False Narratives
A few important things I’ve learned over the years:
1) The prevailing narrative always follows price.
2) Prices can be very wrong at times (the market is NOT always right).
3) When prices are wrong, narratives become nonsense.
4) Chasing nonsense (false narrative) is not an effective investing strategy.
Just before midnight on election night last November, the narrative was decidedly bearish. The odds of a Trump win had surged higher, and doomsday prophesies piled in. What were they based on?
This, and this alone…
S&P 500 futures traded limit down, the Mexican Peso suffered its worst decline since the Tequila crisis in 1994, and safe haven trades (Treasuries and Gold) moved sharply higher.
“The markets are sending a clear message: Trump is bad for risk assets. All of them. Sell everything.”
By the open the next morning, the narrative already started to change. The S&P 500 had recovered all of its overnight losses while Gold and Treasuries had given up all of their gains. A new narrative was formed: “Maybe Trump isn’t as bad for risk assets as we thought but there’s no possible way he can be good. The volatility over the last 10 hours is a clear sign of things to come. Expect record volatility in the coming months as the market comes to terms with his erratic tweets and more erratic agenda.”
What happened next? Naturally, instead of record high volatility, we saw record low volatility. The market has a tendency to inflict pain on maximum number of participants, and the pain trade for most participants at the time was a low volatility ramp higher. In the months that followed the election, investors would witness one of the most peaceful market ramps in history.
A month after the election, the market had come to terms with Trump’s “policies,” but not in the way anyone expected. Record short-term gains were seen in bank stocks (KBE), financials (XLF), small caps (IWM), and transports (IYT). At the same time, Treasuries were crushed (interest rates spiked), Gold (GLD) was slaughtered, the Dollar (DXY) surged higher, and Emerging Market stocks, bonds and currencies moved sharply lower.
A new narrative was born: “U.S.A, U.S.A., U.S.A.! Trump is going to usher in a new era of economic prosperity for the U.S., with 5% real GDP growth, a boom in building and infrastructure projects, massive deregulation and tax cuts, and trade deals only favorable to America. This growth boom is going to push interest rates much higher (talk of 6% 10-year treasury yields by 2018), push the Dollar much higher, hit safe havens (Gold and Treasuries), and be disastrous for all Emerging Markets, especially Mexico.”
Oh, and lest we forget: “Trump is bad for technology, which should be abundantly clear to anyone given his adversarial statements towards Facebook/Amazon and the underperformance of tech shares (XLK) following the election.”
Fast forward to 2017 and most of these post-election narratives have faded into oblivion. Why? Because one by one, the initial overreaction on the part of investors reversed course:
1) By late January, Emerging Market High Yield bonds (EMHY) and stocks (EEM) recovered all of their post-election losses.
2) By early February, the Chinese Yuan (CYB) recovered all of its post-election losses.
3) By late February, Emerging Market currencies (CEW) turned positive.
4) Then it was Silver’s (SLV) turn.
5) By late March, Emerging Market bonds, local currency (EMLC) and U.S. dollar denominated (EMB), recovered all of their losses.
6) Gold (GLD) reversed all of its post-election losses by mid-April.
7) The Yield Curve (10-year minus 2-year) has reversed all of its post-election steepening and is now flatter since election day.
8) Bonds (AGG) have now recovered most of their post-election losses as interest rates have moved back to election week levels.
9) The Mexican Peso has recovered nearly all of its post-election losses.
10) The relative outperformance of Transports has turned negative.
11) Technology reversed its relative losses and is now outperforming since the election.
12) Small Caps have reversed most of their post-election outperformance.
13) With the exception the few days after the election, financials and bank stocks (KBE) have reversed all of their relative gains.
14) And finally, excluding the week after the election, the U.S. Dollar Index (UUP) has reversed its gains.
One by one, as the post-election moves reversed course, the false narratives were exposed. Traders who saw them for what they were profited by going against the herd. Traders who chased after them on the belief that “markets are always right” have suffered.
The question for investors today is whether the reversal in narratives will continue. Will risk-on trades continue to fade and risk-off trades continue to rebound until we come full circle, as if the post-election moves never happened? I don’t have an answer for that but given the shift in focus from tax/deregulation/domestic policy to war/interventionist policy, it would be hard to say that would be entirely unwarranted.
Can you make a cogent case that bombing Syria and playing war games with two nuclear powers (Russia and North Korea) is going to help get us to 5% real GDP growth or be beneficial to bank stocks? I certainly cannot.
And so at some point this year, we should not be surprised at all to see a repeat of the initial reaction on election night, with the corresponding narrative in place…
“The markets are sending a clear message: Trump is bad for risk assets. All of them. Sell everything.”
Whether you believe that narrative to be true or false when it comes is up to you. That’s what makes a market.
Disclaimer: At Pension Partners, we use Bonds as our defensive position in our absolute return strategies for all of the above reasons. Bonds have provided a more ...
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