Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Rock, Paper, Scissors

It will come as no surprise that market conditions remain of great concern here. As always, but particularly now, it’s important to stress that our defensiveness is a reflection of prevailing, observable evidence and the alignment of our investment views with the average outcome of such evidence across similar instances over the course of history. The consistency of negative outcomes also worsens the expected return/risk ratio presently. A defensive stance here does not require any particular forecast about recession, profit margins, bubble/crash dynamics, QE, European banking strains, or any of the numerous risks in the economic and financial backdrop. All of these factors are worthy of discussion in their own right. Still, our approach is always to align our investment stance with the average return/risk profile that is associated with a given set of market conditions, placing heavy weight on valuations, market action (e.g. trend-following factors, market internals, measures of overextension, price/volume behavior), as well as monetary factors, sentiment, economic measures and other considerations. See Aligning Market Exposure with the Expected Return/Risk Profile for a review of this general approach.