Let’s spare a few moments of symphathy for the equity bears. The Q4 rout was supposed to have been an appetizer for a more sustained bear market, and by most accounts, the major narratives are still on their side. Excess liquidity indicators—chiefly real M1—and other leading macro-indicators look dire, and the hard data have predictably rolled over. They gave up the ghost in Europe a long time ago, and are now softening in the U.S. Even better for the bears, earnings growth is now slipping and sliding, a logical consequence of the sharp drop in the rate of growth in almost all main hard macroeconomic indicators and surveys.
Despite such a perfect set-up from the macro data, the equity market has rallied strongly at the start of the year, and is showing few signs of rolling over mid-way through February. There is still hope for the bears. If you are just looking at the headline data, it is relatively easy to dismiss the rebound at the start of the year as a reflexive rebound from the horror show in the latter part of 2018, a bear market rally to suck in the naive bulls before the next deluge. The idea of a bear market rally is still alive, but equity bears also now have to contend with a revival of their greatest foe to date; the global central bank put.
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