Hussman Funds: Weekly Market Comment – Biting a Bullet (July 27, 2009)
Excerpt (click on the link above for the full version)
In recent weeks, the dominant view of investors and analysts has shifted clearly to the expectation that the U.S. economy is in recovery. Appearing to seal the deal for some analysts was the third consecutive increase in the index of leading economic indicators. For that index, interest rate spreads and the S&P 500 Index have been the strongest contributors in recent months, as 10-year yields have shot higher from near 2% at the beginning of the year to about 4% before retreating a bit, and stocks have similarly rebounded from deeply oversold levels. Unfortunately, as I’ve noted before, there is little information content in mean reversion following extreme moves, and that’s what the LEI is picking up here – to a much greater extent than has typically been the case at the end of recessions. Put another way, the case for an economic recovery is based largely on mean reversion from the early 2009 extremes (not on improvements in jobless claims or other measures to a level that is on par with prior recoveries). The recovery argument also relies strongly on the idea that this is a run-of-the-mill post-war recession.
That said, I can only describe our investment stance here as “uncomfortably defensive.” That is, the measures that have guided the performance of the Strategic Growth Fund over time are still holding to a defensive stance, which is admittedly uncomfortable with the market pressing strenuous but persistent overbought levels. It’s a lot like watching people scale across a tenuously secured rope bridge and get a nice meal at the center. You’d like to climb across and join them, but you know that too many things aren’t right with the bridge, and it’s not clear that the people who are eating will ultimately survive.
Our defensive stance here is driven by a combination of poor price-volume sponsorship, moderate overvaluation, strenuous overbought conditions, Treasury yield and commodity price pressures, as well as a variety of other factors that have historically combined to produce a weak overall return-to-risk tradeoff. Moreover, from a fundamental standpoint, the ebullience about an economic recovery is based on what I’ve frequently called the “ebb and flow” of short-term economic information that very well can turn hostile again – particularly given that there is no reason to assume that deleveraging pressures have seriously abated.
