Interesting piece today. I don't listen to Cramer much; he, like his former co-host, are too devoted to the characters they play on TV. That said,
Cramer made an interesting point (8/19/2020) about the shape and future of the market:
The S&P’s new highs are a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing about the hardship of millions of people on food stamps, or the millions about to be fired from service jobs, or the homeless, or the people who are just huddled at home waiting for the vaccine . . .
You don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure this out. Just look the stocks that have brought us to these levels — they’re not the recovery plays. In fact, they are the opposite. They are stocks that tend to do well, because of what we call secular consideration [not] classic recovery stocks.
The winners in this market are the companies that are most divorced from the underlying economy.
Which is to say, it does not appear to be a prelude to a rebound in the underlying economy.
That's sadly consistent with a new E*Trade survey of the beliefs and behaviors of Millennial and Gen Z investors, the so-called RobinHood investors who, in many cases, are using the market as a substitute for sports betting and other entertainment.
E*Trade reports (8/19/2020) that such investors:
- Risk tolerance skyrockets since the pandemic. Over half (51%) of Gen Z and Millennial investors say their risk tolerance has increased since the coronavirus outbreak, 23 percentage points higher than the total population.
- They are taking cash off the sidelines. Over one in three investors (34%) under the age of 34 said they are moving out of cash and into new positions, 15 percentage points higher than the total population.
- They are trading more frequently. Over half of investors (51%) under the age of 34 said they are trading equities and 46% said they’re trading derivatives more frequently since the pandemic, compared to 30% and 22% of the total population, respectively.
- They’re optimistic for a quick recovery.
If you care: "E-Trade's quarterly survey was conducted from July 1 to July 9 and included a sample of 873 self-directed active investors managing at least $10,000."
Fool (or coward) that I am, my portfolio remains pretty hedged in the sense that I'm maintaining
RiverPark Short-Term High Yield(RPHYX) and substituting
T. Rowe Price Multi-Strategy Total Return (TMSRX) for more of my fixed-income and a bit of my equity exposure. Overall equity exposure is 50%ish, though a foolishly high percentage is non-US stocks.
For what that's worth,
David
Comments
I have a hard time combining the stats you describe with the stats that say most Americans don't have 400 simoleans in savings.
There's something about the Robinhood stories that remind me of the animus surrounding avocado toast.
Someone bid Hertz up to a ridiculous level at some point. But where I live we can still find two avocados for a dollar. And that covers a few slices of toast.
“The regulatory environment next year is going to be brutal for these [six] companies."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/08/19/tech-stocks-markets/
And I don't read the Bezos Post.
I find myself agreeing with Jim Cramer here ... which happens, from time to time.
Remember the irrational exhuberance going into the Dot Com Crash (Pets.Com!), the Housing Bubble (5 houses on NINJA loans!), and now this.
Remember when you start seeing day-trading ads and services on TV and people start buying into the mania thinking they can't ever lose and that markets only go in one direction (up) that it's time to start inching closer toward the fire exit. As Jeremy Irons' character from 'Margin Call' said, "it's not panic if you're the first one out the door."
What is particualrly disturbing is the 'gamification' of investing by platforms like Robinhood that conflate longterm "investing" for wealth-building and retirement planning with "trading".
My investment portfolio is downright boring compared to most people, and I'm fine with that. It's also why I don't believe in the indices or do index-based investing -- because they're so heavily influenced by a single-digit's worth of ultramegacorps and don't reflect broader equity sentiments.
Remember when GE was cock of the walk? IBM? Intel? Oracle? Cisco? Microsoft? Hey . . . wait a minute.
I searched on nifty fifty and found it is a real thing on the Indian stock market at the present time.
1) The economy, unemployment, inflation, debt, opinions, experts are not the stock market. They can be off by months and years.
2) As a trader I only depend on charts, uptrends that derive from the price. The price is the ultimate indicator. It is what sellers and buyers agree on real time regardless of anything.
3) The top 6-10 high tech companies are nothing like the dot com or nifty fifty. They control the world with enormous cash flow and earnings. Sure, one day they will be down but not for long and these top high tech may be replaced by others just like INTC is no longer a top one.
4) You can join the ride and leave any time. Just hold an index like SPY,QQQ with a trailing order at a certain % you are willing to lose and let it go. You can do it with a certain % of your portfolio.
5) As a retiree I only trade stocks/ETFs/CEFs/GLD/whatever when I have a very good chance to make several % in hours and days (when it goes down, then goes up with a clear uptrend and then I join the ride). For the rest I use bond OEFs.
Equally likely are an alternative set of scenarios.
- A very long multi-year (even multi-decade) “rolling” decline to normal valuations with alternating good and bad years. Patient investors can still make money in such an environment - but would require more insight and ingenuity than simply buying the index.
- A rotational correction where the big overvalued names fall while the undervalued equity sectors gain. Financials have lagged. And while one might think the energy, commodity, natural resource sectors overvalued after a recent surge, truth be told those areas are just emerging from the worst decade long bear market in history.
- Correction by stagnation. Equities essentially go nowhere for a decade or longer while the dollar sags, global interest rates rise, and the CPI , real assets, real estate climb in value. Even without a sharp decline, equities would have returned to more normal valuations relative to the dollar and other asset classes over a decade or so.
- Black swans. War, domestic upheaval, shifts in the global balance of power, plagues, environmental catastrophe can all upend an economy and jolt markets leading to different end results than anyone anticipated.
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I might speculate on short-term index moves via futures or ETFs but 95+ percent of my investments are for the long term unless the current situation suggests I should 'raise shields' a bit and go defensive ... which I did w/stuff i bought in Feb which I wanted to hold for the long term, but which I sold this month after insane run-ups in recent months.
Too bad there aren't futures on popcorn we could go long on while watching things, eh?
I don't know if that's likely, and I'd personally prefer your "happy ending" but I feel like the above is what a lot of big investors are currently betting on.
I'd also add one more to your list of what could jolt markets: President Elect Biden says Elizabeth Warren will be Treasury Secretary. I'd personally love it, but I don't think the markets (and the tech giants) would.
There's an alternate cinema now showing. That's the previously tabu (X-rated) pressures now being exerted on the Fed by the Trump administration - mostly arm twisting thru public denigration - but also implicit threats to radically restructure the Fed, perhaps by adding more voting members and by making the Chair recallable at any time. Trump's nomination of maverick Judy Shelton, who would have the U.S. return to the gold standard, for a Fed post is an interesting one. Mainly, I think, he wants to rattle Powell and the others; but it's hard to imagine how anything approaching a gold standard would help the markets keep rising. After all - loose fiscal and monetary policies are "golden" for sustaining asset bubbles. A gold standard, in contrast, would exert just the opposite effect. The bottom line to all this is that if the current regime persists for another four years monetary policy is likely to become more uncertain (perhaps more unstable) than now envisioned.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/23/opinion/trump-convention-economy.html