Santa Claws Snatches Christmas Stock Market Rally

By Moxie837 (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Horror movies begin with a simple, almost innocent hint that something is not quite right. The first sign that we have entered the shadowy dawn of global economic collapse, which I call the “Epocalypse,” is Santa Claus’s failure to show up on Wall Street at Christmastime. A Santa Claus rally for the New York Stock Exchange is as dependable as December snow in New York’s Central Park. Oddly, December snow also didn’t happen this year.

 

The year Santa Claus forgot

 

‘Twas an eerily balmy December in New York when Santa Claus failed to rally the stock market. Heat waves were rising from Central Park as both the Dow and the S&P 500 limped out of a particularly scrappy year, bloody and torn. Thus ended a multi-year winning streak by closing out in the red. The S&P 500 experienced its worst sell-off in four years and its most volatility since the financial crisis known as “the Great Recession.”

Both indexes banged their heads against an immovable ceiling throughout 2015. If you’ve been reading here long you know that I predicted the stock market would crash in 2014. Many would say I was wrong, given that a surprising number of trusted experts continued to call 2015 a bull market. But a look at the graph below tells a simple truth. The market plunged in the fall of 2014 into what some called a 10% correction, but what happened near the end of 2014 was a transformation far worse than a mere correction:

 

DowGraph

 

In a correction, the market recovers to rise again. It looks to me like the US stock market had a heart attack in September of 2014, from which it went into fibrillation for all of 2015. Then it had another coronary in late August and September of 2015. Even though the tail-wagging, bobble-head dogs of Wall Street kept baying as if they were chasing a bull uphill, I see no evidence of that through all of 2015. They are all bark and as empty of reason as they can possibly be.

All of that is, in my mind, a crash of sorts. The market never developed a rising trend line again, had its second massive coronary and finally closed lower than it began. As for the Santa Clause rally, the final December column looks like nothing but a down trend to me.

Here is one fact that should catch your attention: The best the stock market did all year was to crawl along its ceiling in spastic jerks, even though it was amped up all year on the Fed’s amphetamines (zero interest stimulus). Throughout 2015, investors almost always responded as if bad news were good news because it meant the Fed would continue with that stimulus that was keeping the market minimally alive. Yet, turning all bad news into good was barely enough to hold the market flat, and it even gradually rounded downward, ending on a sour note.

Ask yourself, “If this is how bad the stock market performed all year on Fed stimulus when bad news nearly always was perceived positively as indicating Fed stimulus would continue, what is the market going to do now without that stimulus in a world flooded with bad economic news?

The bulls were hoping a Santa Claus rally would, at least, add some merit to their year of bullish blather by causing the market to close the year up slightly from where it began. Didn’t happen, just as I said earlier this month it would not.

 

Santa’s crippled reindeer

 

The worst part of this news is that there were only ten stocks keeping the US stock market from being a bear market all year. (Ten stocks did so well they kept the market’s average flat even as nearly all other stocks fell.) One of those ten was Apple, which many thought was practically invincible. In the final month of 2015, when Santa was supposed to arrive with Christmas cheer, a declining sales outlook took the first bite out the Apple, and it closed with its biggest loss in stock value since the crash of 2008.

What that means is that one of Santa’s ten reindeer broke its leg and wasn’t able to help pull Santa’s sleigh up into the sky this Christmas. From its record high in the spring of 2015, Apple fell, with its shares losing a fifth of their value. A 20% loss is considered a bear market if one is talking about the US stock market overall. Apple dipped 17.5%, so one can say that it is on the cusp now of being in a bear market of its own.

This doesnt mean Apple is doomed; but what it does mean is that one of the ten reindeer that had been pulling this sled of a stock market along enough to, at least, maintain a horizontal but bumpy run, developed a lame leg. And those ten, when all were doing well, barely had enough pull to keep the market horizontal … with the lure of Fed stimulus still dangling before their noses.

 

No Miracle at Macy’s this year

 

I bet my blog that Santa’s alter ego would arrive this Christmas. Instead of the usual stock rally, the stock market would crash in the final quarter of the year after a brief rally when the Fed ended its stimulus. That brief rally (not the Santa Claus rally) I said would happen because all the market bulls would be euphoric that the much-feared day of Fed terminus had come and nothing bad happened. That rally was even more brief than I thought it would be, lasting all of two hours!

The significance of the end of Fed stimulus was never, in my mind, the quarter-of-a-percent increase in interest. It was the fact that investors would no longer perceive bad news as good news. The ludicrous lift that was created throughout 2015 from bad news has suddenly turned into lead. Not only is there no more free money (though money is still close to being free), but  all bad news now reverts from a lofting effect to downward pressure.

That’s a double whammy, which most people still have not realized is the new market dynamic; but the last two weeks of December already show us what this looks like. After the Fed finally came off of its zero-interest target, we saw the market decline reflexively every time it got more news about oil prices dropping, which increases the risk of bankruptcies, bond defaults and layoffs in the oil industry and in businesses that serve that industry.

The oil industry was the primary driver of the Fed’s jobs recovery. You won’t see oil helping the job market again in 2016. With China stating in December that it will decline more in 2016 (and People’s Republic hates to admit bad news), all commodities are certain to fall more for some time, though the rate of fall may decrease.

With turmoil in the middle east getting worse every month, with all emerging markets in serious decline (now bailing themselves out by expending their sovereign treasures) and with many stock markets in other countries already in bear territory, there is a lot more bad news to push the US stock market down than there is good news to help it up. Therefore, whatever bumps it may get up along the way, the overall trend is steeply down.

Santa Claws also decided to deliver pink slips for Christmas. We got our first return to bad news in the jobs market with word that jobless claims made their first jump up in many months — an increase of 20,000. That’s not a huge increase, but it is the first turn to moving in the wrong direction after months of having not seen that kind of trouble. The 287,000 new jobless claims was the highest in half a year, and the 20,000 increase that got us there happened all in one week.

The pink slips must have cast a rosy reflection over the glasses of many economists because they found an optimistic explanation for this that makes no sense to the rational mind, but apparently is quite satisfactory for modern economists: “Seasonal layoffs,” they said. Really? The rise was already seasonally adjusted, and it was for a work week that ended on Christmas Day.

Since when do holiday jobs terminate before Christmas? Most businesses keep their holiday help on long enough to help with the returns that come in after Christmas and the after-Christmas close-out and end-of-year inventory sales. There seems to be no limit to the nonsense economists spew to keep the dumb masses from getting scared by truth.

Moreover, most businesses are closed on Christmas (Friday this year), and the government is closed on Christmas, So, the layoffs would have had to all happen on or before Christmas Eve Day, and everyone would have had to rush to file their jobless claims after work, before the government closed and before their Christmas Eve celebrations.

Today’s economists think you’re dumb enough to believe that is a reasonable scenario — that lots of businesses laid off their extra holiday help before the heaviest day of the holidays. They cannot even convince me they believe that. If they do believe it, they’ve held their heads under the punchbowl for too long. And if they are bizarrely right, that only tells you how horrible the holiday sales season must have been — that they’d retire the extra help before it was over.

Santa Claws also brought some bloody-bad news in time for New Year’s Eve. The US is solidly in a manufacturing recession. At a rating of 42.9, the Chicago PMI (Purchasing Manger Index) closed the year well below its 50-point median, which is the level at which business is neither up nor down.

 

Down from 48.7 in November, the final US economic data point of the year sums up perfectly what a disaster Yellen has hiked rates into. (Zero Hedge)

 

December’s numbers mark the seventh month of contraction this year and bring the manufacturing index to a six-and-a-half year low. In other words, US manufacturing hasn’t been this bad since the official years of the Great Recession. The quarterly average was the weakest since the third quarter of 2009.

New orders, one component of the index, contracted at a faster pace, which means the future outlook is bleak as well. Manufacturing is not only down; there are fewer orders in line to stimulate future production.

Company purchasing agents overwhelmingly reported that business activity was below seasonal norms. Businesses that normally see an uptick during the holiday season, as well as those that normally see a decline, both reported worse-than-normal activity. So, there is nothing seasonal about this decline.

Similarly, the Dallas Fed’s general business activity index plunged from an already declining rate of -4.9 in November to -20.1 in December. Anything below zero in the Dallas Fed’s measurements means business is contracting. The gauge has been below zero all year, but now it is plummeting.

Economists blamed some of this decline on warmer-than-average temperatures in the eastern half of the US. Gee, last year, economists were blaming bad economic statistics on colder-than-average temperatures. That would lead me to conclude the only temperature that works for the US economy any more is an exactly average temperature. That’s kind of fussy. Humbug.

Santa Claws looked even longer in the tooth outside of the US. European stocks plunged 5% in December, their worst drop during the holidays since 2002. Moreover, they plunged because the European Central Bank promised to continue its economic stimulus. That’s weird! The ECB promised more free money for investors, and stocks fell?

The inverse reaction happened because the Christmas revelers were disappointed by the size of the package once they looked under the tree. Gone are the days when the gifts of a central bank automatically brought cheer to the rosy faces of market investors. This year European investors stomped their feet under the Christmas tree because their gift did not have a big enough bow, and the box was smaller.

 

Santa Claws ripped into Macy’s, too

 

After the holidays, Macy’s announced it was firing 4,800 employees. About half of the cuts come from forty store closings, a plan announced last fall. The rest will come from streamlining operations due to the bad Christmas shopping season.

Sales during the holiday season were down over 5%, and Macy’s has reduced its anticipated earnings per share for the year down about 17%. Apparently Santa Clause said, “Ho, ho, humbug” on 34th Street this year.

Macy’s blamed part of the slowdown on the movement of customers to online shopping, even though Macy’s has been stepping up it own online presence, part of it to a demographic move toward sending extra money on dining out, rather than shopping, and part of it on the weather. Hmm, this year the weather was too warm. Last year, the economic slowdown was because the weather was too cold. Is there no end to shopping for excuses?

 

So much for December. How did 2015 as a whole turn out?

 

Commodities crashed worldwide, and almost no one avoids calling that a “crash” at this point. So, I have nothing to be concerned about for having also bet my blog that we would enter a global economic collapse by the end of 2015. Oil, coal, gold and that reliable economic barometer, copper – you name it — it all came down hard. Oil plummeted almost 35% from an already low position, and copper closed the year 25% lower. The Bloomberg Commodities Index plummeted 25% overall in what was its fifth straight year of decline. Such a massive overall deflation in commodities has to eventually affect the price of everything made from those commodities as well.

Toward the end of 2015, junk bonds began to tear apart because of the commodities crash. More importantly, the junk-bond crash began to spill over in November and December into investment-grade bonds as bond fund managers were forced to start selling their higher-value bonds in order to find liquidity to pay off investors who want out of the funds due to the failing junk bonds.

I’ve said in the past that, while housing is going to crash again, housing is not going to lead the crash this time. Corporate bonds of commodity-sourcing industries are already leading the crash.

Stock markets took their worst hit in late August and early September when China entered rough waters, and things have been bouncy ever since. Warren Buffet lost a bundle (but not more than he can afford — just $8 billion.)

Hedge funds started collapsing as bonds went bonkers. The ratio of endangered bonds versus healthy bonds as well as the number of defaults have both hit their highest levels since the official years of the Great Recession.

Nearly 700 hedge funds died in the first three quarters of 2015 — the last quarter yet to be known.

 

The [hedge-fund] money managers who charge some of the highest fees on Wall Street had a chance in 2015 to outperform a flat stock market and end years of subpar performance. Instead, hedge funds lost more than 3%, on average…. “Everything went wrong,” said Alexander Roepers, founder of $1.5 billion hedge-fund firm Atlantic Investment Management. “There were very few places to hide.” (The Wall Street Journal)

 

I won’t go into more detail about all that fell in 2015 because I’ve covered a good portion of it here: “Epocalypse Soon: The Great Economic Collapse is Happening.” Bloomberg called 2015 “The Year Nothing Worked: Stocks, Bonds, Cash Go Nowhere“:

 

It’s the worst year for asset allocation funds since 1937…. The idea behind asset allocation is simple: when one market struggles, it’s OK because an investor can jump into another that is thriving. Not so in 2015…. Investors found themselves with nowhere to run at a time when the Federal Reserve’s campaign of stimulus drew to an end. Normally it isn’t like this. Since 1995, practically every year has seen some asset deliver returns exceeding 10 percent…. “This year is a wake-up call to think about lower returns for the next several years.”

 


 

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So, about that bet, what about this blog!

 

It all sounds like the final quarter of 2007 to me; so I am not too concerned about having bet my blog on a global economic collapse and a US stock market crash at the end of 2015, as I think all of this is spinning rapidly downward into a vortex that will take everything down. Nevertheless, if it doesn’t, I’ll honor my word and stop writing this blog.

With a headline like Bloomberg’s to sum up 2015, can anyone still seriously argue I was wrong when I predicted the stock market would crash in the fall of 2014? Maybe a bit off in degree — I’ll acknowledge that — but it has proven over time to be a pretty bad pile-up, at best. I think you’ll be seeing a lot of headlines at the start of 2016 about what a lousy year 2015 was for the global economy as well as the US stock market.

A sudden move in the fall of 2014 from a bull market that had maintained a steady climb with few interruptions for well over five years to a year of “going nowhere” is certainly a crack-up if not an off-the-cliff stock-market crash. The 2014 September-October plunge wasn’t just a “correction.” A correction means a pricing problem was solved, and now the market goes on. It didn’t go on. It doesn’t matter that the bulls continued to try to buffalo the market out of its malaise all year with their baloney.

The bottom line is that anyone who bought stocks and held them went nowhere because the bull market died completely — stocks, bonds and cash. (I.e., lock, stock and smoking barrels.) It lay dead, giving off occasional post-mortem spasms and a bad stink for an entire year, and now we’re about to see it all get buried.

I expect you will see the Santa Claus rally that turned out, instead, to be a downhill sled run will continue to steepen and then go over a cliff. In the very least, for my bet to be won so my blog continues, I have to be able to show that mid-December began a relentless bear market — a long cascade downhill. If it doesn’t turn out to be the growing Epocalypse I said would come, I’ll stop writing this blog, even at a time when its readership and profitability have been rapidly increasing.

Bear in mind, however, that no global economic collapse has ever played out in a day or week or month. I’ve said all along that a collapse of that breathtaking magnitude takes months or years to fully play out, just as the Great Recession did. The change to a severe downtrend, however, should become quite clear. It, however, only takes weeks to show the market has stabilized or is rising like a bull out of its ashes once again.

Somebody in this world needs to stand by what he says. I am sick to death of the hoards of false prophets who endlessly revise their dates and who even claim to be speaking for God, though their dates prove wrong. I’m weary of the permabears who have been wrong year after year but who keep saying what they say until they are accidentally right. That means I’m weary of those who don’t put specific time frames on their predictions. I’m even sicker of the prophets of false profit — those permabulls who have kept bellowing all of last year about a bull market when a simple graph can prove they are full of their own bull%^*!.

Things either unfold now as I have claimed they are starting to, or I fold up. I believe what I have said as strongly as I believed in the collapse of 2008 clear back in 2007 before it happened, and that turned out to be exactly what I told others it would be. As the movie, The Big Short, shows, it was possible to see that coming if you were not living in denial or full of corruption. Our family was better off for having seen the unpopular truth. I remember my own conversations at that time with a well-healed real estate agent who argued, “This is just a gully. Real estate always goes up.”

I am not claiming to be predicting anything here by divine inspiration — just by good sense, unblinded by economic denial. And, having made a big point out of that, I’ll make just as big of a point about how I was wrong … if that proves to be the case.

To me, the surprise lack of a Santa Claus rally (surprise to many, but predicted here) is the first harbinger that the Epocalypse has begun. So, hold onto your sled!

Or, as the old adage, says: “If Santa Claus should fail to call, bears will come to Broad and Wall.”

 

Earlier articles about the dawning Epocalypse

 

Alternative safe-haven investments — not gold or silver but old coins made of gold and silver.

Note that one should learn a little about investing in old, rare coins, as one should about any kind of investing before jumping in. Learn the possible pitfalls but also how they have proven to be a safe haven for many people in the worst of times.

 

How to invest in rare, old, gold and silver coins:

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Rare gold and silver coins for every budget:

[Note that these are not my coins, and I have not evaluated their actual worth or their likelihood of either rising in worth or holding their value. That’s your work if you are interested in an alternative to stocks and bonds, which are both falling already, and gold and silver, which is easily manipulated in price by the central banks and national treasuries that own huge hoards of it. I present them because readers keep asking for some alternatives, and it has occurred to me that having your gold and silver in the form of rare coins that add collector value is an interesting niche investment.]

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10 Comments

  1. Ping from jakartaman:

    As I am writing this the dow is down 350 and China has suspended trading.
    I am onboard except for the prediction of a slow world economic collapse.
    I see MOST country’s economies on the brink at best – when the proverbial straw get put on – I think we could see a fast total world collapse – not months weeks at best

    • Ping from Knave_Dave:

      I believe we’ll likely see the US stock market fall off a cliff quickly, too, but when I’m betting my blog on it, I lean toward a little more conservative prediction ; )

      The main thing I am saying, though, is that the global economy will be a long collapse. It’s a train wreck, and trains don’t crash like automobiles in a second. They crash and just keep on crashing until every last car has joined the pile.

      –David

  2. Ping from Delving Eye:

    Great analogy, Dave. Hoping for a rising Dow is sort of like hoping for the Jets to make the playoffs. Your lame Apple reindeer? It’s like seeing Muhammed Wilkerson limp off the field yesterday with a really bad ankle. That’s the season for him. And the Jets. And the economy. :/

    • Ping from Delving Eye:

      And this, from the NYTimes, December 30, 2015:

      Pending U.S. Home Sales Declined Again in November:
      Contracts to buy previously owned homes fell in November for the third
      time in four months, a signal that growth in the housing market could be
      cooling.

      Ya think?

      • Ping from Knave_Dave:

        “Ya think” is right. People are surprised to see this coming? It would appear the collapse of the housing market is rapidly catching up with the collapse of the stock market, which is rapidly catching up with the collapse of the bond market. It’s looking a little more like all could go down at the same time. Whoosh!

        • Ping from 3:30 Ramp Capital LLC:

          The great reset comes before or after the election?

          • Ping from jakartaman:

            Before and Trump walks into the White House

          • Ping from Knave_Dave:

            In terms of the stock market, probably both: The market will crash this year, but before it turns into total carnage, the Fed and the executive branch will do anything and everything they have to to rescue it so that Obama looks like a savior. We’ll get a dizzying look into how deep the pit really is. The safety cable we’re attached to will suddenly jerk tight, suspending us over the flames of hell inside the pit, and the populous will be thankful that Obama rescued them. Once the elections are over, the temporary suspension will give way and the market will fall into the pit of hell. That’s the best-case scenario.

            Housing’s ride will probably be slower. The crash of the bond market may be momentarily suspended by flight of capital from the stock market; but the failure of junk bonds will prevail.

            It’s hard to say for sure, but you know the administration and eventually the Fed will do all they can to arrest the fall, even though nothing they do will resolve the underlying problems that are causing the fall. Meanwhile Republicans will be, as they have been for eight years, content to let the country crash into oblivion so that the president gets the blame. If the president’s party is trashed due to guilt by association, then the Republicans can hope to win the White House.

            There’s likely to be little love for the Republicans, but that will improve Trump’s likelihood of winning the nomination because he is the non-Republican Republican. Beating Hillary will be another problem altogether, as the uncommitted center of the country is unlikely to vote for someone as extreme as Trump or with the brash personality of Trump. So, it’s going to be a wild and crazy race.

            Another way of saying all of this is that “It’s a train wreck,” so who knows what car will end up where as there are too many colliding parts to predict; but it will be a mess; and whatever rescue operation happens (as you know one will), it will leave plenty of room to fall further.

            –David

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