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Is the Stock Market Dead Money For The Next 10-20 Years?

So much of how our markets work is based on optimism. Can you imagine being a money manager and your entire sales pitch is some negative diatribe about how the market is going down and will continue to go down?

Would you fork over your hard-earned savings based on such a story? Not a successful plan of attack for a person trying to raise capital if you ask me.

However, therein lies the disconnect between what is really going on in today’s market, versus what the average person reads and hears in the financial news. The same optimistic money managers sponsor those articles or those TV shows. Would your business buy an ad on a show or in a magazine that constantly gave a negative outlook on your business?

I’ve always considered myself an optimist. However, nowadays, I find nothing to be optimistic about with respect to the US stock markets. The reason is, my prevailing analytical thesis is, the markets are now entering a long-term cycle in which many aspects of our economy will be reverting to their respective long-term mean. From interest rates, to income inequality. This time frame, I refer to, is meant to be a reset in expectations. If I am correct in my analysis, this will unfold over a long period of time. During this period, many of old correlations and metrics used to determine the value of the stock market, assets in general, (housing, for example) will break down and end up becoming less useful to those who fundamentally analyze assets, stocks and the markets for a living. The cycle I am referring to is one in which none of the current market participants have experienced. Now before you draw a hasty conclusion, and think this article is about me warning you, the reader, a 1987 stock market crash scenario is on the horizon, I’ll caution you. It is not.

However, my analysis shows that the market will essentially become dead money for at least the next decade or two. That means buying most market-based asset classes, and holding them, will not produce the desired results of the past.

Please indulge me while I provide some background and explain.

I practice a form of market analysis that is exclusively focused on price action. I guess you could sum up my work by styling me as a pattern analyst. That means stock market news, events, corporate earnings and all external data is of little concern to me as I carry out my day-to-day analysis on the SP500. I never take those external events into account while analyzing any of the markets I cover. I watch the patterns market participants create with their buys and sells. I study those patterns across the many markets I cover and over both the short and extremely long periods of time. One could say I took my mother’s advice to heart, and watch what they do, not what they say. It’s the law large crowds, and the larger the crowd, the more accurate the forecast. The SP500 contains one of the largest crowds assembled. Each day it involves millions of participants, exchanging large volumes of assets for vast sums of money. Suffice to say, my work can produce some scary accurate forecasts based on the participation of the crowds in those markets.

A final anecdote to explain my work lies in a simple experiment I observed some time ago on YouTube. To illustrate the power of large crowds, a YouTuber decides to conduct an experiment. The individual fills a large mason jar with marbles. The half gallon sized mason jar is now brimming with marbles, and the metal lid is twisted on, sealing the jar. The individual then attends a local carnival and sets up a booth to solicit guesses as to the total amount of marbles contained in the mason jar. Volunteers are asked to simply observe the jar, and write down their guesses on a post-it-note. After collecting a large number of post-it-notes, the guesses are entered into a spreadsheet. Next, the marbles are emptied on a carpet and counted. 1340 marbles. Comparing the spreadsheet data, the conclusion was, although some volunteers came close in guessing the correct number of marbles, no one guessed correctly. Guesses ranged from as low as 300 to as high as 3,000. A seemingly random data set. However, under further examination, the average of the total guesses were 1335 marbles. This simple experiment explains the legitimacy of some sort of “inexplicable collective consciences” when involving a large crowd.

My current bearish perspective manifests itself in this same notion of the large crowd of market participants but over an extremely long-time frame of the SP500 (INDEXSP: .INX).

Below is a chart of the price action of the index from inception.

To put a simple explanation on the chart above. Since the stock market crash of 1929, the price pattern of the SP500 has essentially advanced in a 45-degree angle higher. I will spare you my explanation of the labeling of the chart as to not bore you as those details do little to further my explanation of the analysis. However, I will state that all our society has achieved since in the last 150 years is notated on the above chart. The advancement of technology, medicine, communication, war and peace is all included. For me, this becomes a visual picture of some of the best and worst times humanity has experienced during this time. What is compelling, is some of those pivotal moments barely stands out on the chart.

Fast forward to today.

After almost a 100-year price advance from the 1929 crash, we are now entering a prolonged period of digesting all those gains. I cannot over emphasize that this area of consolidation I forecast is 100% natural and should be no cause for alarm from a pattern analysis standpoint. As stated, that is a simplified explanation of what a super cycle event wave (IV) accomplishes. Additionally, our last Supercycle event, labeled (II), is an area of digesting gains that was hastened once the events of the Spanish Flu of 1918 were behind us and that pent-up demand was unleased. In the US, those times are referred to as the roaring twenties. Cyclically there are many character similarities in our wave (II) and our current wave (IV). Chief among them was a global pandemic and the aftermath. However, in my form analysis, a wave (II) and a wave (IV) are supposed to alternate in terms of time duration and retracement depth. If one takes place over a short period of time, the other should be long. I can see this sort of alternation I refer to take place every day, as it pertains to the very short timeframes. These patterns, whether long or short term, tend to be fractal in nature. Meaning, if you removed the dates and timeframes from a 1-hour chart of the SP500 and a 150-year chart (like the one displayed above) they would look strikingly similar. To a pattern analyst, like myself, I would be unable to discern what timeframe I was looking at. Nonetheless, the patterns would be instantly recognizable. Because these fractals form and complete on the smaller timeframes, through observation we can forecast the same effects on the much longer time duration charts. These fractal patterns tend to be self-similar and repeating.

In conclusion, if what I see unfold each and every day is indeed similar and repeating when observing a price pattern that is 150 years in the making, the conclusion will be a decade or two of dead money due to a long-term cyclical digestion of gains. Call it a “massive reversion to the mean event”. From things like interest rates to income inequality, a total reset to longer term norms.

Additionally, if my analysis is correct, the January 2022 stock market highs will not be breached for a very long time to come. This will be a time where investors will be forced to become more creative and pickier, as it pertains to seeking a return on capital.