Stock Market Bad Omens

Jul 10, 2013 – 04:33 AM GMT

By: John_Mauldin

We have clearly been in a recent run of higher interest rates, with a looming “threat” that there might be less quantitative easing before the end of the year. It would appear now that Bernanke wants to leave his successor to implement what everyone knows must be coming at some point: a return to a normal interest-rate environment. While rising interest rates are bad for me personally (for another four months), a return to normalcy would be good for our future – though the transition is likely to be bumpy.

With this in mind, I offer this week’s Outside the Box from Louis and Charles Gave. In a brief essay entitled “Bad Omens,” they note: 

 … if the recent global equity market sell-off can be laid at the feet of the 100bp move higher in US bond yields, it is hard to know how another 50bp increase in real rates will be digested.

US investors might not have noticed, but there is carnage scattered here and there on the world’s markets, and not just the equity markets. The central banks of the world, in their furious attempts to promote stability through easy-money policies, have cooked up a witches’ brew of instability of unknown quantity and contents. There is no set formula for this concoction; they are making it up as they go along. Anything that seems to calm the storm momentarily becomes the order of the day. Bernanke hints at the mere possibility of less easing (not tightening, God forbid!), something that we all know must happen at some point, and the market throws up and half a dozen Fed governors go on the air to say “Not really … maybe … we are going to be cautious … we’ll go slow … no one wants to do anything rash” – etc. It was almost comical. 

Thus we can expect a volatile summer (as the interns man the trading desks), and I think you will find the Gaves’ insights useful. 

I am somewhat better, though still weak, but I’m glad to be home where I can pause and rest as necessary. I have not been down this long since I was a kid. For all those years of good health I am grateful, and I hope to go another 50 years without problems like the ones I’ve had this week. In the grand scheme of things, there are so many who are having to deal with so much more. I am a lucky man.

I feel I should have warned my readers about the rise in interest rates. Rates have risen since just about the day that I irrevocably committed to a large mortgage which I cannot lock in until construction is done. The interim loan rate is quite cheap, but I am made acutely aware of what rising interest rates can do to a home payment, since I must go to more conventional financing within a year. And hedge in yen. 

The weather here in Texas is abnormally nice for July. Instead of the typical 100s, highs are in the low 80s, at least in the shade. If it was this way all the time, our problem would be dealing with the tax refugees from California and New England. Have a great week. 

Your watching his new place begin to take shape analyst,

John Mauldin, Editor Outside the Box [email protected]