If you’re trying to figure out this market–and who isn’t?–down 700 points on the Dow on Monday; up 1000 on Wednesday, down 400 points on Thursday before finishing up 250 points, I’d suggest starting with the observation that this bear market is global.
In the United States, the NASDAQ Composite and the Russell 2000 indexes are in bear territory and the Standard & Poor’s 500 is flirting with the 20% drop that signifies a bear market.
China’s Shanghai market has been in a bear since the summer. Chinese stocks have shed $3 trillion in market value during the decline. (Across Asia the loss is in the neighborhood of $7 trillion.)
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell into bear market territory on Christmas.
The Euro Stoxx 50 index closed in a bear market today.
There’s clearly more at work here than worries about the shutdown of 25% of the U.S. government or the security of Jerome Powell’s job as head of the Federal Reserve.
The underlying and common problem is deep anxiety about a slowdown in global economic growth. Economists and organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund were warning of a slowdown in emerging markets, China, Europe, Japan, and the United States even before U.S. President Donald Trump upended global trade with his tariff war. But now, economists and investors have added worry that the U.S.-China trade war and other tariff conflicts will further slow an already slowing global economy. In addition, of course, you’ve got higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve (which may or may not be on a rate pause for 2019), constricting liquidity from the Fed’s plan to let $50 billion in portfolio assets mature each month without rolling over the proceeds into new Treasuries or mortgage-backed securities and from the European Central Bank’s announcement that it will end its program of buying bonds. And finally you’ve got high levels of government and corporate debt that threaten to crimp future spending (and that could lead to some kind of credit crisis event.)
It’s this context–the background of fundamental worry–that has put the market on edge to a degree that relatively minor daily news events lead to huge moves up or down in the indexes.
If you’re looking for an end to the bear, I think, you’ve got to look for a change of trend in this story of falling global growth.
And so far, unfortunately, I don’t see a change in the trend. In fact we’re still in that stage where economists and financial players are  cutting their estimates for near term growth. For example, the most recent report on trade from the International Monetary Fund forecast that growth in global trade volumes will slow to 4% in 2019 from 4.2% growth in 2018 and from 5.2% in 2017 The IMF also warned that current tariff conflicts could slow growth even further.
At a minimum, the global bear needs to see the current U.S.-China trade truce, which runs only until March 1, turn into a lasting peace agreement. CEOs, and at one remove investors, need to see that there’s enough predictability in the global economy to produce an increase in capital investment. That would mean the removal–or at least the lessening–of big global risks like the threat that the United States will impose punitive tariffs on European auto imports into the United States. And a lessening into the fundamental growth fears probably also needs a sense of stability in Federal Reserve interest rate policy–a  belief that the Fed isn’t just reacting to events because it really doesn’t now what policy to pursue would help–and in the fiscal policies of the U.S. government–getting through the March debt ceiling deadline without another shutdown of the Federal government would be a big plus.
Until the market sees some of those risks downgraded and some positive developments in place, it’s hard for me to see why we should expect an end of the current bear market.
