Has the Market Hit Bottom?

The deeper global equity and bond markets sink, the more contrarian investors begin to ask, when is it enough? At what point have financial markets appropriately discounted weaker future growth, including plausible worst-case scenarios, paving the way for markets to bottom and subsequently recover?

That assessment is, to put it mildly, nontrivial. Economies and asset prices are interconnected in complex fashion, and relationships between them are forever shifting. Thats why even the most sophisticated fundamental models or pattern-recognition algorithms are incapable of reliable forecasts.

But humans are decision-makers. And decisions invariably demand probabilistic assessments, however uncertain, of future outcomes. So, try we must.

What, then, can we say about prevailing asset prices and their implications for future economic and investment outcomes?

To begin, the expected future path of short-term interest ratesthe forward curveoffers some guidance. According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlantas Fed Funds probability tracker^[2], investors anticipate that the Fed will hike short-term interest rates above 3% by early 2023. The peak in the expected path of Fed rate hikes comes shortly thereafter, around 3.5% in mid-2023. Rising short-term interest rates reflect the Feds intention to bring inflation down to its target level of 2%.

But is the markets expectation for short rates already high enough to achieve the Feds aim? The answer depends, in part, on the point where monetary policy shifts from accommodative to restrictive.

According to various studies, the real (inflation-adjusted) natural rate of interestthe rate that is consistent with a fully employed economy accompanied by nonaccelerating inflationis about 0.5%. Meanwhile, equilibrium long-term expected inflation is about 2.5% (consistent with the Feds definition of core personal consumption expenditures inflation of 2.0%). Hence, the neutral nominal short-term interest rate is also around 3.0%.

In other words, in one years time, investors believe the Fed will have arrived at a neutral, but not yet restrictive, level of short-term interest rates.

That might not seem sufficient for the Fed to achieve its objective of bringing down inflation. But it could be if other factors help to bring the economy back into balance.

If, for example, global production and distribution bottlenecks ease and if the U.S. labor force participation rate rises, some of the desired reduction in inflation will be achieved without the need for overly restrictive monetary policy. For now, however, Covid lockdowns in China^[3] and the latest dip in the U.S. labor force participation rate are not encouraging signs for those hoping the supply side will come to the rescue.

Much depends, therefore, on other demand transmission channels, including the impact of broader asset price movements on household and business spending, as well as the impacts of higher long-term interest rates on housing markets. We can omit the impact of a stronger U.S. dollar because, historically, it only has a minor impact on U.S. growth or inflation outcomes.

We begin with business spending. Anecdotal evidence suggests that some businesses are slowing hiring and overall spending. Among information technology companies, belt tightening follows the need to demonstrate free cash flow generation, resulting from the drubbing that speculative growth stocks have taken this year. That suggests that investors will focus on indicators of labor market softness, such as rising jobless claims, in the weeks to come. Thus far, the labor market is not softening.

Another focal point will be housing. Courtesy of rising Treasury yields, conventional 30-year mortgage rates^[4] have jumped to over 5.5%, their highest levels since the global financial crisis. Investors are also apt to increasingly scrutinize mortgage applications, homebuilder sentiment, and similar evidence for a slowdown in housing demand and construction. So far, however, housing is holding up.

Consumer spending is, however, the big fish. The U.S. is a consumer-driven economy, after all. Consumers presently enjoy good job prospects and strong nominal wage gains. If cracks are to emerge in their spending, therefore, it may be due to negative wealth effects from falling stock and bond prices.

According to various studies, the marginal propensity to consume from a given change in stock market wealth is between 2.5% and 5.0%. Thus far in 2022, U.S. equity market capitalization has tumbled about $7 trillion. Not all of that will impact households directlymany hold their portfolio wealth in retirement accounts. Accordingly, the negative wealth effect is likely to be smallperhaps $100 billion to $200 billion in 2022. Thats 1% (or less) of U.S. gross domestic product.

The best way to pull all this together is to consider the impacts on the U.S. output gap, which today is roughly minus 1% to 2% of GDP (actual GDP exceeds potential GDP as one would expect when inflation has risen). Based on observed outcomes in labor and housing markets, as well as the likely impacts of negative wealth effects, the overall impact on output appears smalltoo small to reverse the sign of the output gap over the remainder of 2022.

The conclusion that follows is that while markets have shifted dramatically thus far in 2022, they do not yet appear to reflect more plausible outcomes of weaker demand (and weaker profits) that will be required to bring U.S. inflation down in line with the Feds aims. That conclusion also mirrors recent comments from Fed Chairman Powell that a harder landing may be unavoidable.

Finally, prevailing market pricing has not yet been tested by the realization of rising unemployment, weaker housing activity, and slowing consumer spendingnone of which has yet materialized. Equally, investors have yet to endure genuine credit stress, which typically accompanies a period of monetary policy tightening.

Knowing when enough is enough is frustratingly difficult to determine. But in macroeconomic and financial terms, it appears that investors still havent discounted the full extent of the challenges that are yet likely to surface in this cycle.

Guest commentaries like this one are written by authors outside the Barrons and MarketWatch newsroom. They reflect the perspective and opinions of the authors. Submit commentary proposals and other feedback to ideas@barrons.com.^[5]

References

1. ^{^} Jackson Hole Economics (jheconomics.com)
2. ^{^} probability tracker (www.atlantafed.org)
3. ^{^} Covid lockdowns in China (www.barrons.com)
4. ^{^} mortgage rates (www.marketwatch.com)
5. ^{^} ideas@barrons.com (www.barrons.com)