale=1.0,maximum-scale=1.0,user-scalable=no\"/>\n<meta name=\"format-detection\" content=\"telephone=no,email=no,address=no\" />\n<title>5 Reasons The Next Stock Bear Market And Recession Could Be The Worst Since The 1930s</title>\n<style type=\"text/css\">\na,abbr,acronym,address,applet,article,aside,audio,b,big,blockquote,body,canvas,caption,center,cite,code,dd,del,details,dfn,div,dl,dt,\nem,embed,fieldset,figcaption,figure,footer,form,h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6,header,hgroup,html,i,iframe,img,ins,kbd,label,legend,li,mark,menu,nav,\nobject,ol,output,p,pre,q,ruby,s,samp,section,small,span,strike,strong,sub,summary,sup,table,tbody,td,tfoot,th,thead,time,tr,tt,u,ul,var,video{ font:inherit;margin:0;padding:0;vertical-align:baseline;border:0 }\nbody{ font-size:16px; line-height:1.5; color:#999; background:transparent; }\n.wrapper{ overflow:hidden;word-break:break-all;padding:10px; }\nh1,h2{ font-weight:normal; line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:.6em; }\nh3,h4,h5,h6{ line-height:1.35; margin-bottom:1em; }\nh1{ font-size:24px; }\nh2{ font-size:20px; }\nh3{ font-size:18px; }\nh4{ font-size:16px; }\nh5{ font-size:14px; }\nh6{ font-size:12px; }\np,ul,ol,blockquote,dl,table{ margin:1.2em 0; }\nul,ol{ margin-left:2em; }\nul{ list-style:disc; }\nol{ list-style:decimal; }\nli,li p{ margin:10px 0;}\nimg{ max-width:100%;display:block;margin:0 auto 1em; }\nblockquote{ color:#B5B2B1; border-left:3px solid #aaa; padding:1em; }\nstrong,b{font-weight:bold;}\nem,i{font-style:italic;}\ntable{ width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;border-spacing:1px;margin:1em 0;font-size:.9em; }\nth,td{ padding:5px;text-align:left;border:1px solid #aaa; }\nth{ font-weight:bold;background:#5d5d5d; }\n.symbol-link{font-weight:bold;}\n/* header{ border-bottom:1px solid #494756; } */\n.title{ margin:0 0 8px;line-height:1.3;color:#ddd; }\n.meta {color:#5e5c6d;font-size:13px;margin:0 0 .5em; }\na{text-decoration:none; color:#2a4b87;}\n.meta .head { display: inline-block; overflow: hidden}\n.head .h-thumb { width: 30px; height: 30px; margin: 0; padding: 0; border-radius: 50%; float: left;}\n.head .h-content { margin: 0; padding: 0 0 0 9px; float: left;}\n.head .h-name {font-size: 13px; color: #eee; margin: 0;}\n.head .h-time {font-size: 11px; color: #7E829C; margin: 0;line-height: 11px;}\n.small {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.9); -webkit-transform: scale(0.9); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.smaller {font-size: 12.5px; display: inline-block; transform: scale(0.8); -webkit-transform: scale(0.8); transform-origin: left; -webkit-transform-origin: left;}\n.bt-text {font-size: 12px;margin: 1.5em 0 0 0}\n.bt-text p {margin: 0}\n</style>\n</head>\n<body>\n<div class=\"wrapper\">\n<header>\n<h2 class=\"title\">\n5 Reasons The Next Stock Bear Market And Recession Could Be The Worst Since The 1930s\n</h2>\n\n<h4 class=\"meta\">\n\n\n2021-09-02 18:01 GMT+8&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href=https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452860-5-reasons-the-next-stock-bear-market-and-recession-could-be-the-worst-since-the-1930s>seekingalpha</a>\n\n\n</h4>\n\n</header>\n<article>\n<div>\nSummary\n\nThe first reason we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be the worst since the 1930s is due to extremely high asset valuations.\nThe second reason is due to extraordinarily ...\n\n<a href=\"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452860-5-reasons-the-next-stock-bear-market-and-recession-could-be-the-worst-since-the-1930s\">Web Link</a>\n\n</div>\n\n\n</article>\n</div>\n</body>\n</html>\n","type":0,"thumbnail":"","relate_stocks":{".DJI":"道琼斯",".IXIC":"NASDAQ Composite",".SPX":"S&P 500 Index"},"source_url":"https://seekingalpha.com/article/4452860-5-reasons-the-next-stock-bear-market-and-recession-could-be-the-worst-since-the-1930s","is_english":true,"share_image_url":"https://static.laohu8.com/5a36db9d73b4222bc376d24ccc48c8a4","article_id":"1146170136","content_text":"Summary\n\nThe first reason we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be the worst since the 1930s is due to extremely high asset valuations.\nThe second reason is due to extraordinarily bullish investor sentiment.\nThe third reason is due to weak economic fundamentals.\nThe fourth reason is due to excessive debt levels.\nThe fifth reason is due to limited policy options.\n\nWith the S&P 500 (SPY) at all-time highs and seemingly endless “free liquidity” being provided by the Fed, the last thing most investors can envision right now is a major bear market or recession - particularly ones that will be the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s!\nBut the facts we will detail in this article show that is highly likely to be the case. This is an extraordinary statement, but we are living in extraordinary times! Investors need to understand the risks they are facing now in order to prepare and profit from them in the future.\nHere are the five key reasons we believe the next stock bear market and recession will be worse than the Great Recession of 2008-2009 (when the S&P 500 fell 58% and it took about six years to recover), which will make it the worst since the 1930s (when the S&P 500 fell 86% and it took about 25 years to recover):\n1. Extremely High Asset Valuations\nInformed investors know that we are currently in an “Everything Bubble” driven by massive and persistent central bank money creation. Virtually every major financial asset is overvalued and priced to deliver low - or even negative - long-term returns.\nFor example, the Shiller P/E Ratio shown below is 30% higher than it was at the 1929 peak and is nearly as high as the all-time high in 2000. TheShiller P/E Ratiowas created by economist Robert Shiller and is calculated as the price of the S&P 500 divided by the average past 10 years of earnings, adjusted for inflation. It attempts to smooth the cyclicality of earnings. Historically, high Shiller P/E Ratios have led to below-average long-term returns.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofShiller PE Ratio, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nWarren Buffett’s favorite valuation measure- and the one that best predicts future long-term stock market returns - is the Stock Market Capitalization To GDP Ratio, which is shown below. Based on this measure, stocks are trading 30% higher than the prior all-time high at the Tech Bubble peak of 2000! Stocks would have to fall over 60% for this ratio to return to the levels it reached at the stock market bottom in March 2009.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nIt is not just stocks that are priced to deliver poor returns. US Treasury bills and bonds are trading at historically low interest rates not far above zero (and some countries have negative interest rates), assuring very low returns until maturity. Also, corporate bond yields relative to Treasury bond yields are at historically low levels.\nReal estate is also expensive, with REITs trading at historically low dividend yields. And as shown in the chart below of theS&P/Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, home prices are currently 27% higher than they were at the housing bubble peak of 2006!\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nImportantly, not only do high valuations lead to low long-term returns but they also usually lead to devastating bear markets on the path to those low long-term returns.\n2. Extraordinarily Bullish Investor Sentiment\nAlong with high asset valuations, investor sentiment is at sky-high levels of bullishness. When investors are very bullish, that is a bearish contrarian indicator.\nThe best investor sentiment indicators show where investors are actually putting their hard-earned money in anticipation of making a profit, not just what they say their “mood” is. For sentiment, we focus on investoractions, notwords.\nOne excellent sentiment indicator is the Equity Put/Call Ratio. When investors are bearish, they buy Put options in anticipation of profiting from a fall in stock prices. When they are bullish, they buy Call options in anticipation of profiting from a rise in stock prices. When the ratio of Puts to Calls is very high, that shows investors are very bearish, which is a bullish contrarian indicator. Conversely, when the ratio of Puts to Calls is very low, that shows investors are very bullish, which is a bearish contrarian indicator.\nThe chart below shows the Equity Put/Call Ratio, using the 100-day moving average to reduce short-term noise in this indicator. Over the past year, it has fallen to extremely low levels - well below those seen at the stock market peak in 2007.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofStockCharts.com, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nThe next chart is the Rydex Asset Ratio, which is the ratio of investor assets in all Rydex bear and money market funds (bearish positioning) compared to investor assets in all Rydex bull funds (bullish positioning). As you can see, investors have been very bullishly positioned in US stocks for over seven years! The last time investors approached this level of bullishness was around the Tech Bubble peak of 2000.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofStockCharts.com, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nWhen the majority of investors are already very bullish and “all in”, there is no one left to buy and lots of potential sellers when something changes, as it always does. Most investors will be shocked when their bullish expectations meet the harsh reality of a major bear market.\n3. Weak Economic Fundamentals\nThe US economy is not as strong as it used to be. That is certainly true in the wake of the Covid pandemic, but it has also been true for the past two decades. All of the taxes, regulations and other government interventions in the economy in recent decades have created a weaker and more fragile economy that will make the next recession even worse.\nThe chart below of Industrial Production shows it is only 8% higher than at the 2000 peak and is 1% lower than at the 2007 peak. It has nearly flatlined over the past two decades. That is much weaker than the 3.9% annual growth in Industrial Production from 1920 to 2000.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nTotal Nonfarm Employment, shown below, grew at a 2.5% annual rate from 1940 to 2000. Similar to Industrial Production, Employment has nearly flatlined over the past two decades. It has increased only 10% since the 2000 peak and only 6% since the 2007 peak. Sadly, it is still nearly 4% below the February 2020 peak.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\n4. Excessive Debt Levels\nThe chart below shows the US Total Debt To GDP Ratio is near recent all-time highs at 3.8 times (or 380%), even higher than the high levels preceding the Great Recession. Global Debt To GDP is also at record high levels over 300%, as is US Federal Debt To GDP at 125%.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nExcessive debt has been the problem with every financial crisis in history, due to prior money creation out of thin air. So the next one promises to be one for the history books given these unprecedented high debt levels. Debt liquidation and defaults will lead to deflation, particularly for asset prices, as we saw in the Great Recession and even more so in the Great Depression.\n5. Limited Policy Options\nThe primary “bull case” for the stock market and economy over the past 12 years since the Great Recession ended has been “free liquidity” provided in seemingly endless amounts by the Federal Reserve. It is almost as though money really does grow on trees!\nBut money created out of thin air does not create new goods and services that improve living standards. If it did, a place likeZimbabwewould be the wealthiest country in the world. However, newly created money can flow into financial assets, which helps explain why valuation levels are so high.\nThe graph below shows “Austrian” Money Supply (AMS), the best measure of money supply that is consistent withthis Austrian School of Economics definition(although it no longer includes traveler’s checks, which have been discontinued in the Fed’s database due to limited use these days). AMS is up 40% since February 2020 and is up an astounding 225% since the Great Recession ended in June 2009!\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nThis is well above the money supply growth that drove the Roaring ‘20s and ultimately led to the Great Depression of the 1930s, as detailed in economist Murray N. Rothbard’s definitive history of that period in his bookAmerica’s Great Depression. In this book, heexplained the cause of the boom and bust business cycle:\nThe “boom-bust” cycle is generated by monetary intervention in the market, specifically bank credit expansion to business…[B]ank credit expansion sets into motion the business cycle in all its phases: the inflationary boom, marked by expansion of the money supply and by malinvestment; the crisis, which arrives when credit expansion ceases and malinvestments become evident; and the depression recovery, the necessary adjustment process by which the economy returns to the most efficient ways of satisfying consumer desires.\nAll this money creation has enabled the Fed to target theFederal Funds Rateat only 0.1%, as shown below. While that is above the negative interest rates prevailing in some countries, it doesn’t leave much room for the Fed to cut rates to try to prevent a recession, particularly with inflation at over 5% now. And as the chart shows, the Fed cut rates throughout the prior three recessions and bear markets and was not able to stop them, since the market is bigger than the Fed. This leaves the stock market and economy very vulnerable in the next downturn, with potentially no “safety nets” to protect them.\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nLastly, for the Keynesian economists who still believe the dogma that Federal budget deficits can prevent a recession - despite any evidence or logical theory to support it - the current Federal Budget Surplus/Deficit To GDP Ratio of -15% is the worst since World War II, as shown below. Given record-high government debt levels and deficits, how much more deficit spending will bond investors be willing to finance? And what good will it do, since deficits did not prevent the Great Recession?\nSource: Chart courtesy ofFRED, with annotations by Jon Wolfenbarger, CFA.\nImplications For Investors\nThere is much more that can be said to prove our case, but hopefully, the facts provided in this article are sufficient for investors to understand the current risks in financial assets and the economy.\nWhile the exact timing of the next bear market and recession is unknown and there are currently no signs of it with stocks at all-time highs, now is the time for investors to seek out information on how to identify the tell-tale signs of bear markets and how to profit from them, rather than being decimated by them, as the majority of investors, unfortunately, will be.","news_type":1},"isVote":1,"tweetType":1,"viewCount":260,"commentLimit":10,"likeStatus":false,"favoriteStatus":false,"reportStatus":false,"symbols":[],"verified":2,"subType":0,"readableState":1,"langContent":"EN","currentLanguage":"EN","warmUpFlag":false,"orderFlag":false,"shareable":true,"causeOfNotShareable":"","featuresForAnalytics":[],"commentAndTweetFlag":false,"andRepostAutoSelectedFlag":false,"upFlag":false,"length":54,"xxTargetLangEnum":"ORIG"},"commentList":[],"hasMoreComment":false,"orderType":2}