Prepare The Pile

“The key is not to predict the future, but to be prepared for it.”

-Pericles

I was on a plane to Denver last night and was reviewing some of the required reading in my pile. For those of you un-familiar with my research process, my pile is part of it. I never leave home without it. I typically read my pile on a 1-3 week lag.

The Pile revealed 2 different perspectives on preparing for the future trajectory of long-term Global Economic Growth:

1. Goldman Sachs: Global Strategy Paper No. 4 – “The Long Good Buy” (March 21, 2012)
2. Reinhart & Rogoff: “Five Years After Crisis, No Normal Recovery” (April 2, 2012)

Goldman’s view acknowledges that “future growth may be lower than experienced over the past decade in many parts of the world”, but that equities are already pricing in “unrealistically large declines in growth.” They’re making both a growth and valuation call.

Reinhart & Rogoff suggest that “the concepts of recession and recovery need to take on new meaning” and that “financial crises leave behind deep recessions of long duration and considerable volatility.” They’re calling for debt and volatility to slow growth.

The Pile did not change my 5 year-old view on the Global Growth Cycle. Neither did it change my risk management process. From these debt and deficit levels, Big Government Interventions in our markets and economies will continue to:

A)     Shorten economic cycles

B)      Amplify market volatility

As growth slows, “cheap” markets get cheaper. Valuation isn’t a catalyst until growth re-accelerates.

Back to the Global Macro Grind…

While it’s interesting to observe the emotion and Storytelling associated with why the US stocks are going down, this morning’s Global Macro research process reveals pretty much the same thing we have been flagging since February. While Growth Slowing, globally, may be new to a US stock market centric media consensus, it’s not new to the rest of the world.

Here’s a quick Global Equity market update:

1.   ASIA – context is always critical, so it’s important to acknowledge that 2 of the major leading indicators in Asia, the Hang Seng and the Nikkei, stopped going up on February 29th and March 27th, respectively. Inclusive of this week’s declines, the Hang Seng and Nikkei are down -6.1% and -7.0% from their YTD tops. India, Australia, and Singapore are all bearish TRADE.

 

2.   EUROPE – if Germany’s DAX is susceptible to a 6.2% correction from its YTD high (March 15th), any equity market in the world is. Germany’s employment situation is much more stable than that of the US, despite neighboring some of the most dysfunctional debt/deficit laden countries in the world. Spain is the Global Macro train wreck of the YTD, down -11%.

3.   USA – the SP500 finally broke our immediate-term TRADE line of 1391 support yesterday, but has only corrected -2.6% from its April 2nd top. The Russell 2000 stopped going up 3 weeks ago and is down -5.1% from its March 26th top (immediate-term TRADE resistance there is now 822). As for the 50-day moving averages – we only use them for behavioral observations.

The rest of the world, of course, doesn’t hinge on Dow 13,000 or the price of Apple. It’s globally interconnected, across asset classes, from countries, to currencies, bonds, and commodities.

Here are my Top 10 cross asset class callouts to make a note of this morning:

1. US Equity Volatility (VIX) has held its long-term TAIL of 14.41 support and is now breaking out above our 16.24 TRADE line
2. Oil Volatility (OVX) remains above its immediate-term TRADE line of 28.43 support as Oil prices break TRADE support
3. Brent Oil (BNO) has finally broken its immediate-term TRADE support line of $124.23/barrel
4. Copper continues to be broken from a long-term TAIL perspective and immediate-term TRADE resistance = $3.85/lb
5. Gold is in a freshly formed Bearish Formation (bearish TRADE, TREND, and TAIL) with next support = $1616/oz
6. Spanish and Italian 10yr bond yields remain in a Bullish Formation (bullish TRADE, TREND, and TAIL)
7. US Treasury 10yr bond yields continue to signal Growth Slowing, under both TRADE resistance of 2.18% and TAIL 2.47%
8. US Treasury Curve Yield Spread (10s minus 2s), which is a proxy for growth’s slope, has compressed 14bps wk/wk
9. US Dollar Index is moving into a stealth Bullish Formation with intermediate-term TREND support = $79.55
10. Japanese Yen is bumping up against another lower long-term high at $81.23 (vs USD) and remains in a Bearish Formation

I have a passion for my team’s process because it’s had repeatable success in revealing the deep simplicity of Growth and Inflation Accelerating or Decelerating, globally, on a real-time basis. I Prepare The Pile every day so that I am always reading the counter punches to our overall risk management conclusions, but I do not defer to The Pile’s views based on short-term market moves.

What we’ve all had the opportunity to learn in the last 5 years is that if you get the intermediate-term TRENDS in both Growth and Inflation right, and you’ll get a lot of other things right. Valuation calls with no catalysts are called opinions. If you’re using the wrong Global Economic Growth assumptions, you’re basing your “valuation” work on the wrong numbers anyway.

My immediate-term support and resistance ranges for Gold, Oil (Brent), US Dollar Index, and the SP500 are now $1, $121.31-123.84, $79.55-80.16, and 1, respectively.

Best of luck out there today,

KM

Keith R. McCullough
Chief Executive Officer