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Why Rising Stock Market Is Bad News
By Shlomo Maital
The New York Times reports: “The US stock market is off to its best start (of the year) since 1987”. Good news? And then the bad news….”investors are expected to dump hundreds of billions of dollars of shares this year.” Bad news.
So what in the world is going on? The article, by Matt Phillips ,has an uncharacteristically clear, simple explanation.
Remember that Trump tax cut? The one that put billions of dollars into the pockets of the wealthy and the corporations? Well it made the corporaitons cash flush.
What did they do with the cash?
Invest it, in infrastructure, R&D, innovation?
Not exactly.
They mostly used it to buy back their own shares, massively.
Why? Simply – to funnel that big tax cut directly into the pockets of shareholders, at low (capital gains) tax rates.
Share buy back by corporations drove the market up. Even at a time when armchair investors, funds, etc…. were selling. Investors aren’t dumb. They will take their profits, before the market crumbles when the buy backs of corporations stop.
I avoid the stock market. But for those who want to listen, I counsel, don’t hold shares of businesses that buy back their own shares. Why? If the best investment businesses can make, is buying back their own shares, rather than developing new and better products, well — dump them. Share buy backs are abysmal. They are caused by CEO’s seeking to look good, in the short years they hold the position, under pressure of myopic shareholders and Boards.
Share buy backs have now cemented corporations as the leading source of demand for shares – their own. This is a fundamental change in the way the stock market works. It is a change for the worse. When companies STOP buying back their own shares, they will pull the rug out from under the market.
This will happen, perhaps, when the US enters recession – something most economists expect to happen by 2021.
Stock Prices Plummet in October
By Shlomo Maital
On Sept. 13, in a blog titled “the coming meltdown”, I noted signs that the world economy was weakening.
Now, in this the middle of October, stocks have declined sharply. For the month, U.S. stocks are down 5 per cent, German stocks are down 9 per cent and French stocks are down 11 per cent. There are a number of causes. Believe it or not, Ebola has created a negative mindset. Oil prices are down, slashing profits for many big companies and nations. Demand appears to be weakening in Europe, raising fears of a third recession since 2009. Geopolitics are highly unstable, with problems in Ukraine, the Mideast and elsewhere.
At the same time, there is a flight to ‘safety’. Bond prices are up, as demand increases, with investors willing and even eager to take low yields in return for safety.
The bright spot is the U.S. economy. Falling gasoline prices, often below $3 a gallon, have put money into working people’s pockets and they are spending it. This is a natural experiment. It amazes me how economists and policymakers are ignoring this simple evidence — spurring demand helps the economy! America’s economy is doing better than Europe’s as a result.
October is an awful month for stock prices, for some reason. In October 1987, the market fell 20 per cent on a single day, but that was due to computer trading and a doom loop link between spot and future prices.
The mindset of global investors continues to be shaky. In the end, it is the confidence, or lack of it, of global investors that drives equity and bond prices. When world headlines are terrible, as they are now, investors run for cover.
TIMnovate 