Bull markets, like the human investors that compose them, are mortal—and sometimes they die in a spectacular and bloody fashion. Trouble is, you never know for sure when a few days of big losses represent a mere dip (or to some, a buying opportunity) and what is the start of bigger decline. But there are at least four signs that appear when equities are approaching the abyss.
Crashes hit with the scary impact of a Category 4 hurricane, ripping apart portfolios that people depend on to fund retirements and college educations. Often, they are precursors to a recession. In 1929, the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost half its value. Amid the early-2020 pandemic, the Dow fell by more than a third. Today, with the market at a heady level, prophets of market doom are everywhere. Example: Michael Burry, the Big Short hedge fund manager who predicted the 2007-08 housing bust and the resulting market rout, sees hazardous amounts of speculation that he says will bring “the mother of all crashes.”
When these four warning signs occur together, be alert that wicked circumstances may ensue:
High market multiples. An overvalued market is tempting fate. The most common means of tracking stocks’ affordability—the price/earnings ratio, or P/E—has been at a high level for some time: for the S&P 500 lately, it’s 26. That’s far above the historical average of about 15. The market tends to revert to the mean. That is, after getting too lofty, it drops to a more sustainable level, a painful experience.
Since stock prices are largely a reflection of corporate earnings, the P/E measures what you are getting for your money. In the third quarter, earnings were burgeoning, and FactSet projects they’ll be up 45% for all of 2021. Next year, though, prospects aren’t as rosy: The research firm expects a dramatic downshift to 8.5%. And if an economic slowdown comes along, those earnings will evaporate.
Another and even more fright-inducing metric is Nobel laureate economist Robert Shiller’s cyclically adjusted price/earnings ration (CAPE), which smooths out earnings gyrations over the preceding 10 years, giving investors a longer view of valuations. The Shiller P/E, as it’s known, is around 40 lately. The last time the CAPE was this high was during the dot com bubble, and a fearsome market descent followed.
Federal Reserve actions. One classic cause of market dives, and thus recessions, is that the Fed raises interest rates too high for investors to stomach. Higher rates make borrowing less attractive and crimp corporate earnings. After keeping short rates near zero, the Fed has indicated that it will hike them beginning late next year. But on Tuesday during testimony Fed Chief Jerome Powell said that persisting inflation (a worrisome 6.2% in October) may nudge the central bank to act sooner and clamp down harder. Economist Jeremy Siegel, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, predicts that the Fed will move in the next month or two, and stocks will slide as a result.