A few weeks ago I wrote about the market decline and why I thought we had a little more to go. Turns out I was right - not to brag. These falls throughout the year are not uncommon. In fact, the average decline in any given year is about 14%.
The S&P 500 is now in the green for August, having climbed nearly 7% out of its most recent hole. To put things into perspective, that's put stocks just 2% off all-time highs reached a month ago.
I believe there were a few triggers that cracked the market:
The Bank of Japan raising rates by 0.25% and unwinding the free carry trade that many hedge funds had in place - not individual investors, hedge funds!
A weaker US jobs reports - which is probably a post pandemic flush out from a period of pent-up jobs.
A weaker than expected reporting period from the big AI players - maybe it was expectations more so than the actual earnings?
Warren Buffett's disclosure of his 50% reducing in holdings of Apple.
All of these factors, which I believe at this point are independent of each other, had a massive hit to investors sentiment. And unfortunately, investor sentiment plays a huge role in what happens to stocks - I mean, we see each and every day with the tickers moving up and down.
The media is full of anecdotes from earnings calls about the economy supposedly slowing down. Here's Apollo's Torsten Sløk:
But the reality is that firms on earnings calls talk less and less about recession, see chart below. In fact, we have never had a recession at the current low level of recession talk, see again chart below.
The latest company earnings reports show us that there is no sign of an imminent recession. More than 90% of the S&P 500 companies have reported their earnings for Q2. Collectively, S&P 500 operating earnings per share (EPS) rose 10.9% y/y during the quarter to a record high of $60.19 - see charts below:
As much as sentiment moves markets, the one factor that really matters is earnings. In fact, this is the true signal amongst all the noise.
Just because the market isn't playing out the way you want it to, doesn't mean the market isn't still in a relatively strong position. I still believe the market fundamentals are strong. We're no doubt going to go through a flushing of the post COVID period with jobs, savings rates, retail sales etc. But that doesn't mean the world is coming to an end. For now, I remain bullish.
Don't hate the player, hate the game.