2009-07-20

Is The Recession Over?

I don't know and I think those who attempt to answer this question in real-time are bound to look foolish sooner or later. But as a group, that's what security analysts might be getting at: a consensus opinion that the stock market recession is over.

Here's the empirical data: today, thirty two companies for which there are analyst estimates posted their quarterly earnings. Out of those, a solid 28 beat expectations, 2 were inline and 2 missed. That's an 87.5% "success" rate.

By my account, the stock market has been rallying since March due to the same reason. So, from a pure interpretation of analysts expectations, the stock market, which is a forward-looking market, might have discounted expectations too much again. And hence why we observed yet another rally today and most of the past week. This will happen until expectations become high again and companies start to occasionally miss them, the market collapses and the cycle repeats.

When we look back at today and look at a timeline of the past N recessions (on those gray-shaded graphs indicating recessions where the stock market usually leads by six to nine months), we'll know for sure if the recession was really over six to nine months from now.

What does this mean for investors? Sadly, that those who didn't invest in the recent panics of November and March might have missed some pretty good opportunities. The good news? I can't predict the market, but here's one prediction I can make: there will be other buying opportunities in the future, however distant it may be.

My advice: pick the winning companies now, assess their intrinsic value and be ready to buy at the next opportunity. We don't know how soon it could be.

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