commentary Commentary
Commentary: Here’s why stock markets are defying the economic reality of COVID-19
Normally stock markets tell us a lot about the economy, but there might be structural reasons why they’re divorced from reality this time, says an observer.
A man with a face mask walks by television screens outside the Nasdaq Market Site at Times Square in New York, US, March 9, 2020. (Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton)
SYDNEY: The stock market is not the economy.
This old and playful maxim is typically not true: Often the stock market is a good proxy for the economy and a very good indication of what will happen to it.
But it aptly captures the current divergence between stock markets and the worst economic crisis in a century.
In the United States, the NASDAQ (which include tech stocks such as Amazon, Apple, eBay, Microsoft and Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc) is now 10 per cent higher than before COVID-19 fears crashed global markets between late February and late March.
The benchmark S&P 500 index is now on the verge of an all-time high. Last week it closed at 3,349 points, just 1 per cent lower than its February 19 high of 3,386.
LISTEN: Unfair firing and hiring practices under scrutiny during Singapore’s worst recession
Compare this reversal of fortune to the S&P 500’s trajectory after the Global Financial Crisis of 2007 to 2008. Then it took about five years for the index to claw back its losses.
And this despite the US economy now being in a much worse position than during the GFC, with an unemployment rate of more than 10 per cent, a muddled federal government response and Congress unable to agree on a new economic stimulus package.
Other national stock markets have had similar if less exuberant rebounds. From their pre-COVID highs, Britain’s FTSE 100 is still down about 20 per cent, Japan’s Nikkei 225 about 6.5 per cent and Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 index about 15 per cent.
Nonetheless, their recoveries are still remarkable.
READ: Commentary: Financial markets beware. The white swans of 2020 are coming home to roost
STOCKS THE LEAST WORST BET
Normally stock markets tell us a lot about the economy. Buying and selling shares is a near-instant response to new information. The aggregation of those best guesses is generally an accurate indicator of the way things are going.
This time there might be a structural reason why the markets appear divorced from reality.
READ: Commentary: Should government bailouts restrict stock buybacks?
Investors could be bidding up stock prices because they have to put their money somewhere, and stocks are the least worst bet.
Broadly speaking, investors can put money to work in five places: Stocks; property; commodities; bonds or money in the bank.
Property investment has become extremely risky. Values remain high due to temporary support schemes, and significant falls are likely.
READ: Commentary: Why Singapore's private residential market will remain attractive in the long term
Commodities are generic tradeable items such as oil, wheat and coffee beans.
Like all tradeable items, their prices rise and fall, and the pandemic has been driving them down. In April the World Bank’s Commodity Markets Outlook warned the risks to forecasts were “large in both directions”.
READ: Commentary: Low oil prices gives Asia the chance to steer Middle East geopolitics
What about bonds – the ultrasafe investment offered by governments?
Their attractiveness depends on the interest they pay, and that depends on expectations about interest rates and inflation.
Both were going downhill before the pandemic, and COVID-19 has pushed them down further.
In March, the US Federal Reserve cut its interest-rate target range to 0 per cent to 0.25 per cent. The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its target to 0.25 per cent but has in practice been prepared to accept a cash rate closer to zero.
The interest rates that influence bonds also affect returns on bank deposits.
READ: Commentary: It is time central banks and governments shoot for negative interest rates
INFLUX OF RETAIL INVESTORS
That leaves stocks.
A notable feature of the stock market’s buoyancy has been the influx of retail (at the expense of professional or institutional) investors.
Since the market peaked in late February they have become net buyers of stocks, while professional institutional investors have become net sellers.
READ: Commentary: SGX sees boom in retail investments. But can it last?
Researchers Carole Comerton-Forde and Zhou Zhong suggest this might be due to people having fewer other spending opportunities, and more time on their hands – the so-called boredom markets hypothesis.
Governments have helped with programmes to prop up businesses, among them the US$659 billion Paycheck Protection Programme and Australia’s A$86 billion (US$62 billion) JobKeeper and A$40 billion Coronavirus Small and Medium Enterprises Guarantee programmes.
In April and May this year, Australian government spending jumped 11 per cent on the same months last year. In April, May and June, US government spending more than doubled.
It’s likely some of that money has flowed thorough to people who have used it to play the stock market.
READ: Commentary: The biggest shock from COVID-19 will be felt on the US dollar
DETACHED FROM REALITY
In the past the stock markets have fallen just before unemployment rose, heralding what was to come.
This happened in the US recession at the start of the 2000s and the Great Recession during in the Global Financial Crisis, as the following graph shows.
What’s notable is that the stock market didn’t fall just before unemployment rate climbed this time.
Now, more than ever before, the stock market tells us little about where the economy is heading.
James Doran is Deputy Head of School and Associate Professor at the University of New South Wales. This commentary first appeared on The Conversation.
