Sep

7

V NThe action on the first day of the month of September was highly unusual, and apparently at that time the employment number had leaked so the moves after that first day were much more likely to happen than before. After such bad starts the rest of the week has a standard deviation of 30 and only 50% chance of rise.

The 40 point S&P decline on Thursday was the fourth largest decline on a Thursday ever. By that time, the news was out, and the increase in unemployment was icing on the cake.

All this occured in conjunction with repeated highs in the fixed income prices around the world, and declines in the omniscient market in Israel below the round and Japan near three year lows of 12000 on the Nikkei.

To me, the key event was the raising of the Swedish discount rate during the night Thursday, causing an immediate 1% decline in all European equities. How come they weren't keyed in like the others to the forthcoming announcement?

The most hurtful piece of mass psychology was the naive notion about stocks having to go down because the P/E of 25 was the highest in 15 years, and that was bearish. Earnings are forecast next quarter to be the highest increase ever of 50% and you would think that people are taught to look at the future rather than the past for moves in markets.

There were many good economic numbers and bad economic numbers in the past week relative to expectations. What is it that caused the employment number to be the focus, other than the desire to paint the economy as weak before the election for obvious reasons of agrarianism? More important, why should a decline in employment at this stage be bearish for stock markets?

The one factor that made it seem so much like the end of the world was the the four day move down in S&P from the Thursday 8 28 close of 1298 to the Tuesday 9 04 close of 1236, a decline of 62 points was the second worst start of a week since the beginning of 2002, the only comparable being the four day move on 1 17 2008 before the French bank inside trading activity.

Michael Bonderer adds:

Perhaps equally important, maybe more so: Trichet's decision to increase the haircut on collateral to 12% from 2%.

Martin Lindqvist writes from Sweden:

The Riksbank declined being part of the liquidity pump that the Fed, ECB, SNB, et al, set up last year and continued with also this year. Maybe they are deliberately kept out of the loop now? However I think it has more to do with them having gotten lot of criticism for raising the last few times. Perhaps they just want to show who is in charge.

John De Palma adds:

With respect to the market obsession with the non-farm payrolls report (to the point of motivating a scene in the movie "25th Hour"), the sensitivity of interest rates to a one standard deviation surprise in payrolls is a few times higher than any other economic indicator. The rankings of market sensitivity to the indicators look like they follow a power law distribution, the distribution that characterizes movie/book popularities and other sociological phenomena. It's difficult to create a model of the economy that conforms to the dispersion of sensitivities. It's more plausible to appeal to a view of markets with focal points, attention biases, etc.

Henrik Andersson follows up on the Swedish developments:

It turns out the Swedish calculation of inflation was flawed leading up to the rate hike and the reported July number of 4.4% was in reality 4.1 percent (they thought shoes prices had increased 30% yoy…). Since the Swedish 'Riksbank' most likely was split in their decision it is widely suspected that with correct data we wouldn't have had a hike to 4.75%.


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  1. George Parkanyi on September 9, 2008 7:26 pm

    Just read an interesting observation made by Ken Fisher of Fisher Investments.

    In the past 20 election years back to 1928, in 16 of 20 the market was higher in the second half of the year than than the first half. Not only that, the (simple) average gain in the first half was 1.3%. The average gain in the second half was 13.0% Random? You be the judge.

    A couple of weeks ago I posited here that Eli Lilly and Nokia were bargains on their balance sheets and yields. Well today (nothing to do with Ken Fisher) I finally made room in the portfolio for both - each with a 4% yield, entering LLY at $46.68 and Nokia at $20.14.

    A tech stock paying 4%? Each year NOK’s dividend has been higher. In 2008 NOK has already bought back EUR $1B of their stock, 58 million of an authorized 370 million. In the past 3 sessions, at around $20 after the big downdraft from $26, positive money flow into the stock has been huge. My guess is Nokia’s in there buying some more. Buy back back enough stock and they can send their sales force on vacation and still increasing earnings.

    I’m probably early. Don’t care.

    Cheers,
    George

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