Sunday, April 8, 2018

7/4/18: Markets Message Indicator: Ouuuuch... it hurts


An interesting chart from the VUCA family, courtesy of @Business:


'Markets Message Indicator', created by Jim Paulsen, chief investment strategist at Leuthold Weeden Capital Management, takes 5 different data ratios: stock market relative performance compared to the bond market, cyclical stocks performance relative to defensive stocks, corporate bond spreads, the copper-to-gold price ratio, and a U.S. dollar index. The idea is to capture broad stress build up across a range of markets and asset classes, or, in VUCA terms - tallying up stress on all financial roads that investors my use to escape pressure in one of the asset markets.

Bloomberg runs some analysis of these five components here: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-03/paulsen-says-proceed-with-caution-across-many-asset-classes. And it is a scary read through the charts. But...

... the real kicker comes from looking back at the chart above. The red oval puts emphasis on the most recent market correction, the downturn and increased volatility that shattered the myth of the Goldilocks Markets. And it barely makes a splash in drawing down the excess stress built across the 'Markets Message Indicator'.

Now, that is a scary thought.

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