Category Archives: Investing Money

When Is The Next U.S. Recession And Bear Market?

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My Monday Comments: All my clients, at least those who haven’t left me for greener pastures, are all concerned about the future of their money. Like me, most of them are going to need their money to pay bills as their years unfold. Losing a big percentage in a market crash makes us nervous.

In my files I have an article dated July 30, 2016 by Jeffrey Gundlach where he yells “SELL EVERYTHING”. In retrospect that would have been a terrible idea. But the headline above still resonates since we know it’s coming sooner or later.

This is long and a little technical so if you are not inclined to worry about it much, you can stop here. On the other hand if you want to explore further, be my guest.

by Jesse Colombo, September 14, 2018

It’s been a decade since the Great Recession, so the obvious question that is now on many people’s minds is “when is the next recession and bear market”? As someone who is warning about a dangerous stock market bubble, I am asked this question quite frequently. Unfortunately, it is impossible to predict the timing of future economic events with a high level of detail and accuracy such as “the market will top on April 17th, 2019” or “the recession will begin in August 2020”, but there are certain tools that help to estimate where we are in the economic cycle. In this piece, I will discuss the U.S. Treasury yield spread and yield curve and how it is useful for estimating the approximate time frame when the next recession and bear market may occur.

Let’s start with a quick explanation of the Treasury bond yield curve: in a normal interest rate environment, bonds with shorter maturities have lower yields, while bonds with longer maturities have higher yields to compensate for the greater risk incurred when holding for a longer period of time (primarily default and inflation risk). The chart below shows an example of a normal yield curve. A normal yield curve takes shape early on in the economic cycle and lasts for the majority of the cycle. A normal yield curve is usually a sign that the bull market in stocks has further to run.

As an economic cycle matures and the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates quite a few times, the yield curve flattens (see the chart below for an example). The Fed controls the short end of the yield curve, and their succession of rate hikes causes the short end to catch up with the longer end. A flat yield curve is a signal to investors that the bull market is “middle aged” – no longer young, but not quite ready to die just yet.

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Ten years after Lehman Brothers, spotting the next crisis

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My Comments: Known as the Great Recession, to distinguish it from the Great Depression, the financial crisis that ended in the first week of March in 2009 was a multi-generational event. The chances of us having another one before I die in a few years is slim to none.

But that does not mean no more market crashes, some of which will cause people to jump off buildings. There are too many signs that one is just around the corner. And I say that mindful of the fact that I’ve been saying that for three years now. Sooner or later I’ll be right!

My money is positioned cautiously, and I’m never very far away from a sell order. What you do with your money is your business but to the extent you will need most of it if you plan to keep living, I encourage you to be very careful.

by Jamie McGeever | September 11, 2018

LONDON (Reuters) – As financial market participants reflect on the 10th anniversary of Lehman Brothers’ collapse, the consensus is there will be no repeat of the near-death experience, largely because authorities simply will not allow it.

The once-in-a-generation financial meltdown and economic catastrophe was so grave that, to borrow from ECB chief Mario Draghi, they will do whatever it takes to make sure it does not happen again. Painful lessons have been learned.

But the idea that a financial crisis on the scale of a decade ago could not happen again is far fetched, and not a little naive. In fact, many of the roots of the blow-up 10 years ago are still alive and well today.

All we can say with some degree of certainty is that the next crash will probably germinate in a different corner of the financial ecosystem before spreading. Familiar warning signs may flash, but what triggers one crisis may not trigger another.

Financial crashes usually result from one or more of the following: high debt and leverage, across household or corporate sectors; increased risk taking; excessive investor complacency, greed and exuberance fuelled by low volatility; rising interest rates; lower corporate profits.

There are signs that, to varying degrees, these conditions are in place today. Debt levels are higher now than before the Great Financial Crisis. According to McKinsey, total global debt rose to $169 trillion last year from $97 trillion in 2007.

Leverage in the banking system is lower now, but a decade of near zero interest rates and ultra-low volatility has fuelled speculation and risk-taking across the financial ecosystem. Remember, it was barely a year ago that Argentina launched a 100-year bond to much fanfare.

The world economy, markets, and policymaking – both fiscal and, especially, monetary – have changed radically since the financial crisis, symbolized by the U.S. investment banking giant Lehman’s implosion on Sept. 15, 2008.

With interest rates so low, central bank balance sheets so big and national debt levels so high, relatively speaking, policymakers may be running low on crisis-fighting ammunition.

Central banks now have a permanent presence in financial markets, and it is highly unlikely they will return interest rates or their balance sheets to pre-crisis “normal” levels.

Japan’s experience of extraordinary measures including QE and zero interest rates, and subdued growth rates over the last 20 years is a useful guide to what we can expect across the developed world.

“KNOWN UNKNOWNS”

There are also fresh market risks, such as the rapid advance of algorithmic trading, a passive and ETF-driven investment universe that is now worth trillions, the crypto world, and the proliferation of artificial intelligence and big data.

All that is set against an increasingly fragile political and structural backdrop. Populism, the far right, and strong-arm leaders are on the rise, globalization is fading, and public trust in governments and institutions is waning. That is a potentially toxic mix.

Global borrowing costs are rising, led by the Fed. The rise may be gradual but is coming from the lowest base in history, so the context is unprecedented. Higher U.S. rates are rarely good news for asset markets, no matter how slow the rise may be.

The corporate bond universe, particularly China, is vulnerable to higher borrowing costs and stronger dollar. Emerging markets too, especially those reliant on deficit-plugging capital from overseas – look at Turkey and Argentina.

Other emerging markets, such as Brazil, Indonesia and South Africa, have come under increasing pressure but contagion has been pretty limited. Developed markets, puzzlingly, remain largely unscathed.

That may be because economic growth, corporate profitability and asset prices have been inflated by the trillions upon trillions of dollars of liquidity pumped into the system by central banks since 2008. But that is now slowly reversing.

There is a degree of complacency across financial markets – volatility has rarely been lower, ever – and many of the risks and potential flashpoints have been well flagged. In Rumsfeldian terms, they are all “known unknowns”.

They include a corporate bond blow up in China; an emerging market crash sparked by rising U.S. rates and dollar; U.S. corporate profits diving; euro zone break-up; a global trade war; a plunge in oil prices; a sharp rise in inflation.

Of course, anticipating what may trigger a downturn and making contingency plans for it are two different things. How are you supposed to adequately prepare for the possibility that Italy might, at some unknown point in the future, leave the euro zone?

Rightly or wrongly, investors are simply hoping for the best. If the euro zone avoided Grexit and impending collapse in 2012, it will surely do so again, right? And no one in the White House really wants a full-blown global trade war, do they?

Maybe. But maybe not.

The Fiduciary Rule Is Dead. What’s an Investor to Do Now?

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My Comments: Under the Obama administration, a long awaited and necessary step was taken to introduce rules that protected consumers of investment advice. It created a fiduciary standard for licensed financial professionals that formalized a ‘best interest’ mindset for professionals when working with clients.

Very soon after Trump became president, he announced this idea was a waste of time, presumably responding to pressure from Wall Street firms. As someone who has embraced a fiduciary standard in my practice for over 40 years, I saw it as a way to better serve my clients and to level the playing field among financial professionals, some of whom choose to cheat.

Interestingly, many national and regional financial firms of every stripe chose to embrace the idea of a fiduciary standard, recognizing it’s value in an ever competitive world. My suspicion is that if and when Trump is gone from the scene, this valid idea will resurface. Finding ways to cheat and not be held accountable is not in my client’s best interest.

By Lisa Beilfuss Sept. 9, 2018

It is a tricky time to be working with an investment professional.

Regulation is in flux, and different types of professionals are held to different standards when it comes to giving advice and recommending products. So, it can be hard to know exactly what you’re paying for.

Muddying the waters, a U.S. Circuit Court in June threw out the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule, an Obama-era regulation that sought to curb conflicts of interest in financial advice that the Obama administration said cost American families $17 billion a year and a percentage point in annual returns.

The decision was a final blow to a rule that the financial-services industry fought, saying it would make advice more costly, and that the Trump administration had put under review for revision or repeal.

The Securities and Exchange Commission, meanwhile, has been working on its own investor-protection measure. The agency’s version may wind up replacing the fiduciary rule, though it is shaping up to be less restrictive for brokers, and consumer advocates say that it would do little to raise the standard of care that is currently required.

Here are a few things investors should know as they navigate their financial relationships.

Names can be crucial
Financial pros can go by a number of titles: There is wealth manager, financial planner, broker, financial adviser—as well as “advisor” with an “o”—and more. The difference is sometimes semantics, but it is often much more.

For one, financial advisers, regulated by the SEC, have for decades been held to a fiduciary standard, meaning they have to put clients’ interests before their own. The requirement traces back to the stock-market crash of 1929 and subsequent Depression, which Congress in part blamed on abuses in the securities industry.

Brokers are regulated by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, or Finra, the securities industry’s self-regulatory body. They must provide what the agency describes as “suitable” investment advice—short of the fiduciary care required of their adviser counterparts.

Where things get tricky is that some financial professionals are dually registered, and some have professional designations that carry requirements trumping the standards required by regulators. For example, a broker who’s also a certified financial planner has to serve as a fiduciary, when doing financial planning, to maintain the designation.

The best way to know whether your adviser is a registered investment adviser, broker or both is to search BrokerCheck, a database maintained by Finra. An individual’s profile will denote his or her title and regulatory overseer.

But industry professionals and consumer advocates say investors should confirm any information with their adviser. Even better, the experts say: Investors should ask a financial professional to put in writing whether he or she is a fiduciary in their particular relationship.

Location matters
When it comes to which standard of care is required of an investment professional, where he or she works matters. Advisers who are held to a fiduciary standard must choose products that are in the best interest of the client. But what products an adviser can pick varies from firm to firm.

For example, at stand-alone investment advisories—-those that aren’t connected to a bank or brokerage—advisers typically have access to the universe of investment products, including the cheapest index funds. Some brokers at firms connected to banks do too, but not always. Some firms have house funds and lucrative partnerships with fund companies, and their brokers have more limited menus of investment options from which to choose.

To understand any constraints and incentives an investment adviser might have in recommending products, consumer advocates suggest checking firms’ securities disclosures. Advisory firms regulated by the SEC have to spell out conflicts of interests in those.

With the Labor Department’s fiduciary rule dead, brokers don’t have to disclose conflicts the way they did under the rule. Observers say potential rules from the SEC requiring that brokers serve clients’ best interest may emphasize disclosing conflicts over mitigating them.

For now, the best way to understand conflicts and constraints is to ask your broker, and to have him or her explain product selections.
“Never own something you don’t understand,” says Patti Houlihan, who heads the advocacy group Committee for the Fiduciary Standard. “If you can’t understand [a product] after reading a few pages on it, you shouldn’t be buying it,” she says, suggesting investors walk away from anything that is confusing or sounds too good to be true.

Fees don’t necessarily mean ‘best interest’
Many investment advisers, already required to act as fiduciaries, charge investors a percentage of their assets under management. Doing so eliminates commissions, which can cause conflicts of interest by pushing an adviser to recommend one product over another to the detriment of the client.

After the fiduciary rule was unveiled—and then went into temporary effect—many brokerages accelerated moving clients toward fee-paying accounts from commission accounts. They said it made compliance with the new regulation easier, because charging commissions under the fiduciary rule would require disclosures and contracts that executives said were too onerous and costly.

Fee accounts are regulated by the SEC, meaning once you’re in one, the adviser needs to act as a fiduciary. But that doesn’t mean being put into one was actually in your best interest.

A fee account “doesn’t keep your fees from being way higher than they should be,” says Barbara Roper, director of investor protection at the Consumer Federation of America.

“The fee-based accounts at brokerage firms still incorporate the conflicts of the broker-dealer model,” Ms. Roper says, such as revenue derived from fund companies, proprietary products and incentives meant to encourage broker behavior.

Ms. Roper encourages investors to ask their financial professionals for detailed fee breakdowns. For example, is a 1% advisory fee all-inclusive, or is that separate from underlying product fees? Investors with more complicated financial pictures might pay more to get more service, but even they should be wary of paying much more than 1%, Ms. Roper says.

“That’s a hole you have to dig out of,” she says, referring to the long-term effect of fees on investment returns.

By the same logic, paying commissions doesn’t necessarily mean you don’t have a fiduciary. In the spirit of the obligation, investment professionals are expected to evaluate on an individual basis what type of model is best.

Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-fiduciary-rule-is-dead-whats-an-investor-to-do-now-1536548266

Watch Your Wallets — The Next Crash Is Coming

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My Thoughts for Monday, Labor Day 2018: The sun is shining here, the daily showers have not yet arrived, I’ve been to the fitness center already, and life is relatively normal. Happy Labor Day!

But I can get far from the reality that is our life in America these days. In many respects, it’s good but there are existential threats out there that have the potential to cause us grievous financial harm. And when the hammer drops, you’re on your own.

I have enormous respect for Robert Reich, the author of this article. For a rich and prosperous nation, we have some serious flaws that unless they are addressed, will come to haunt too many of us.

By Robert Reich / AlterNet | September 3, 2018

September 15 will mark the tenth anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and near meltdown of Wall Street, followed by the Great Recession.

Since hitting bottom in 2009, the economy has grown steadily, the stock market has soared, and corporate profits have ballooned.

But most Americans are still living in the shadow of the Great Recession. More have jobs, to be sure. But they haven’t seen any rise in their wages, adjusted for inflation.

Many are worse off due to the escalating costs of housing, healthcare, and education. And the value of whatever assets they own is less than in 2007.

Last year, about 40 percent of American families struggled to meet at least one basic need – food, health care, housing or utilities, according to an Urban Institute survey.

All of which suggests we’re careening toward the same sort of crash we had in 2008, and possibly as bad as 1929.

Clear away the financial rubble from those two former crashes and you’d see they both followed upon widening imbalances between the capacity of most people to buy, and what they as workers could produce. Each of these imbalances finally tipped the economy over.

The same imbalance has been growing again. The richest 1 percent of Americans now takes home about 20 percent of total income, and owns over 40 percent of the nation’s wealth.
These are close to the peaks of 1928 and 2007.

The U.S. economy crashes when it becomes too top heavy because the economy depends on consumer spending to keep it going, yet the rich don’t spend nearly as much of their income as the middle class and the poor.

For a time, the middle class and poor can keep the economy going nonetheless by borrowing. But, as in 1929 and 2008, debt bubbles eventually burst.

We’re getting dangerously close. By the first quarter of this year, household debt was at an all-time high of $13.2 trillion.

Almost 80 percent of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck. In a recent Federal Reserve survey, 40 percent of Americans said they wouldn’t be able to pay their bills if faced with a $400 emergency.

They’ve managed their debts because interest rates have remained low. But the days of low rates are coming to an end.

The underlying problem isn’t that Americans have been living beyond their means. It’s that their means haven’t been keeping up with the growing economy. Most gains have gone to the top.

It was similar in the years leading up to the crash of 2008. Between 1983 and 2007, household debt soared while most economic gains went to the top. Had the majority of households taken home a larger share, they wouldn’t have needed to go so deeply into debt.

Similarly, between 1913 and 1928, the ratio of personal debt to the total national economy nearly doubled. As Mariner Eccles, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1934 to 1948, explained: “As in a poker game where the chips were concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the other fellows could stay in the game only by borrowing.”

Eventually there were “no more poker chips to be loaned on credit,” Eccles said, and “when … credit ran out, the game stopped.”

After the 1929 crash, the government invented new ways to boost wages – Social Security, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, a minimum wage, the requirement that employers bargain with labor unions, and, finally, a full-employment program called World War II.

After the 2008 crash, the government bailed out the banks and pumped enough money into the economy to contain the slide. But apart from the Affordable Care Act, nothing was done to address the underlying problem of stagnant wages.

Trump and his Republican enablers are now reversing regulations put in place to stop Wall Street’s excessively risky lending.

But Trump’s real contributions to the next crash are his sabotage of the Affordable Care Act, rollback of overtime pay, burdens on labor organizing, tax reductions for corporations and the wealthy but not for most workers, cuts in programs for the poor, and proposed cuts in Medicare and Medicaid – all of which put more stress on the paychecks of most Americans.

Ten years after Lehman Brothers collapsed, it’s important to understand that the real root of the Great Recession wasn’t a banking crisis. It was the growing imbalance between consumer spending and total output – brought on by stagnant wages and widening inequality.

That imbalance is back. Watch your wallets.

The Longest Bull Market In History And What Happens Next

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Tony’s Comments: What is often overlooked by those writing about the impending doom of the stock market is the age of the reader. What I mean by this is that if you are trying to accumulate money for your eventual retirement, and you have 20 or 30 years between now and then, much of what is going on now is irrelevant.

However, if you are likely to retire in the next few years, or are already retired, then it’s a very different story. Once you turn off the ‘working for money’ switch and turn on the ‘money is working for you’ switch, an end to the current bull market is very relevant.

Many people can expect to live 25 years or more in retirement. And for each of those years, one way or another you’ve going to have bills to pay. And that money needs to come from somewhere. No one is going to suddenly show up at your front door and hand you the keys to the kingdom.

August 18, 2018 by Lance Roberts

Depending on how you measure beginnings and endings, or what constitutes a bear market or the beginning of a bull market, makes the statement a bit subjective. However, there is little argument the current bull market has had an exceptionally long life-span.

But rather than a “siren’s song” luring investors into the market, maybe it should serve as a warning.

“Record levels” of anything are “records for a reason.”

It should be remembered that when records are broken that was the point where previous limits were reached. Also, just as in horse racing, sprinting or car races, the difference between an old record and a new one are often measured in fractions of a second.

Therefore, when a “record level” is reached, it is NOT THE BEGINNING, but rather an indication of the PEAK of a cycle. Records, while they are often broken, are often only breached by a small amount, rather than a great stretch. While the media has focused on record low unemployment, record stock market levels, and record confidence as signs of an ongoing economic recovery, history suggests caution. For investors, everything is always at its best at the end of a cycle rather than the beginning.

The chart below has been floating around the “web” in several forms as “evidence” that investors should just stay invested at all times and not worry about the downturns. When taken at “face value,” it certainly appears to be the case. (The chart is based up Shiller’s monthly data and is inflation-adjusted total returns.)


The problem is the entire chart is incredibly deceptive.

More importantly, for those saving and investing for their retirement, it’s dangerous.

Here is why.

The first problem is the most obvious, and a topic I have addressed many times in past missives, you must worry about corrections.

“Most investors don’t start seriously saving for retirement until they are in their mid-40s. This is because by the time they graduate college, land a job, get married, have kids and send them off to college, a real push toward saving for retirement is tough to do as incomes, while growing, haven’t reached their peak. This leaves most individuals with just 20 to 25 productive work years before retirement age to achieve investment goals.

This is where the problem is. There are periods in history, where returns over a 20-year period have been close to zero or even negative.”

Currently, we are in one of those periods.

CONTINUE READING HERE…

Here’s The Proof That U.S. Stocks Are Experiencing A Massive Bubble

My Comments: To say I’m uncertain what tomorrow will bring is an understatement. For every article like this one that is pessimistic, there is another with presumably compelling logic that the next market crash of consequence will not be here until 2030 or later.

At my age, I’m inclined to be cautious. Yes, I have some money exposed to the markets, but I’ve got Vanguard on speed dial. My memories about this go back to Black Monday in 1987 when people were jumping off buildings.

This is a long read with lots of charts so I’ve tried to whet your appetite and provided a link to the site where it’s posted originally. Have fun…

Jul. 30, 2018 | Jesse Columbo

In Part 1 of this series called “Why U.S. Household Wealth Is In A Bubble,” I explained why America’s post-Great Recession wealth boom is driven by a tremendous bubble that will end in tears.

In Part 2 of this series, I will go into more detail about the U.S. stock market bubble that is a major driver of the overall household wealth bubble. Common stocks – including those held indirectly in mutual funds – are one of the largest components of U.S. household wealth, along with bonds and housing. When stocks are extremely inflated, like they were during the late-1990s Dot-com bubble, they contribute to the inflation of household wealth. Conversely, when stocks experience a bear market, like they did when the Dot-com bubble popped, household wealth falls as well. In this piece, I will show a wide variety of charts and other data that prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the U.S. stock market is excessively inflated and heading for serious pain.

Since the Great Recession bear market bottom in March 2009, the bellwether S&P 500 stock index is up a jaw-dropping 300 percent. In addition, the index is approximately 80 percent higher than its 2007 peak.

The more volatile Russell 2000 small cap index and the tech-centric Nasdaq Composite Index are up even more than the S&P 500 – approximately 400 percent and 500 percent respectively:

As discussed in Part 1 of this series, record low interest rates are the primary reason for both the overall U.S. household wealth bubble as well as the U.S. stock market bubble. The chart below shows how U.S. interest rates (the Fed Funds Rate, 10-Year Treasury yields, and Aaa corporate bond yields) have been at record low levels for a record period of time since the 2008 financial crisis. The fact that credit has been so cheap for so long explains why the household wealth bubble is so extreme and why the stock market bubble is so inflated, as valuation indicators later on in this piece will show.

Low interest rates contribute to the inflation of asset and credit bubbles in numerous ways:
• Investors can borrow cheaply to speculate in assets (ex: cheap mortgages for property speculation and low margin costs for trading stocks)
• By discouraging the holding of cash in the bank versus speculating in riskier asset markets
• By encouraging higher rates of inflation, which helps to support assets like stocks and real estate
• By encouraging more borrowing by consumers, businesses, and governments

The chart of real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates below confirms just how loose U.S. monetary policy has been since the Great Recession. In recent decades, the only time the U.S. has experienced negative real interest rates for a significant amount of time was during the mid-2000s housing bubble and during the current “Everything Bubble” period that started after 2009. (Note: “Everything Bubble” is a term that I’ve coined to describe a dangerous bubble that has been inflating across the globe in a wide variety of countries, industries, and assets – please visit my website to learn more.)

Another way of determining how excessively loose (or tight) U.S. monetary conditions are is by comparing the Fed Funds Rate to the Taylor Rule model. The Taylor Rule is a proposed guideline created by economist John Taylor to estimate the ideal level for central bank-controlled benchmark interest rates – such as the Fed Funds Rate – for the purpose of maximizing the stability of economic growth. When the Fed Funds Rate is much lower than the Taylor Rule model, it means that interest rates are likely too low relative to economic growth and inflation, which greatly increases the probability of forming a dangerous economic bubble. The chart below shows that the Fed Funds Rate was much lower than the Taylor Rule model during the formation of both the mid-2000s housing bubble as well as the current “Everything Bubble.”

To see all 14 pages of this article and the many charts, go HERE…

Behold the ‘scariest chart’ for the stock market

My Comments: By now you’ll perhaps realize that whatever I say about what is likely to happen in the markets is wrong, and that you’d be better off doing just the opposite.

That’s OK. And if you are young and retirement is a few decades away, it’s OK to ride it out. But if you’re no longer young and foolish, then articles like this one from Sue Chang need to be read. What you do about it is up to you.

by Sue Chang, August 9, 2018

A lot has changed since the stock market crash of 2000. Apple Inc. has gone from being just another computer brand to becoming the most valuable company in the world, Amazon.com Inc. went from being an e-book retailer to a byword for online shopping and Tesla’s Elon Musk has risen from obscurity to Twitter stardom.

Yet some things never change and Doug Ramsey, chief investment officer at Leuthold Group, has been on a mini-campaign highlighting the parallels between 2000 and 2018.

Among the numerous similarities is the elevated valuation of the S&P 500 then and now, which Ramsey illustrates in a chart that he has dubbed as the “scariest chart in our database.”
“Recall that the initial visit to present levels was followed by the S&P 500’s first-ever negative total return decade,” he said in a recent blog post.

Price-to-sales ratio is one measure of a stock’s value. It isn’t as popular as the price-to-earnings ratio, or P/E, but is viewed as less susceptible to manipulation since it is based on revenue.

He also shared a chart which he claims is “unfit for a family-friendly publication” that shows how in terms of median price to sales ratio, the S&P 500 is twice as expensive as it was in 2000.
“Overvaluation in 2000 was highly concentrated; today it is pervasive, with the median S&P 500 Price/Sales ratio of 2.63 times more than double the 1.23 times prevailing in February 2000.

In a follow-up post, he then reiterates how 2018 is starting to increasingly look like 2000.

“The statistical similarities between the two bulls are on the rise, and the wonderment surrounding the disruptive technology of today’s market leaders seems to have swelled to maybe 1998-ish levels,” he writes.

That upward trajectory of the market isn’t sustainable, he warns. Ramsey admits that history isn’t the best guide for the future but the S&P 500’s performance since it touched its peak on Jan. 26 is closely mirroring what happened 18 years ago.

“In the earlier case, a volatile five-month upswing that began in mid-April ultimately fell just a half-percent short of the March 24th high by early September. This year, a similarly choppy, six-month rebound has taken the S&P 500 to within 1% of its January 26th high,” Ramsey said.

(At this point, if you are still interested in this idea, I’m going to send you to the article as it first appeared. Here’s the link: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/behold-the-scariest-chart-for-the-stock-market-2018-08-08 )