I have my theories about this–which I’ll post tomorrow, Tuesday, May 28 in a Special Report on my subscription JubakAM.com site –and the facts certainly deserve an explanation.
About 16 months ago on January 26, 2018 the Standard & Poor’s 500 index closed at 2872.87.
During the next 16 months, the markets would witness the extraordinary stimulus of the December 2017 tax cut. The United States and China would launch a long and escalating trade war. The economy would turn in one of its best growth runs, an extraordinary economic performance given the length of the current economic recovery. The Federal Reserve would go from raising rates to holding interest rates steady to the anticipation of interest rate cuts. (And I’m sure you can think of over events to add to this parade.)
On Friday, May 24, the S&P 500 closed at 2826.06.
That’s a move, if you want to call it that of 46 points lower in those 16 months. I’d prefer to call it No change, Nada, Zilch for the market–in spite of all those events–in the course of 16 months.
That’s extraordinary. The last 16 months have been a period with substantial volatility. And yet the net change during that period was almost nil.
And like the dog that didn’t bark in the night (and was thus at the center of the mystery for Sherlock Holmes) it needs an explanation.
One theory, a conventional market cycle, technical analysis explanation is that this period of intense local volatility with no net change marks a topping market. After hitting an all time high above 2900, the market is now exhausted and the upward run is at an end. What follows from that is an extended period of basing where the market build up new energy, recoils its spring, stocks up more fuel (take your pick of metaphors.) So this period of no-change is just a normal part of the market’s cycles.
That’s not my theory. My explanation is that we’re looking at a profound crisis in global capitalism and that the performance of the financial markets is just a side-effect of that crisis.
I’ve laid out that theory in my Special Report: The Crises in GlobalCcapitalism and What It Means for Your Portfolio that I will begin to post tomorrow, Tuesday, May 28 on my subscription JubakAM.Com site. (I’ve sent you an email Friday and again today offering you 20% off if you’d like to subscribe.) That post is getting a little long so I may have to break it into two parts but the first section laying out the crises as I see it will go up tomorrow on my subscription JubakAM.com site.
