The chorus of market bears is getting louder. That much was clear Wednesday, when the Dow fell 800 points, its biggest drop of the year. Investors took worrisome economic data out of Germany and China, coupled with a recession signal in the bond market, as compelling reasons to bail out of stocks.
But bulls could take the reins once again, not bears. As Brian Belski, chief investment strategist at BMO Capital Markets, told me: “A one-day yield curve inversion does not a recession make.”
[Markets rebounded on Thursday, buoyed in part by strong retail sales and a very positive earnings report by Walmart.]
Recession fears have been stoked by the plummeting yield on the 10-year Treasury bond, which fell below that of a 2-year Treasury bond for the first time since 2007. That signals major concerns about the prospects for long-term US economic growth.
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Belski told me that for him to see the yield curve as a recession warning, it would need to stay inverted for weeks or even months. For now, he predicts stocks will be resilient. After all, he points out, we’ve repeatedly seen markets rebound after recent scares.
The strongest case for the bulls is that while the rest of the world is on edge, America is doing just fine. There’s certainly some truth to that.
“The economy itself is still doing relatively well,” Allianz chief economic adviser Mohamed El-Erian said on CNN’s “Markets Now.”
As El-Erian points out: Job creation remains strong. Wages are going up. And balance sheets for most US businesses still look solid.
That doesn’t mean the bond market isn’t worth watching. The yield on the 30-year US Treasuries fell below 2% for the first-time ever on Thursday, indicating that investors are piling into the safest long-term debt they can find.
At some point, all the anxiety can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
“The only way you can end up in a recession in the US is either a self-fulfilling negative expectation, or we get a policy mistake or market accident,” El-Erian said.
