The market is in danger, warns macro analyst Jesse Felder.
The rise of inflation and the reversal of globalization is a HUGE paradigm shift that the market doesn’t appropriately appreciate it yet. The Fed’s hands are tied while inflation remains a challenge, and it likely will be for a long time because the new principal trends in play (on-shoring, tightening labor force) are inflationary. Taming inflation is going to be a protracted, painful process – and likely won’t go back to the disinflationary trajectory we’ve been on since the 1980s. A massive repricing across asset classes is needed & a new rulebook for investing is required.
This is why the market is in such danger. The market hasn’t woken up to this paradigm shift AND valuations, despite the correction this year, are still very close to record highs. There’s a lot of room to fall here, especially as profit margins are at all-time highs. Jeremey Grantham claims they mean revert more than almost any other data set. So they are due for a whopper of a mean reversion from these elevated levels. Will the trigger be a market event? Or a social one? As history shows, too-high profits inevitably lead to wealth inequality that resolved via re-distribution (either effected by the State or an angry rebelling populace). It’s no surprise that Congress is discussing higher corp tax rates.
As for how far the market could drop, Jesse can pretty easily make an argument that financial assets could fall 50% before being considered ‘fairly valued’. The 1973-74 bear market looks like a good analogue to where we are in 2022 given similarities in inflation & Fed policy. The S&P was cut in half during this period.
