Monday, November 9, 2015

Market crash is yet to come

I don't think the crash has happened yet. Say you're a young person and you're just starting to work. So take me in the 1970's. In the US, with 20 hours of work, I could buy the S&P 500. Now you need more than 90 hours of work to buy the S&P 500 if you're young, say with a medium income. When I was young you could buy a home at a reasonable price, even in Hong Kong. 


What I want to say is that the Fed has basically created with their colleagues in Japan and at the European Central Bank (ECB) and the Bank of England (BOE), they've created a colossal asset bubble. And the returns going forward are going to be disappointing.


Advance/Decline numbers

The composition of an index is that it's usually capitalization weighted. So one stock that goes up vertically could theoretically drive up an index and 99 percent of the shares don't make new highs. We had a strong day on Wall Street, but on the New York Stock Exchange, out of more than 3,000 shares that are being traded, only less than a hundred made a 12-month new high. The advance is very narrow.

Some markets are still strong, but the bulk is no longer moving up so in other words the advance of asset price inflation has been narrowing significantly.