Where are we headed in 2009? We will explore that in detail over the next few issues of Thoughts from the Frontline, but today we will start with some of the larger forces which will have a major impact on the economies of the world, and I will end with my usual attempt to forecast the various markets. We will look at deflation, deleveraging, the fallout from the stimulus plans (note plural), housing, consumer spending, unemployment, and a lot more. There is a lot to cover.

Muddle Through on Hold

First, a quick look back at how I did in my 2008 forecast issue. In general, it was not a bad year in terms of getting the direction right on many of the markets, including gold, oil, the dollar (especially against the pound sterling), and stocks. Some predictions were on target, like a second-half rebound in the dollar.

But I missed the economy. I noted then that I believed we were already in recession (which we have now found out that we were), and I wrote that a recovery would begin by the end of the year, but that it would be a very weak one for a long time — my basic Muddle Through scenario. Obviously, the recession is a lot worse than I thought it would be at the time. Looking to the end of this letter, I now think we will be in recession through at least 2009 before we begin a recovery, which will again be a rather anemic Muddle Through period of maybe two years, for a variety of reasons, some of which I cover today and others over the next few weeks.

And I should note that it was not long into the year before I began to get decidedly more gloomy, as many of you noted. And I expect that this year will bring a few surprises that will cause me to change my opinions yet again. When the facts change, I will try and change with them.

Forecast 2009: Deflation, Deleveraging, and the Stimulus Effect

For a very long time, I have been adamant that deflation is in our future. In the next few pages I outline how inflation might come back, but I doubt it will be this year. For now, deflation is the economic factor that the Fed and central banks will be battling. And believe me, it will be a very large and controversial battle.

We had a brief period last summer where inflation (as measured by the Consumer Price Index or CPI) was over 5%, and the trend was clearly up. The increase was almost entirely due to food and energy costs. Core inflation (less food and energy) was around 2%. Many commentators noted that real people actually bought gas and food and we should look at overall CPI and not just core. Now, with the drop in food and energy costs, their impact has vanished.

For the three months ending last November, the compound annual rate for the CPI was a negative(!) -10.2%, reflecting the almost 70% drop in energy. Annualized core CPI for the last three months ending November was a very low 0.4%. November CPI was a flat 0.0%. It has been falling steadily for the last five months.

December is likely to be negative. There is a trend here, and if you are a central banker it is not one you like. And that trend is being manifested in every part of the developed and much of the developing world. It is a global problem.

Given how high inflation was last summer, how could I credibly maintain that deflation was in our future? For reasons that I wrote about extensively then. Briefly, we were in a recession. Recessions are almost by definition deflationary. We had two massive bubbles bursting: the very visible housing bubble which was massively destroying wealth, and the less visible but even more powerful bursting of the credit bubble, which was accompanied by profound deleveraging and the destruction of what Paul McCulley termed the Shadow Banking System.

It would be a strange, strange world indeed if inflation could get any real traction in such an environment, and it didn’t.

But now we have a structural problem in that deflation has the potential to get some very real traction going forward. Why? Because not just in the US, but all over the world, we built too much of almost everything. Too many houses, too many manufacturing plants, too many retail stores — and just too much stuff.

In the US, capacity utilization is falling rapidly. Typically, if we produce “stuff” (cars, food, lumber, etc.) in the range of 80% of potential capacity, that is considered to be a good economy. Capacity utilization has been dropping for some time and is down below 75% for all industries, but in many industries is close to 70%. And the clear trend when looking at ISM manufacturing statistics is that it has a lot further to fall.

That means industries have no pricing power, as they can make a lot more “stuff” than they can sell. And when demand due to the recession drops as well, prices fall as producers try to stay in business.

As a very visible example, global output capacity for automobiles is 92 million cars, but sales will probably be around 60 million. Output in the US will be around 12 million, but right now sales are only about ten million. The average American household has 2.2 cars. Evidently, consumers are reducing the number of cars they own, buying used cars, and making their current vehicles last an average of 6 months longer — all in just the last year.

Many auto plants, both in the US and abroad, are simply going to have to be closed. “Super-efficient Toyota expects its first operating loss in 70 years in the fiscal year ending March 31. Weak sales in China will probably force many of her 80 automakers to merge. Russian sales dropped 15% in November and 25% in Brazil from a year earlier.” (Gary Shilling)

Just as there are too many auto dealers and too much auto manufacturing capacity, there are too many stores for a country whose consumers are in retreat. Consumer spending could easily drop 7% as the saving rate heads back up to 5% (or even more). It is estimated that over 70,000 retail stores will go out of business in the next six months. That would be in line with the 140,000 that closed doors last year. The economy and its businesses have to adjust to a new level of spending that will be the first serious consumer recession in 26 years.

Looking at Federal Reserve data, both total household debt and mortgage debt outstanding dropped in the third quarter, for the largest drop in 40 years. As I wrote almost two years ago, the disappearance of Mortgage Equity Withdrawals is having a negative impact of about 3% on US GDP. Evidence shows that this is also happening in Great Britain and other parts of Europe where there was a housing bubble.

Lies, Damned Lies, and Government Unemployment Numbers

There are some who see a ray of hope in the recent jobless claims reports, which have dropped back to “only” 467,000 in initial unemployment claims, down from 491,000 for the last week, after being over 500,000 for several weeks. Those numbers are seasonally adjusted. That hope disappears if you look at the actual numbers. For the current reporting week ending January 3, 2009, the advance number of initial claims came in at 726,420. Last week’s advance number was 717,000. We have been above 600,000 new initial claims every week since the third week of November. Continuing claims jumped massively, by 744,000 to 5,316,124.

No conspiracy here. This is what happens when you try to smooth a volatile trend by using seasonal adjustments. If you use past performance as the tool by which you smooth the trend, when the trend changes, the seasonally adjusted numbers will be either too large or too small. Thus, the data understated the growth of jobs in 2003 because recent past performance had been bad, and it is now understating the number of unemployment claims and actual unemployment.

In December, the number of unemployed persons increased by a seasonally adjusted 632,000 to 11.1 million and the unemployment rate rose to 7.2%. Since the start of the recession in December 2007, the number of unemployed persons has grown by 3.6 million, and the unemployment rate has risen by 2.3% and is now at 7.2%.

I happened to be watching CNBC at the time of the release of the data, and several commentators remarked how much better the number was than they thought it would be. I wish they were right, but again, the actual numbers showed a loss of 954,000 jobs, over 50% more than the headline number reported in the press release. And that assumes that new businesses created 72,000 jobs from the birth/death model that I so frequently write about. It is possible that almost 1 million jobs were lost in December. I doubt the market would have liked that number.

I should note that the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not hide that number. You can find it if you dig for it. But most analysts seem to prefer just to take the press release and go with it. And most of the time that is fine. But in times like this, when trends are changing, you miss the bigger picture and get misleading data.

Unemployment could rise to 9-10% or more this year and on into 2010. That means we could easily see another 3 million lost jobs over the next year. That is going to put a lot of negative pressure on consumer spending. It also means that wages are not likely to rise, and we have already hard evidence of wages falling in many industries as companies try to find ways to remain solvent.

And that 9% will be the headline number. If you add people who have part-time jobs but would like a full-time job, and what are called marginally attached workers, the current rate is already 13.5%.

Average hours worked dropped to the lowest level since they began collecting data in 1964, as did hourly income. Given the increasing difficulty for consumers to borrow money and with income dropping, plus increased savings on the part of consumers, it is difficult to see how pricing power is going to come back any time soon.

This problem is multiplied throughout the developed world. The developing world, which sells products and goods to the US and European consumers, is starting to feel the pinch. Chinese and other Asian exports are dropping (more on that in future letters, but the data is ugly).

Overcapacity, rising unemployment, imploding leverage, lack of borrowing and/or lending, a serious retreat by consumers, and increased savings are all the conditions needed to bring about deflation. Left unchecked, we could soon see something like what Japan has experienced, and even potentially worse, as they started with a savings rate of 13%.

But deflation is not going to be left unchecked. It will be fought by central banks everywhere with low rates and the printing press, as well as government spending. And so, let’s turn our attention to that process.

Central Bankers of the World, Unite!

There are many people who believe that the Fed and the Treasury increasing the money supply will bring about uncomfortably high inflation. And it is indeed their intention to “reflate” the economy. They are well aware of the problems that would develop if the US (and Europe!) caught “Japanese disease” or a prolonged bout of deflation. Bernanke has made it clear that “it” (as he called deflation in his 2002 speech) would not be allowe to happen on his watch.

And we have already seen a rather large growth in the monetary base. But as I wrote a few weeks ago, the velocity factor of money is slowing rapidly, creating the ability — or dare I say it? — the actual need to expand the money supply (you can read that at http://www.2000wave.com/article.asp?id=mwo120508) . But is it having an effect?

Good friend Gary Shilling raises some doubts (emphasis mine):

“Central banks around the world continue to cut their target rates, although in today’s frozen credit market, that won’t ever get the horse up on his feet, let alone to the water and drinking. The distrust of banks for even loans to other banks is shown by the still wide spread between LIBOR and the Treasury bills they covet.

“The M2 money supply is 60 times bank reserves, so normally when the Fed gives the bank another dollar in reserves, M2 rises by $60. But between August and November of last year, the $577 billion rise in reserves resulted in a mere $264 billion growth in M2, less than one half!”

See the chart below (the red, smooth line is M2, the dotted line is the adjusted reserves).



The Fed is aggressively expanding its balance sheet. They have made clear that they intend to purchase mortgage securities, consumer loans, and credit card securities. Corporate loans are on the table, as well as other forms of debt. (Finland is getting ready to purchase corporate debt. The list of countries that do so will rise very quickly.) This will be direct infusion of money into the system. As Bernanke said in 2002, he knows where the keys are to the room that has the printing press. And they are going to use it.

Obama and his advisors have signaled they intend to run a deficit of at least a trillion dollars. Right now, as I add it up, it is more like $1.3 trillion (the stimulus number keeps moving), and given that tax receipts are going to drop and unemployment benefits will rise (care to bet that unemployment benefits won’t be extended to 52 weeks instead of the current 26?), it could be closer to $1.7-2 trillion. That would be almost 15% of GDP!

Let’s get this straight. The only difference between the Treasury and the Fed under an Obama administration and the Bush administration is that Obama will be even more willing to spend (although Bush certainly showed little restraint). Incoming Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has worked at Treasury and is now president of the New York Fed. There will be little difference between his policies (and those of Larry Summers, Obama’s economic advisor) and those of Bernanke and Paulson. And like Paulson, he is going to have to make up the play book as he goes.

The Fed and the new administration are “all in,” as they say in Texas hold ’em poker, in the fight to defeat deflation and get the economy growing. And eventually England and Europe will get it and join the fight (both the European Central Bank [especially!] and the Bank of England are behind the curve).

But there is a problem.

Lowering rates isn’t enough to get consumers to spend when they have seen their wealth erode from losses in the value of their houses and investment portfolios and retirement accounts. The stimulus last summer was largely saved or used to pay down debt. What was an annualized stimulus of 3% of GDP in the second quarter, which is quite large, only kept GDP growth positive for one quarter.

Obama talks about creating 3 million jobs. If he can do it, that would only partially offset the job losses that will happen in his first year in office. But it will take a long time for much of the stimulus he is talking about to make its way into the economy. You can’t turn on infrastructure projects in one quarter. It takes a lot of time to plan. New green power plants? Wonderful. I’m all for it. But they take years to authorize and build. Tax cuts? Again, much of it will be saved or used for debt.

The reality is that the US and much of the world are going to see their economies shrink for at least another year. And when that new, lower level is reached, the economy will slowly start to grow again. Remember those 71,000 retail stores closing? That means that those left standing will get more business and will be able to expand and grow and hire people. That is how recessions work. Excess capacity is worked through. Businesses cut back until they can get positive cash flow.

In 1978, in the midst of high inflation, bear markets, and malaise about all our jobs going overseas, the correct answer to the question “Where will all the needed new jobs come from?” was “I don’t know, but they will.” That is the correct answer today. That is what free markets and capitalism do. They find a way to make new paths and new businesses where none existed before. And it will happen again. Just with a little lag this time.

In the meantime, there is a lot of pain. An Obama administration is going to do what it can to help relieve that pain, even at the cost of trillion-dollar deficits for several years.

This you can take to the bank: If the Fed buys $500 billion in assets of various kinds and if the US government spends an extra trillion dollars and deflation is still a concern, they are going to double down and do it again. And yet again if they think it is necessary. They are not going to stop until the nominal economy is growing and inflation is above at least 1%.

How much will that number finally be? No one really knows. This has never been attempted. Maybe the initial stimulus package and Fed debt purchases will be enough. My bet is that it won’t be, but that is just a guess. We are in uncharted waters. But the captains of the boats are all Keynesians. They are going to fight a recession and deflation with old-fashioned stimulus. And that means we had better adjust our portfolios and businesses for that reality.

Just to give you a picture of what economists think about the effect of the stimulus, let’s turn to the Levy Economics Institute of Bard College, which is one of my favorite sources for original economic insight (http://www.levy.org/). They are a rather conservative lot. The graph below shows what two different levels of government stimulus will mean to the economy. They graph unemployment at no stimulus (top black line) and at two levels of “shock” or stimulus. Shock 1 is about $380 billion and shock 2 is about $760 billion. The dotted lines are what is known as “output gap,” or the measure of the difference between the actual output (actual GDP) of an economy and what it could produce at its most efficient (potential GDP).



“The implication of these projections is that, even with the application of almost unbelievably large fiscal stimuli, output will not increase enough to prevent unemployment from continuing to rise through the next two years.

“It seems to us unlikely that U.S. budget deficits on the order of 8–10 percent through the next two years could be tolerated for purely political reasons, given the strong and widespread belief that the budget should normally be balanced. But looking at the matter more rationally, we are bound to accept that nothing like the configuration of balances and other variables displayed in Figures 3 and 4 could possibly be sustained over any long period of time. The budget deficits imply that the public debt relative to GDP would rise permanently to about 80 percent, while GDP would remain below trend, with unemployment above 6 percent.

“Fiscal policy alone cannot, therefore, resolve the current crisis. A large enough stimulus will help counter the drop in private expenditure, reducing unemployment, but it will bring back a large and growing external imbalance, which will keep world growth on an unsustainable path.

“… At the moment, the recovery plans under consideration by the United States and many other countries seem to be concentrated on the possibility of using expansionary fiscal and monetary policies.

“But, however well coordinated, this approach will not be sufficient.

“What must come to pass, perhaps obviously, is a worldwide recovery of output, combined with sustainable balances in international trade.”

Let me wrap up with a quick note about housing. The economy is going to have a rough time getting back to trend growth with the housing market in the tank. New home sales fell 2.9% in November, while the median price declined 11.5%. Unsold inventories stood at a rate of 11.5-month supply. Housing starts fell nearly 19% in November, while the number of building permits was down 15.6%. Sales of existing homes in November fell more than 8%. The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city housing index showed an 18% drop in prices in October from a year earlier, while the 10-city index declined 19.1%. Prices in the 20-city index have fallen more than 23% since their July 2006 peak, while the 10-city index is down 25% since its top in June 2006.

It will be 2011 before we work through the excess supply of homes, especially as we are seeing more and more come onto the market because of foreclosures. Prices are likely to drop another 10%. There will be more wealth destruction and more pressure on consumers. 10% of all mortgages are either delinquent or in foreclosure.

Predictions 2009

Let’s close with some predictions. Ten out of ten analysts in the recent Barron’s forecast saw stock prices rising 10-20% this year. For reasons I outlined last week, I think we could see a tradable rally in the next few months, but at the very least test the lows this summer, if not set new lows. Earnings are going to be far worse than any analyst’s projections I have seen. And earnings drive stock prices.

Further, this recession is going to be the longest in anyone’s memory. It is going to seem like it is never going to end (it will, I promise), and more and more investors are just going to give up on stocks. The buy and hold for the long run mantra is wearing thin. In inflation-adjusted terms, the stock market is about where it was in 1973! If you reinvested dividends, that gets you to 1991 (again, inflation-adjusted). It takes a lot of buying to make a bull market. It only takes an absence of buying to make a bear market.

Could we get a rally after the summer or fall lows? Sure. And it could be a good one. A lot depends on how fast the stimulus kicks in and whether it really has an effect. Will the Fed really buy large-cap corporate debt? I hope we can see something like a 1974 bottom in stocks develop.

I think the correlation between the US stock market, other developed markets, and emerging markets is close to one. I prefer to stand aside until the US economy has a clear direction and we can see whether the stimulus actually works. And then we can look at the world economy. I won’t embarrass them by naming names, but those who argued for “decoupling” between the US and the rest of the world are not looking good. Someday, but not this decade.

I would be a buyer of quality bonds, both corporate and municipal. The key is to have a bond analyst who knows what they are doing and not just looking at ratings. There are some real values in the bond market today.

I would not be a buyer of US government debt. Treasuries, if not in a mini-bubble, have little upside potential and just don’t yield enough. Why would I hold a ten-year treasury for 2.39%? I like TIPS at these prices. TIPS are pricing in deflation for ten years and, as I outlined above, I don’t think the Fed will allow deflation to take hold.

With all the massive printing of money, you would think I expect the dollar to crash. I don’t. The question is, what will it fall against? The euro? Really? The pound is better valued, but England and Europe are going to have to cut rates and apply massive stimulus as well. Every developed country will have problems. I can see holding Canadian, Australian, and other commodity-country currencies, but the leverage needed to make it a reasonable investment potential is too risky for individuals.

I can’t see the Japanese letting the yen get too much stronger. China seems to want to halt the rise of the yuan, and the rest of Asia will devalue their currencies to maintain whatever they think of as a competitive advantage. Longer term, I like Asian currencies.

After a year of bouncing around, gold may be poised to rise against all major currencies. We could easily see new highs in the next year.

I think oil is going lower (and maybe much lower — can you say $1-a-gallon gas?) in the near term. As I have written about before, oil is now in the steepest contango on record. That means oil is cheap today and more expensive in a few months. That is not normal. Oil is bidding for storage. You can make 20-25% on your money in a few months if you can buy oil and find somewhere to store it. At least 25 supertankers have been leased to store oil, and sources say another ten are being bid for. It remains to be seen if OPEC can really cut enough to make a difference in the near term.

As for the other metals, I think it is quite likely copper and its industrial allies will fall in price at least for the near term, until production can be cut and demand in Asia begin to rise again. I would not be a buyer of long-only commodity funds for the near term. Someday the bull market in commodities will return, but not until Asian demand picks up.

The risks to my forecasts are quite clear. The stimulus could happen quicker and be more effective than I think, and the economy and the markets could surprise to the upside. On the other hand, and more scarily, the Fed could be pushing on a string in a liquidity trap and the economy and markets could get hit harder, along with most assets.

Briefly, if you would like to look at a range of money managers I think have the potential to navigate the current market successfully, let me suggest you contact some of my partners around the world. If you are an accredited investor (net worth $1.5 million) and would like to look at a group of hedge funds and especially commodity funds in the US, go to www.accreditedinvestor.ws and fill out the form, and my partners at Altegris Investments will get in touch with you. If you are in Europe, use the same link and I will get you in touch with Absolute Return Partners in London. In South Africa, my partner is Plexus Asset Management. We will soon be announcing new partners in Canada and in Latin America.

If your net worth is less than $1.5 million, my US partners at CMG have a platform of managers and traders that take direct-managed accounts with minimums of $100,000. These are liquid and fully transparent accounts with managers with long-term track records. You really should check it out. The link is http://www.cmgfunds.net/public/mauldin_questionnaire.asp.

And if you are an advisor or broker and would like to see the managers on the Altegris or CMG platforms and how you can access them for your clients, sign up and note on the form you are in the business. It might actually be fun to make a client call with a recommendation for a fund or manager that was up in 2008.

John Mauldin is president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. Contact John at John@FrontlineThoughts.com.

Disclaimer
John Mauldin is president of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC, a registered investment advisor. All material presented herein is believed to be reliable but we cannot attest to its accuracy. Investment recommendations may change and readers are urged to check with their investment counselors before making any investment decisions.

Front page economic news tends to have broad impact on the markets, while other important news seems to slip past the masses. The January Effect is one of my favorite indicators that is routinely overlooked, yet it is very reliable. Did you know that the first five days of 2008 held the worst performance for the S&P 500 (down 5.32%), that was a warning of strong losses, which materialized into the worst annual performance in S&P 500 history? The First-Five-Days in January are crucial for the full-year outlook. Nobody has found the’perfect prediction model, yet the January Effect seems to work with a reasonable amount of consistency. Thursday’s close marked the fifth trading day of 2009 so let’s take an in-depth look at the historical accuracy as well as the current signal for 2009.

The January barometer that traders look at is the potential for the first five trading days of the New Year to be a harbinger of the market’s direction for the coming year. The basic premise is that momentum at the start of the year sets the tone for the rest of the year.

The idea is simple. Whichever way the fist five days goes, so goes January and so goes the entire year. Over the last 24 years, this theory has been accurate 70 percent of the time. I’ve charted the percentage changes for the S&P 500 in January over the last twenty-five years, and compared that to the corresponding annual changes.

S&P 500 Performance (First Five Day – Annual)


While the theory is not a full-proof indicator, it is more likely to be correct than not. More importantly, take a look at the results from the years highlighted in yellow (when the theory failed). You’ll see that in absolute (negative or positive) terms the theory failed, however, the majority of failed predictions deviates a relatively small amount. While technically the theory failed, these years were ‘near misses’ where the annual gains were minimal following a first five days performance.

The counter-argument against this first-five-trading-days effect would be that the inherent bias built into the stock market is a bullish one, so again in January and a gain for the same year would just reflect natural market movement. The data may not imply a definite loss, but certainly implies that a gain is less likely and minimal at best.

So why does this indicator work? Perhaps the effect is coincidental, or perhaps it’s a sign of simple momentum. Maybe it’s even something of a self-fulfilling prophecy, where investors see a certain beginning, and that sets the tone for the entire year. But most likely it’s something a little more scientific than that – with a clean slate (a New Year) and the previous year behind us, many investors begin taking positions within the first few trading days of the year. It is this trading, barring any substantial economic or political changes, that lets you know whether the public is thinking like a net seller, or a net buyer. For 2009, thus far, traders are net buyers (albeit mildly). If probability plays out, then 2009 will be a positive year for stocks.

Price Headley is the founder and chief analyst of BigTrends.com.

For Monday, the bond complex projects lower, or at least the 5- and 10-year. The 30-year is neutral.

Either-Or Biases

The first set of biases includes six biases that individually signal either long or short on a daily basis, except for the rare tie. Each bias has a +1 value for long bias, and a -1 for short. The bottom line is the sum total, which can range from -6 to 6. Positive totals are bullish; negative are bearish. For bullish signals (opposite is bearish):

1. The 2-day average is below the 5-day average.
2. The close is above the 40-day average.
3. The highest close of the last 50 days occurs before the lowest close of the last 50 days.
4. The day’s trading range is smaller than the 10-day average range and the day’s close is higher than the previous day’s close OR the day’s range is larger than the 10-day average range and the close is lower than the previous day’s close.
5. The close is above the midpoint of the average 15-day range. (The 15-day high average plus the 15-day low average divided by 2.)
6. Fade the majority direction of the last three open-to-closes.



Infrequent Biases

The five infrequent biases are listed below. For bullish signals (opposite is bearish):

1. Four successively higher closes were followed by yesterday’s down close. Today’s action was irrelevant.
2. Five successively lower closes were followed by today’s up close.
3. CUP trade. For the last three trading days, the middle day had both the lowest low and the lowest close. In addition, the low on the middle day must also be lower than the lows from the previous three trading days before the middle day. (CAP is the reverse and bearish.)
4. The highest low minus the lowest low of the last three days is less than or equal to 20% of the highest high minus the lowest low of the last three days.
5. For the previous two days, the market closed lower than it opened.



Calendar Biases

The calendar biases in the indexes are listed below.



DISCLAIMER: It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in this column will be profitable or that they will not result in losses. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Examples presented in this column are for educational purposes only. These set-ups are not solicitations of any order to buy or sell. The author, Tiger Shark Publishing LLC, and all affiliates assume no responsibility for your trading results. There is a high degree of risk in trading.

Art Collins is the author of Beating the Financial Futures Market: Combining Small Biases into Powerful Money Making Strategies. E-mail him at art@traderinsight.com.

It was just too easy for us last year…

In lower Manhattan, we could throw a brick in any direction and be sure to hit a major swindler and at least two knuckleheads. And as for making money, everywhere we looked, we saw something to sell – art, oil, retailers, finance…you name it. The only things that went up last year were gold and U.S. government bonds. All we had to do was to stick to our Trade of the Decade…sell stocks on rebounds, buy gold on dips…and we made money.

A year like that doesn’t come along very often. We can’t remember when we had so much fun…

A real boom lasts longer than most marriages. This last one began in 1982 – during the first Reagan term. Now it is gone…over…fini…kaput. Just like that.

After so many happy years spent together, you’d think there would be some kind of ceremony…some suitable last rites and requiem mass to mark its passing. Instead, people turn their backs on the past like it was day-old bread. They clean out their cupboards on January 1st, and toss out the dead year to bluejays and starlings.

Here at The Daily Reckoning we are sentimental fuddy duddies. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t recall the many good times we had during the madcap years of the boom. We still haven’t even been able to take down our Christmas tree or hang up our 2009 calendar…and, below, we turn our heads back for one last, nostalgic look…

And now we face a grim task; for now we have to reckon with the year ahead. Stocks are no longer absurdly over-priced. Nor is oil. Nor is anything else – with one major exception – U.S. Treasury debt. Should you buy stocks…or sell them? Should you buy more gold now…or wait for the first signs of inflation? Is it time to buy the oil producers…or the gold miners? Will the world economy sink into a Japan-like slump…or will the feds cause a Zimbabwe-like catastrophe?

Every day, our head aches from trying to figure it out…

How do you make money, dear reader? You look for the fool who wants to give it to you. Who is the fool in the market in 2009? He is the fellow who buys U.S. bonds. But taking his money may not be as easy as it looks.

Let’s first turn to the headlines…and we’ll come back to the fool later.

Yesterday, the Dow sold off a further 27 points. The stock market looks to us as though it wants to go up. We’re tempted to bet on…since a rebound is usually the safest bet you can make after such a major tumble. But there is no guarantee it will work that way.

But Mr. Market is full of tricks. Who knows what he’ll get up to?

Oil is trading above $40 this morning. And gold rose $12 yesterday.

The news from the economy tells us that the financial losses are working their way into the business world.

Retailers had their worst December in 40 years, says the LA Times .

Loan delinquencies hit record highs last year, says the Washington Post .

“Job losses stack up as recession deepens,” is one of today’s headlines. Unemployment numbers have reached a high not seen since the beginning of the boom – 26 years ago.

Layoffs in China are beginning too. At least China has some savings it can use to fight the downturn. America can only borrow…and borrow…and finally, print up money.

That is our forecast, by the way.

First, we don’t believe that a generation’s worth of errors can be corrected in 6 months. Investors and consumers have had a shock. But they are still hopeful. After the worst crash in stock market history they are nevertheless holding onto their stocks. They see a recession…but they don’t quite believe it. Just wait. First, there’s the financial shock. Then, the economic shock. And then, another financial shock as investors realize how bad the situation really is. Shock after shock…knock after knock…investors, consumers and businessmen get the boom year reflexes beaten out of them.

*** Dividend yields are now higher than Treasury bond yields, but they are still not at sold-out, depression bottom levels. And the Dow, now down about 35%, is far above the depths you’d expect in a generational downturn. To get down to real bargain levels – such as those of 1932, 1949 and 1982 – the Dow will have to go well below 5,000…say, to around 3,000. And investors’ attitudes will have to change. That’s when they cease believing that prices bounce at all; instead, they come to think that they are leaden…and begin to believe that holding stocks is always a losing proposition.

Bounce or no bounce…stock prices are probably going a lot lower.

Second, the feds are hell-bent on preventing this kind of severe, natural correction. The Fed has already cut its key lending rate to zero. Yesterday, the Bank of England hacked its own key rate to the lowest level since the bank was set up in the late 17th century. Apparently, this is the most menacing situation faced by the British economy since the reign of William of Orange. Or to look at it with a bit of historical imagination, not since the beginning of the industrial revolution has the Anglo-American empire needed such emergency-level interest rates:.

The New York Times provides the latest details:

“Crisis Trumps Restraint

“As the ranking Democrat and then chairman of the House Budget Committee, Representative John M. Spratt Jr. of South Carolina accused President Bush for eight years of recklessly running up huge fiscal deficits.

“But by noon on Wednesday, after listening for two hours as economists explained why it was crucial to run a large deficit – one that would triple the previous record and vault far above $1 trillion – Mr. Spratt looked shell-shocked.

“Lingering in his chair as the cavernous hearing room emptied, he stared into the distance and gave vent to his concerns.

“The thing I wanted to ask,” he said, “was if there was some limit which we should be wary of? Is there some limit in terms of how much borrowing and debt creation we should take on?”

“For the moment, the answer is no.”

*** And here we spare a moment to return to one of our own old dicta:

People come to think what they must think when they have to think it.

The House Budget Committee listened to Martin Feldstein and Mark Zandi – both conservative economists – along with Robert Reich, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Labor.

All sang the same Keynesian tune. The refrain, as rehearsed by Martin Feldstein, goes like this:

“Reviving the economy requires major fiscal stimulus from tax cuts and increased government spending.”

When America’s economy was young and competitive it survived slumps and crashes without medical intervention. Now, every passing cold requires feeding tubes. And this latest bout of influenza has the doctors in a panic. They are casting aside warnings and giving the patient masses doses of the old quack treatments. They’ll increase the dosage – until they run out of supplies – and then switch to those new, experimental medicines that have recently been used in field trials by Dr. Gono in Zimbabwe. Since they cannot leave well enough alone – the public won’t stand for it – they will keep giving bigger and bigger doses, of more and more dangerous medicines, until the patient dies.

When? How? We wish we knew. But yesterday, we got word that the European Central Bank has found a way to do what the U.S. Fed is already doing – buying up government debt. As you may know, dear reader, when central banks buy government debt, the money supply increases directly.

Surely, Gideon Gono must feel his chest swelling with pride. He must be in line for a Nobel Prize…or a hanging. Against, we quote his approving words:

“Banks, including those in USA and Britain are not now just talking of, but actually implements flexible and pragmatic central bank programs where these are deemed necessary in their national interests.

“That is precisely the path that we began only 4 years ago in pursuit of our national interest and have not wavered from that critical path despite the untold misunderstandings, vilification and demonization we have endured from across the political divide.”

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.

I was one of the few analysts calling for a potential rebound in non-farm payrolls in the month of December (Non-Farm Payrolls Preview: Could We See a Rebound) and that was exactly what we saw this morning. 524k jobs were lost in the US economy, which is modestly better than the -586k revised loss for November. In the past 5 decades, we have seen a rebound every single time job losses topped 500k, and this time it was no different. The employment component of service sector ISM which rebounded last month has once again proved to be one of the most reliable leading indicators for NFP. We have a service based economy and the rebound in the employment component of ISM was a strong signal that we could see a rebound in payrolls. However, the rebound is far more modest than what we have seen in the past and the unemployment rate jumped from 6.8 to 7.2 percent, is the highest level in close to 15 years.

Despite the better than expected number, if you need proof that the US economy is in bad shape, the latest non-farm payrolls report certainly provides it. In the course of 2 months, more than a million Americans lost their jobs, totaling 2.485 million jobs lost in 2008.

We will probably not see the new assault on the US dollar that traders were expecting since NFPs matched expectation, but in the long run the data is nothing to cheer about. An unemployment rate of 7 percent was the big number that everyone was focusing on now that the unemployment rate has exceeded that level, it will force more creative measures of stimulus from the Federal Reserve.

Rebound is a Precursor to More Losses

We have just endured one of the worst strings of job losses that this generation has ever seen and unfortunately the pain will continue. Companies are tightening their belts and are in survival mode. Alcoa and Intel have already announced layoffs. Fourth quarter and first quarter earnings will be very weak. To shore up their stock prices and plan for a recovery, many companies may be forced to announce more layoffs.

The US is in recession and in previous recessions, job cuts have lasted for at least 15 months. So far, we have only seen 12 consecutive months of job losses which means that non-farm payrolls will not turn positive until the second half of the year.

There was nothing good report as the pace of job losses in the manufacturing sector accelerated while average weekly hours and earnings declined.

Kathy Lien is Director of Currency Research at GFT, and runs KathyLien.com.

Lone dissenting seasonal bear flash in the Nasdaq aside, the indices are in solid bull mode for Friday. The market could gap sharply lower off the big unemployment report, but that could prove to be the best buying scenario.

Either-Or Biases

The first set of biases includes six biases that individually signal either long or short on a daily basis, except for the rare tie. Each bias has a +1 value for long bias, and a -1 for short. The bottom line is the sum total, which can range from -6 to 6. Positive totals are bullish; negative are bearish. For bullish signals (opposite is bearish):

1. The 2-day average is below the 5-day average.
2. The close is above the 40-day average.
3. The highest close of the last 50 days occurs before the lowest close of the last 50 days.
4. The day’s trading range is smaller than the 10-day average range and the day’s close is higher than the previous day’s close OR the day’s range is larger than the 10-day average range and the close is lower than the previous day’s close.
5. The close is above the midpoint of the average 15-day range. (The 15-day high average plus the 15-day low average divided by 2.)
6. Fade the majority direction of the last three open-to-closes.



Infrequent Biases

The five infrequent biases are listed below. For bullish signals (opposite is bearish):

1. Four successively higher closes were followed by yesterday’s down close. Today’s action was irrelevant.
2. Five successively lower closes were followed by today’s up close.
3. CUP trade. For the last three trading days, the middle day had both the lowest low and the lowest close. In addition, the low on the middle day must also be lower than the lows from the previous three trading days before the middle day. (CAP is the reverse and bearish.)
4. The highest low minus the lowest low of the last three days is less than or equal to 20% of the highest high minus the lowest low of the last three days.
5. For the previous two days, the market closed lower than it opened.



Calendar Biases

The calendar biases in the indexes are listed below.



DISCLAIMER: It should not be assumed that the methods, techniques, or indicators presented in this column will be profitable or that they will not result in losses. Past results are not necessarily indicative of future results. Examples presented in this column are for educational purposes only. These set-ups are not solicitations of any order to buy or sell. The author, Tiger Shark Publishing LLC, and all affiliates assume no responsibility for your trading results. There is a high degree of risk in trading.

Art Collins is the author of Beating the Financial Futures Market: Combining Small Biases into Powerful Money Making Strategies. E-mail him at art@traderinsight.com.

The US dollar is selling off aggressively ahead of Friday’s non-farm payrolls report on the fear that for the second month in a row, job losses may have topped 500k. The recent moves in the currency and equity markets suggest that everyone expects a very weak labor market report. Although the consensus forecast is -520k, the whisper number is closer to -650k to -700k. Sentiment is strongly skewed in one direction which can be dangerous considering the fact that some of the leading indicators for non-farm payrolls call for a rebound. The Non-farm payrolls report is the most market moving release for the currency market and it should live up to its volatility inducing reputation.

Why Non-Farm Payrolls Could Rebound in December

For many Americans, 2008 has been a year unlike any other. Companies across the nation have been forced to tighten their belts and move into survival mode, accelerating layoffs towards the end of the year. With the December numbers, more than 2 million Americans will have lost their jobs in 2008. In fact, jobs were cut every single month last year. Although everyone expects very weak job growth, there is reason to believe that we may see a rebound in non-farm payrolls. First, the employment component of Service sector ISM, which is one of the most reliable leading indicators for non-farm payrolls improved in December along with the University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index. Since the US is a service based economy, the slower pace of job losses in the ISM report suggests that we could see a rebound in non-farm payrolls.



In addition, every single time that we have seen non-farm payrolls fall by more than 500k, there is a steep rebound the following month. In the past 50 years, we have had 3 cases where more than half a million jobs were lost in one month and in every single one of those cases, NFPs rebounded close to 50 percent. The improvement in service sector ISM suggests that the rebound could be seen again in December.

12 Consecutive Months of Negative Non-Farm Payrolls

With that in mind however, non-farm payrolls will still be weak and the unemployment rate will rise as all of the leading indicators for non-farm payrolls point to more job losses. The main reason why the whisper number is around -650k to -700k is because private sector payroll provider ADP reported that 693,000 jobs were cut last month. Given that non-farm payrolls came out worse than the ADP report every single month last year, this has led some people to believe that job losses in December could have been the largest in 5 decades. Unemployment rolls are also continuing to grow with the 4 week average of jobless claims and continuing claims at 26 year highs. Layoffs have risen 274.5% while online job ads have declined. Despite the rebound in the employment component of service sector PMI, the index remains in contractionary territory while the record low hit by the Conference Board’s report of consumer confidence offsets the improvement in the University of Michigan data.

Here’s how the 10 leading indicators for non-farm payrolls stack up for December:

1. Employment Component of Service Sector ISM Rebounds but Remains Contractionary
2. University of Michigan Consumer Confidence Index Increases Marginally
3. Employment Component of Manufacturing Sector ISM Hits Another Record Low
4. ADP Report Private Sector Job Losses at 693,000, A New Record Low
5. Challenger Reports that Layoffs Rise 274.5%
6. Conference Board Consumer Confidence Report Hits Record Low
7. 4 Week Average Claims at 26 Year High
8. Continuing Claims Hit 26 Year High
9. Monster.com Index Falls 12 Points
10. Strike Activity Flat

How the Dollar May React to NFPs

A negative non-farm payrolls reading alone will not hurt the US dollar. Instead the greenback’s reaction to the labor market report will depend on the severity of job losses. If non-farm payrolls fall by 525k or less, we could see a bounce in the dollar because these days matching expectations can have more of a positive than negative impact on a currency. If payrolls fall by more than 575k however we could see the dollar extend its losses, particularly against the Japanese Yen and Euro. The larger the decline in payrolls, the greater the potential sell-off in the US dollar. If NFPs comes anywhere close to 700k, the EUR/USD could surge towards 1.40 and USD/JPY could break 90. Keep an eye out of revisions as well which could add to the expected volatility post payrolls.

Here are the forecasts for December Non-Farm Payrolls:

Change in Non-Farm Payrolls: -520k (-533k Previous)
Unemployment Rate: 7.0% (6.7% Previous)
Change in Manufacturing Payrolls: -100k (-85k Previous)
Average Hourly Earnings (MoM): 0.2% (0.4% Previous)
Average Weekly Hours: 33.5 (33.5 Previous)

A Rebound Would be a Precursor to More Losses

If we really see a rebound in December non-farm payrolls, it would only be a precursor to another phase of aggressive layoffs. Alcoa and Intel have already announced another round of job cuts. In previous recessions, job cuts have lasted for at least 15 months (December would only mark the 12th month of layoffs). The current recession is the closest to the 1980s recession, when job losses continued for 17 consecutive months. Even the recession in 2001, which was shallower than the current recession had 15 consecutive months of job losses. Therefore non-farm payrolls should remain negative throughout first quarter. Furthermore, a large drop in non-farm payrolls does not mean that we have hit a bottom.

In analyzing non-farm payrolls data during past recessions, we see that at the beginning of an official recession, as defined by the National Bureau of Economic Research, non-farm payrolls start to decline rapidly. However after falling between 200k and 300k, job cuts stall and then pick up once again. We saw this trend in the 1981 to 1982 recession, the 1990 to 1991 recession and during the 2001 recession. This pattern could be repeated in 2009.



Kathy Lien is Director of Currency Research at GFT, and runs KathyLien.com.

Poor Adolf Merckle. The tycoon must have been down to his last billion or so. He was “broken” by the credit crunch, says the Financial Times . He wrote a farewell note and stepped in front of the 7:38 Express on its way to Munich.

As far as we know, the worldwide meltdown has claimed as much as $30 trillion dollars, according to one figure we saw, but relatively few lives. That makes it a comedy…not a tragedy.

Too bad for Herr Merckle. He didn’t appreciate the humor of it.

Yesterday was a bad day for investors. They are all expecting a recovery. Instead, the patient got sicker…the Dow fell 245 points. Oil slipped down nearly $6. And gold? Et tu AU? Yes, gold fell too – down $24.

So, here is a good place to take up our guesswork about what is going on in the world’s markets and what we should expect.

It all seemed too simple, a few days ago. It was. Too simple, that is.

The world’s markets have begun a major correction. The world’s governments – led by the United States – are determined to stop it. They want people to spend like there was no tomorrow. But people are acting like every day is tomorrow. Instead of spending, they are beginning to save.

Then comes news that vacancies in malls are at a 10-year high. Malls are places where consumers buy stuff. The days of stuff-lust are over. Ergo, less retail space is needed.

But if they buy less stuff, fewer people are needed to sell stuff…to make stuff…to move stuff…to count stuff and so forth.

“Pink slips pile higher,” reports the Associated Press . Employers cut nearly 700,000 jobs in December. The total for last year, when the final counts are made, is expected to be about 2.4 million. But the job losses have barely begun. It was only at the end of 2008 that most businesses realized they were in trouble. The real job losses will come this year.

The unemployment rate in November was about 6.7%. In December, it was said to be around 7%. If you put into the number all the people who have given up looking for work, the figure would go to about 12%. But even that will seem like full employment after the tsunami of job cuts hits this year.

Since so many Americans live without substantial reserves – savings – the pressure on Misters Obama and Bernanke to ‘do something’ will increase. What can they do? Spend money.

“US deficit set for post-war record,” reports the Financial Times . Reports today tell us that Obama says deficits will go “over $1 trillion.” One estimate put it at $1.2 trillion for ’09. We’ve seen others at $1.5 and even $2 trillion.

What they are trying to do is two things: replace private spending with public spending…and cause consumer prices to rise.

But replacing private spending with public spending, alone, is a task that would have staggered Hercules. In the past, the U.S. consumer could be counted on as the planet’s chump of last resort. He didn’t have any money. Still, when an economy slumped, he nevertheless kept spending – buying on credit. Gradually, the whole world economy came to rely on him. But now he’s stopped borrowing; in the last 12 months net consumer lending has collapsed. With neither more income nor more credit he has had to stop buying. And without buying from the U.S. consumer, the world economy is dying in a ditch.

Of course, U.S. rescue teams are on the scene. But if the U.S. government is going to save American households, it practically has to save every gadget maker in China…every call center in India…every rubber plantation in Malaysia…all the wine makers in Bordeaux – all the industries and jobs that relied on U.S. consumers. Otherwise, prices fall.

Even the United States can’t afford a bailout of this magnitude. Trillion-dollar deficits won’t be enough. Martin Wolf, in the FT , quotes a report from Levy Economics – “even with the application of almost unbelievably large fiscal stimuli, output will not increase enough to prevent unemployment from continuing to rise through the next two years.”

With rising unemployment the pressure to ‘do something’ grows. And the feds redouble their efforts. And this is where we find the basic logic our forecast:

In the fight against the global financial illness, the feds can’t cure the patient. All they can do is to deliver larger and larger doses of their quack medicine – until the patient dies.

*** A few days ago, this seemed so obvious, we worried that it was too obvious. Mr. Market doesn’t reward people for doing the too-obvious thing. He sets them up. Then he destroys them. He always seems to find a way.

The Barron’s survey told us that Wall Street’s strategists all believe stocks will go up in ’09. The only question is how much. The bulls think they’ll go up and keep going up. The bears think they’ll go up…and then go back down again.

And currently, there’s more money on the sidelines – waiting – than there is in the game. U.S. money market funds now exceed the amount in equity funds, for the first time in 15 years. According to the dominant view, this money is just itching to get back in the game and score a major victory. Battered in ’08…it wants to get even in ’09. This attitude, we hasten to point out, is not what you find at the end of a bear market…it’s what you find at the beginning of one. People still think that they will make money in stocks – it’s just a matter of time! And how much!

Will Mr. Market give these people what they expect? Or what they deserve?

We don’t know, but we see two possibilities:

The first is that there is no significant rally. Instead of going up, a torrent of bad financial news washes stocks further downstream in the first quarter. There, they will stay for the next 5, 10, or 15 years…until they give up all hope of ever making any money in the stock market.

The second possibility is that stocks do rally…strongly enough that that money now on the sidelines comes back in – just in time to get wiped out by the next major leg downwards.

*** If we were in an earlier phase of the imperial cycle – such as we were in 1920 – we would ride out the bust…liquidate the mistakes…and bounce back stronger than ever.

But this is 2009…not 1920. The empire is now old and tired. It has been burdened with so many fixes, rules, privileges and safety nets it cannot compete in many key industries. It is also heavily in debt…and running a trade deficit and a public deficit that sink it further into debt each day.

At this stage, Americans do not boldly face the future…they want protection from it. And so the feds flex every flabby muscle trying to hold it back. Of course, no one can stop the future. Birds gotta fly. Fish gotta swim. And the future’s gotta happen.

All the feds can do is to make it happen in a different way. Almost certainly a worse way. More tomorrow…as we keep thinking…

*** We also promised, yesterday, to tell you how you could escape… Americans already have a huge burden of private debt. Now, their government is adding an even huger new burden of public debt. How are you going to get out of this stalag of debt? What will happen to it? What effect will it have on your investments?

Hmmm….our answers will have to wait another 24 hours…we’re out of time for today.

*** This year marks the 50th anniversary of Cuba’s revolution. How things change! As a note in the Financial Times reminds us, a half century ago a young lawyer took charge in Havana while an old general ruled in Washington. Now a young lawyer takes charge in Washington while an old general tries to hold on in Havana.

Bill Bonner is the President of Agora Publishing. For more on Bill Bonner, visit The Daily Reckoning.