Do the Fed, computer trading, and a few hedge funds rule the market? That might explain why it's lost its mind.
by Bethany McLean
After the madness of last week and the rollercoaster at the beginning of this week, the stock market recovered from its Aug. 10 rout to bounce 423 points on Aug. 11. It was the fourth day in a row in which the index moved by more than 400 points, which has never happened before in history. As I write this, stock prices are leveling off, but the big swings may not be over. Has the market gone mad? Actually, yes.
In theory, the stock market is supposed to reflect the prospects for the economy—the earnings potential of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But there's more than one reason to believe that what's going on now has little to do with any rational view of the future, and a lot to do with the market itself. "Dip your toes into any risk asset right now and understand that you are not entering into anything remotely resembling a normal market environment," wrote David Rosenberg, the well-respected former Merrill Lynch analyst who is now the chief economist at Canadian firm Gluskin Sheff, in his recent newsletter. "Dysfunctional is more like it."
The first factor to consider is that the huge rebound in stocks and in all sorts of risk assets from the spring of 2009 until May of this year wasn't necessarily driven by a belief that better times were coming. It was driven by a belief that investors had to buy riskier assets given the Fed's determination to hold interest rates near zero. Because investors can't get a return in "safe" assets—indeed, a small return will get chewed up by inflation—they are driven to riskier assets. As more investors pile in, everyone is driven further out along the risk curve.
This is what traders call "risk on." What they mean is that you'll be rewarded for buying risk, regardless of reality. The Fed's second round of quantitative easing ("QE2"), in which it bought $600 billion of Treasuries in order to keep interest rates low, encouraged this investment strategy. "We had a nice two-year rally in risk assets and something close to an economic recovery, but as we had warned, it was built on sticks and straw, not bricks," wrote Rosenberg. "This isn't much different than the financial engineering in the 2002-07 cycle that gave off the appearance of prosperity."
You can think of the Fed's medicine as a painkiller. It allows everyone to pretend that bad stuff isn't happening, until something shatters the illusion and the comfortable numbness abruptly gives way to panic. There's massive selling. Then the Fed reassures everyone that its toolbox isn't empty just yet—witness the big upturn on Aug. 9 after the Fed said it would likely hold rates near zero until mid-2013 (a worthless prediction if inflation surges)—and the market soars. Risk on!
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by Bethany McLean
After the madness of last week and the rollercoaster at the beginning of this week, the stock market recovered from its Aug. 10 rout to bounce 423 points on Aug. 11. It was the fourth day in a row in which the index moved by more than 400 points, which has never happened before in history. As I write this, stock prices are leveling off, but the big swings may not be over. Has the market gone mad? Actually, yes. In theory, the stock market is supposed to reflect the prospects for the economy—the earnings potential of the stocks that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average. But there's more than one reason to believe that what's going on now has little to do with any rational view of the future, and a lot to do with the market itself. "Dip your toes into any risk asset right now and understand that you are not entering into anything remotely resembling a normal market environment," wrote David Rosenberg, the well-respected former Merrill Lynch analyst who is now the chief economist at Canadian firm Gluskin Sheff, in his recent newsletter. "Dysfunctional is more like it."
The first factor to consider is that the huge rebound in stocks and in all sorts of risk assets from the spring of 2009 until May of this year wasn't necessarily driven by a belief that better times were coming. It was driven by a belief that investors had to buy riskier assets given the Fed's determination to hold interest rates near zero. Because investors can't get a return in "safe" assets—indeed, a small return will get chewed up by inflation—they are driven to riskier assets. As more investors pile in, everyone is driven further out along the risk curve.
This is what traders call "risk on." What they mean is that you'll be rewarded for buying risk, regardless of reality. The Fed's second round of quantitative easing ("QE2"), in which it bought $600 billion of Treasuries in order to keep interest rates low, encouraged this investment strategy. "We had a nice two-year rally in risk assets and something close to an economic recovery, but as we had warned, it was built on sticks and straw, not bricks," wrote Rosenberg. "This isn't much different than the financial engineering in the 2002-07 cycle that gave off the appearance of prosperity."
You can think of the Fed's medicine as a painkiller. It allows everyone to pretend that bad stuff isn't happening, until something shatters the illusion and the comfortable numbness abruptly gives way to panic. There's massive selling. Then the Fed reassures everyone that its toolbox isn't empty just yet—witness the big upturn on Aug. 9 after the Fed said it would likely hold rates near zero until mid-2013 (a worthless prediction if inflation surges)—and the market soars. Risk on!
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