What Will Derail the Endless Rally?

Gene Marcial of Forbes reports, Ride With The Bulls Even As Warnings Of A Big Correction Are On The Rise:

With the market’s major indexes continuing to climb to new all-time highs, investors are getting increasingly jittery about the incorrigible bears’ warnings that the huge correction they have been predicting is on its way. The selloff will signal the market has hit its peak, they assert. What to do?

Ride with the bulls — and face any pullback with enough cash firepower to buy the battered shares of fallen angels with proven track records. The proven antidote to a massive pullback is to embrace it and prepare to buy shares of companies that are fundamentally sound and equipped to thrive after a market pullback. The key is to be prepared – not by selling but to be an opportunistic buyer as prices plummet.

“The bears keep seeing market tops as the bull charges ahead,” notes Ed Yardeni, president and chief investment strategist at Yardeni Research. Even some of the bulls had warned about an imminent correction but instead, after a 3.9% drop from July 24 through Aug. 7, the S&P 5000 made a new record high on Monday, Yardeni points out.

But should perplexed investors really worry about the coming of a Big Correction? Not if you listen to savvy market watchers and analysts who recommend running with the bulls. True, the bull market is over five years old now, but Yardeni looks at it this way: “It seems to be maturing rather than aging. It is certainly less prone to anxiety attacks, and has treated buying dips as buying opportunities.”

Indeed, although the market continues to gain and treks to higher grounds, it appears more persistent in climbing walls of worries in the U.S. and overseas.

“While the bears continue to look for signs that the bull market is about to break up, I don’t see any significantly bearish divergences, or decoupling, between key internal stock indicators and the overall market,” says Yardeni. “It’s a well-adjusted bull,” is how Yardeni describes it.

The market’s technical picture looks particularly healthy, according to some veteran technical analysts. “The trend remains bullish and an extension above 2,000 (in the S&P 500) would favor a strong push higher into 2030, where we would expect some initial profit taking,” says Mark D. Arbeter, chief technical analyst at S&P Capital IQ. He notes that the S&P 500 has been in an uptrend within an ascending trend channel for the last few years.

So where is the index headed from here?

“The long-term outlook is pointed higher, while above support at 1,838 – 76. Only a drop below the lower trend channel boundary and support at 1,738 would substantially damage the structure of the big picture rally,” says the analyst.

And based on the fundamentals, the market’s outlook seem as positive, as well. “Indeed, the market may be feeding off of consensus expectations for a near 11% climb in yearly earnings-per-share growth through the second quarter of 2015, as compiled by Capital IQ,” says Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Capital IQ. He sees the S&P 500′s “fair value around 2,100 a year from now, based on earnings per share growth forecasts, the expectation that inflation will remain around 2%, and that we get a meaningful digestion of gains along the way,” says Stovall.

Meanwhile, the bears aren’t getting much confirmation for their bearishness, notes Ed Yardeni – not even from the Dow Theory, which postulates that the Dow industrials and transportation groups should both be moving higher in a sustained bull market. Well, both the Dow Jones Transportation and the S&P 500 Transportation indexes rebounded to record highs in recent days, notes Yardeni.

Now that the S&P 500 is almost at our 2014 yearend forecast of 2014 for the S&P 500, well ahead of schedule, we remain bullish and continue to favor financials, health care, industrials and information technology.

These groups appear to be the stocks of choice for continued strength and stamina in this long-running bull market? As the S&P Investment Policy Committee sees it, the energy, health care, industrials, and information technology are the attractive sectors, which they recommend to clients to overweight in their portfolios. The committee rates the financial sector as “underweight.”

In my last comment on the real risk in the stock market, I discussed why I believe the real risk in the stock market right now is a melt-up, not a meltdown that many bears are warning about.

Admittedly, my thinking centers around the big picture, meaning there is an abundance of liquidity in the global financial system -- even if the Fed continues tapering -- and some risky sectors of the stock market are going to take off.  If the ECB finally engages in quantitative easing to combat the euro deflation crisis, it will unleash another massive dose of liquidity which will further bolster global equities and other risk assets.

Soon after I finished writing my comment yesterday, permabear David Tice,  President of Tice Capital, came onto CNBC calling quantitative easing a "short-term economic fix" and warning that a 50% correction in coming. Abigail Doolittle, Peak Theories founder, also appeared on CNBC proclaiming that the range has started to reverse the QE 3 uptrend, and a major move down is coming.

Another permabear, SocGen's Albert Edwards, wrote a note to clients warning the S&P is running on fumes:

With U.S Federal Reserve policy easing drawing to a close, Societe Generale's uber-bearish strategist Albert Edwards predicts that a bubble in stock markets is on the verge of bursting.

"Is that a hissing I can hear?" Edwards quipped in his latest research note, published on Thursday.

Edwards claimed the "share buyback party"—which some analysts see as the key driver for recent record Wall Street highs—was now over.

"Companies themselves have been the only substantive buyers of equity, but the most recent data suggests that this party is over and as profits also stall out, the equity market is now running on fumes," Edwards said.

Buybacks occur when firms purchase their own shares, reducing the proportion in the hands of investors. Like dividend payments, buybacks offer a way to return cash to shareholders, and usually see a company's stock push higher as shares get scarcer.

According to Societe Generale's research, share buybacks fell by over 20 percent the second quarter versus the first quarter. However, TrimTabs Chief Executive David Santschi said in a research note on Sunday that buyback announcements were "solid" as earnings season wrapped up.

Some firms borrow cash to buy back their shares, taking advantage of ultra-low interest rates in the U.S. and other developed nations. Edwards warned that as companies had issued cheap debt to buy expensive equity, a "gargantuan" funding gap could yet emerge.

"The equity bubble has disguised the mountain of net debt piling up on U.S. corporate balance sheets. This is hitting home now QE has ended. The end of the buyback bonanza may well prove to be decisive for this bubble," Edwards wrote.

Edwards is known for his markedly pessimistic predictions, and regularly touts the idea of an economic "Ice Age" in which equities will collapse because of global deflationary pressures.

Some analysts remain unconvinced. MacNeil Curry, head of global technical strategy at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, sees no imminent hit to equities. He predicts further upside for the S&P 500—currently near all-time highs—over the next few weeks, and sees the benchmark index reaching 2,050-to-2,060 points by late September.

Global deflation is coming and the bond market knows it, but Edwards is wrong if he thinks the S&P is running on fumes and won't continue to grind higher. Some of the riskiest sectors, like biotech, are booming again after a spring selloff. When the ECB starts engaging in massive quantitative easing, risk assets (and gold) will really take off.

Of course, nobody really knows where the stock market is heading. A million things can derail this rally and cause jittery investors to pull the plug and sell their stocks. But with pension deficits rising as bond yields fall, pensions will be forced to take on more, not less risk. And where will they be taking that risk? Stocks, corporate bonds and alternative investments like real estate, private equity and hedge funds.

I leave you with an interesting clip below. Charles Biderman, TrimTabs Investment Research CEO, analyzes current market conditions saying the market is essentially rigged and you have to "ride the tide." You sure do but make sure you're in the right sectors because some tides will be a lot bigger than others.