The fear generated by Wall Street’s sharp fall has been greatly magnified by the calm that preceded it. Before the 8 per cent decline in United States stocks over the past week, the Standard & Poor’s 500 had gone two years without suffering a drop that large. Spoiled by this unnaturally placid stretch, many people had forgotten what a routine market setback even looks like.
They better get used to this. Going back three decades, the average market drop in any given year has typically been around 10 per cent. What we are witnessing now is thus a return to normal market behaviour, which has never followed a straight line.
This year could be pivotal, because the conditions that underpinned the steady upward march of stock prices are now likely to deteriorate.
In the US, and around the world, stocks have been buoyed by the trifecta of accelerating global growth, low inflation and loose central bank policies, all of which are now poised to turn against the bubbly market.
Optimists believe that the global economy can still grow at 4 per cent, the pace it had maintained during the post-Second World War miracle. Fewer workers means slower economic growth, and will make it difficult for the world economy to sustain.
Fewer workers also mean labour shortages and higher inflation. Unemployment rates are close to a 40-year low in developed economies, including the US. If the US economy keeps adding 200,000 jobs per month, as it did last month, the unemployment rate could fall below 3.5 per cent by the end of the year. And a rate that low has never been sustained in the past.
If you account for people who are between jobs or who can no longer work as a result of disability, the data suggest that nearly every American who wants a job has one. The same can be said for developed countries from Germany to Japan.
This looming shortage of workers is now putting upward pressure on wage growth, which has been steadily rising in recent months. And historically, wage growth has been a strong driver of inflation, as workers use their expanded pay cheque to bid up prices for goods and services.
This then is the big picture: Over the past year, investors worldwide have been pleasantly surprised by an unusual combination of economic growth beating their expectations and inflation undershooting expectations.
These pleasant surprises fed an unnatural calm. Over the coming year, these forces are likely to reverse, as labour shortages slow growth and begin to drive up inflation, and bring a normal level of volatility back to the markets.
Cheap liquidity
The scale and timing of a turn in the markets is likely to be decided by the third leg of the trifecta: Easy money. Central banks have been printing money like never before, holding interest rates at record lows for extended stretches. Investors have used this cheap liquidity to drive up prices across the asset markets, from stocks and bonds to bitcoin and fine art. The US stock market is now around 25 per cent higher than it would have been had it grown at its historic average pace.
Stock values have rarely risen so high, yet many seasoned investors had come to believe these nosebleed valuations could be justified as long as the US Federal Reserve Board kept interest rates low. When investors are worried about the future they move money into cash, and today their cash balances are at record lows. In other words, complacency was arguably at a record high when the correction began last week.
Watching their market wealth soar, even average middle-class Americans got caught up in the faith that nothing could go wrong. They started spending aggressively again, after dialling back in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. In the past, whenever the stock market has been this expensive, an increase in interest rates has brought it back down to earth. In recent years, the swelling size of the stock market has magnified the potential economic impact of a correction. If the stock market suddenly reverts to its long-term trend, it could push the American economy close to recession.
Idyllic conditions
All eyes are now on the central bank. Confidence that the idyllic economic conditions of the last year will last indefinitely has been rattled, particularly as wage growth begins to signal a return of inflation. Many investors are fretting that the Federal Reserve in America may be compelled to raise rates faster than anyone had expected, just the kind of negative surprise that could deflate sky-high prices in all assets, and not only for stocks. 2018 may be remembered as the year when the moody market beast returned to its natural state.
— New York Times News Service
Ruchir Sharma, author of The Rise and Fall of Nations: Forces of Change in the Post-Crisis World, is the chief global strategist at Morgan Stanley Investment Management and a contributing opinion writer.
