The headlines are terrifying. The jobless rate is the highest it's been since 1983 -- 8.1% -- and it could get worse.
"We'll be at 10% unemployment by year end," Joseph LaVorgna, chief U.S. economist at Deutsche Bank, told the Wall Street Journal (subscription required). "What's going to stop it?"
The gloom and doom crew has been winning the day lately, but here's the question: What does it all mean for stocks?
Go back to 1983 for the answer -- four years after BusinessWeek had declared the permanent death of equities. That year marked essentially the beginning of the greatest bull run in history. From 1982 through 1999, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soared from 800 to over 11,000.
What prepared the market for such an unprecedented run? A big part of it was the overwhelmingly negative sentiment surrounding the stock market at that time. All the "weak hands" had ditched the stock market in a fear-driven panic, leaving the market with nowhere to go but up once the economy started to show signs of life.
None of this is to say that we've reached the bottom of the market, or that we're about to go back up again. But the point is this: Near-record unemployment has not, historically, been an omen of bad things to come.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-08-2009 @ 2:36PM
tom said...
I think it's crazy to buy stocks now.
If you buy it you need to have some stop loss rules.
It took me a lot of time to find out about it but then I found histocky.com that helped me.
It's not just buy or sell , it's also have a psycologhy sides.
How do you handle a losss...
Some people can't handle a loss of one dollar and some , like warren buffet can lose more than 10 billion dollars
3-08-2009 @ 4:15PM
Joe Henderson said...
Wonder how much stock these spinsters are wanting to dump on the naive or gullible. Now, if the dollar continues to drop to lira-levels the stock might reflect this in prices.
3-08-2009 @ 8:27PM
Scott Thoburn said...
In the 80's the fed raised interest rates to fight inflation. They started the economy back up by lowering interest rates. This time it is really different, interest rates are close to 0. So what is going to start this next bull market? Hot air?
3-08-2009 @ 10:23PM
TX CHL Instructor said...
Things are a bit different this time. Obama just managed to get the largest slab of pork ever passed in the history of the US (without a single congressman of either house actually reading it prior to the vote, which bothers me all by itself), and there is another one following closely behind it. To a Lib, the only thing wrong with the first one was that it wasn't big enough. It's like congress has become a bunch of pre-schoolers let loose in a candy store and told they can have whatever they want.
The money supply has been increased by a staggering amount in just the last month, and the only reason that we aren't already seeing inflation is that there is enough mistrust of the banking system that a lot of that money is staying out of the banking system (just like in the 1930's), thereby decreasing the money velocity. Deflation may be a positive-feedback situation, but eventually Obama's printing presses are going to overwhelm the "mattress money", and we will see hyperinflation similar 1923 Germany -- only due to the increased speed of the spread of information now, it will happen MUCH faster.
Of course, I could be wrong (actually, I hope so) and the government could miraculously stop the inflation before it got out of hand. I wouldn't bet on that, though. Especially since the folks in charge don't appear to have the first clue about elementary economics.
I predict that there will be some draconian (but unsuccessful) attempts to stop the hyperinflation. One such attempt will be to outlaw cash, and try to force everyone to use the banking system.
If you haven't already, I recommend that you stock several months' worth of canned foods (a good idea even in 'normal' times, and these are NOT normal times).
--
www.chl-tx.com
3-09-2009 @ 1:50AM
Gary E. Sattler said...
In the eighties and nineties, the growth engine was the tech boom.
What's the growth engine this time, Zac?
The "green economy"?
pffft!
3-09-2009 @ 6:06AM
al coholic said...
That's a good point, Gary, but I believe the tech revolution has only begun and the next twenty years may astonish us.
One thing's for sure. As TX mentions in comment #4 runnaway inflation cannot be ruled out considering the enormous sums of money we are spinning out of thin air. The amount of spending that created the last round of inflation in the 70's pales in comparison to the staggering sums we are dealing with today.
3-09-2009 @ 10:42AM
Iridium said...
Much of what fueld the great bullsh*t run was the massive consolidation of the economy into a few mega players in the global market. We saw the wholesale destruction of the small business economy and hundreds of thousands of small local companies go belly up.
The entire economic structure that held up the US economy, small business, collapsed. What was left in its wake is the mega corporation too big to fail. Yes the DOW surged and yes you could have made a ton of money betting on the mega corporation but look what it brought us. It brought us to the brink of a total global meltdown that may take decades to recover.
The rise of the mega corporation also brought with it massive governemnt spending and a sphere of influence that trumps the American voter. Corporations forced thier political will on Washington adn the middle class was destroyed in the process.
The run to 11,000 in 1999 was based on fake money and creative accounting. It wasn't based on anything real. How many mergers and aquisitions added to the BS. We are not better off.
Soon we will be left with one corporation in each sector. Just like the federal government the ammount of waste generated through running the massive enterprise will cause it to fail. The mega corp may bring in $1 trillion in revenue yet be bankrupt at the same time.
Through all the mergers the government has been asleep letting them happen. Well they were paid off to let them happen. Was any of it better for the consumer? I remember Verizon said aquiring Alltel would lead to better service for customers. I looked at Verizons new packages. They are all more expensive than last year for worse service.
Perhaps we can learn from the collapse of the greatest Bullsh*t run in history. Or perhaps not since we let our government bail out the mega corporation that should have failed. Intead of righting the wrongs we have declared war on what remains of the middle class and will destroy it forever.