{"id":61094,"date":"2014-09-29T12:33:51","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T16:33:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/countingpips.com\/?p=61094"},"modified":"2014-09-29T09:35:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T13:35:08","slug":"outside-the-box-future-bull","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/2014\/09\/outside-the-box-future-bull\/","title":{"rendered":"Outside the Box: Future Bull"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"inves-2098746998\" class=\"inves-below-title-posts inves-entity-placement\"><div id =\"posts_date_custom\"><div align=\"left\">September 29, 2014<\/div><hr style=\"border: none; border-bottom: 3px solid black;\">\r\n<\/div><\/div><h4><span style=\"font-size: small;\">By John Mauldin<\/span><\/h4>\n<div class=\"body\"><img style=\"float: right; margin: 15px 0 15px 15px;\" alt=\"\" \/>In a conversation this morning, I remarked how rapidly things change. It was less than 20 years ago that cutting-edge tech for listening to music was the cassette tape. We blew right past CDs, and now we all consume music from the cloud on our phones. Boom. Almost overnight.<\/p>\n<p>A lot has changed about the global economy and politics, too. Things that were unthinkable only 10 years ago now seem to be reality. What changes, I wonder, will we be writing about a few years from now that will seem obvious with the advantage of hindsight?<\/p>\n<p>In today\u2019s Outside the Box, my good friend David Hay of Evergreen Capital sends us a letter written from the perspective of a few years in the future. I find myself wishing that some of the more hopeful events he foresees will come true, and my optimistic self actually sees a way through to such an outcome. In that future, I will join David as a bull. But the path that he proposes to take to that more optimistic future is not one that most investors will enjoy, so on the whole it\u2019s a very sobering letter and one that should make all of us think.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m back from San Antonio, where I spent four enjoyable days with my friends and participants at the Casey Research Summit. I tried to attend as many of the conference sessions as I could, and I intend to get the \u201ctapes\u201d for some of the ones I missed.<\/p>\n<p>I did a lot of video interviews while in San Antonio, too. And finished up a major documentary. Mauldin Economics will be making all of these available very soon. It\u2019s hard to recommend one interview over another, but Lacy Hunt is just so smart.<\/p>\n<p>And with no further remarks let\u2019s turn it over to David Hay and think about how the next few years will play out. Have a great week.<\/p><div id=\"inves-263230443\" class=\"inves-in-content inves-entity-placement\"><hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads_header\">\r\n<p style=\"font-size:10px; float:left; color:#666;\">Free Reports:<\/p><\/div>\r\n<div id=\"inpost_ads\"> \r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/graph_techs_PD.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t     <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/1ApBOV\"><b><u>Get Our Free Metatrader 4 Indicators<\/u><\/b><\/a> - Put Our Free MetaTrader 4 Custom Indicators on your charts when you join our Weekly Newsletter<\/p><br><br>\r\n<br>\r\n<br>\r\n<p style=\"font-size:15px; float:left;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/investmacro.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/cot_pie_80.png\" align=\"left\" width=\"80\"  height=\"55\"\/><\/a>\r\n\t    <a href=\"https:\/\/goo.gl\/f3RrHX\"><b><u>Get our Weekly Commitment of Traders Reports<\/u><\/b><\/a> - See where the biggest traders (Hedge Funds and Commercial Hedgers) are positioned in the futures markets on a weekly basis.<\/p><br><br>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<hr style=\"border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\r\n<br><\/div>\n<p>Your wishing his crystal ball was clearer analyst,<\/p>\n<p class=\"signature\"><em>John Mauldin, Editor<br \/>\nOutside the Box<\/em><a href=\"mailto:subscribers@mauldineconomics.com\">subscribers@mauldineconomics.com<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"signature\">\n<div style=\"width: 80%; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; margin: 20px auto; background: #e9eced; -moz-border-radius: 10px; -webkit-border-radius: 10px; -khtml-border-radius: 10px; border-radius: 10px; padding: 10px; clear: both; margin-top: 5px; color: #333; text-align: center; line-height: 100%;\">\n<p style=\"font-family: Arial, sans-serif; text-align: center; font-size: 18px; color: #0b507c; line-height: 130%;\">Stay Ahead of the Latest Tech News and Investing Trends&#8230;<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-bottom: 1em;\"><span style=\"color: #0b507c;\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/go\/udnh5-2\/PIP\">Click here to sign up for Patrick Cox\u2019s free daily tech news digest<\/a>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Each day, you get the three tech news stories with the biggest potential impact.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<hr \/>\n<h2><span style=\"color: #000000;\"><strong>Future Bull <\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n<p><strong>By David Hay<\/strong><br \/>\nTwitter:\u00a0@EvergreenGK<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">\u201cMoney amplifies our tendency to overreact, to swing from exuberance when things are going well to deep depression when they go wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n<p style=\"margin-left: .5in;\">\u2013 Economist and historian Niall Ferguson<\/p>\n<p><strong>Future bull.<\/strong>\u00a0 Let me admit up front that this EVA has been rolling around in my mind for quite awhile. Its genesis may be directly related to the fact that I\u2019ve been desperately yearning to write a bullish EVA \u2013 besides on Canadian REITs or income securities that get trounced by the Fed\u2019s utterances. In other words, I want to return to my normal posture of being bullish on the <em>US stock market<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>It wasn\u2019t long ago, like in 2011, that clients were chastising me for believing in what I formerly referred to as \u201cthe coiled spring effect.\u201d By this I meant that corporate earnings had been rising for over a decade, and yet, stock prices were much lower than they there were in 1999. Consequently, price\/earnings ratios were compressed down to low levels, though certainly not to true bear market troughs. My belief was that stocks were poised for an upside explosion once the inhibiting factors, primarily extreme pessimism on the direction of the country, were removed. I even remember one long-time client dismissing my \u201cBuy America\u201d argument on the grounds that in my profession I had to be bullish (regular EVA readers know that is definitely not the case!).<\/p>\n<p>Well, a funny thing happened to my \u201ccoiled spring effect\u201d \u2013 namely, it became a reality. Additionally, the upward reaction was much stronger than I envisioned. But what really caught me by surprise was that it played out with virtually no improvement on the \u201cextreme pessimism on the direction of the country\u201d front. Perhaps I\u2019m wrong, but I don\u2019t think there has ever been a rally that has taken stocks to such high valuations (time for my usual qualifier \u2013 based on mid-cycle profit margins, not the Fed-inflated ones we have today) concurrent with such pervasive fears America is on the wrong track.<\/p>\n<p>Undoubtedly, the pros among you who just read that last sentence are thinking: \u201cThat\u2019s great news! All that pessimism will keep this market running. We\u2019re not even close to the peak.\u201d Not so fast, mon amis (and amies)! We\u2019re not talking market pessimism here. As numerous EVAs have documented, US investors are as heavily exposed to stocks as they have ever been, other than during the late 1990s, when stocks bubbled up to valuations that made 1929 look restrained.<\/p>\n<p>Further, please check out the chart below from still-bullish Ned Davis regarding investment advisor sentiment.\u00a0 The bearish reading is the lowest since the fateful year of 1987, while bulled-up views are in the excessively optimistic zone.\u00a0 (<em>See Figure 1.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 247px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_1_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It is my contention that there are currently millions of fully-invested skeptics. They aren\u2019t bullish long-term \u2013 in fact, they believe the underlying fundamentals are alarming (with the usual perma-bull exceptions) \u2013 but they feel compelled by the lack of competitive alternatives to remain at their full equity allocation. Disturbingly, professional investors are increasingly doing so even with money belonging to retired investors who need both cash flow and stability.<\/p>\n<p>Okay, with all that history out of the way, let\u2019s go the other direction \u00a0\u2013 into the future, to a time several years from now, when conditions are nearly the polar opposite of where they are today.<\/p>\n<h4 align=\"center\"><strong>The Evergreen Virtual Advisor (EVA)<\/strong><\/h4>\n<h4 align=\"center\"><strong>November, 201???<\/strong><\/h4>\n<p><strong>At long last, reforms!<\/strong> Do you remember back in 2014 when the stock market was as hot as napalm? When it just never went down? When millions believed the Fed could control stock prices by whipping up a trillion here and a trillion there?<\/p>\n<p>Looking back from the vantage of today, it all seems so obvious. We should have known better than to believe that the S&amp;P 500 had years more of appreciation left in it after having already tripled by the fall of 2014 from the 2009 nadir. The warning signs were there. But, before we rehash what went wrong, let\u2019s focus on the upside of what some are calling \u201cThe Great Unwind\u201d \u2013 the hangover after years and years of the Fed recklessly driving asset prices to unsustainable heights.<\/p>\n<p>First of all, let me start with what I think is the biggest positive of all:\u00a0 the end of the central banks\u2019 era of omnipotence. While that might sound like a major negative, you may have noticed that with the crutch of binge-printing taken away, our nation\u2019s leaders are finally getting around to implementing reforms that should have been enacted years ago. The history of our country is that we are energized by crises, and the latest is no exception. Our most recent financial convulsions have galvanized a bipartisan coalition to attack an array of long-festering problems that have hobbled our country since the start of the millennium.<\/p>\n<p>Arguably, the most important was the recently enacted tax reform legislation. Skeptics believed the US could never move toward the type of simple tax system that has long been used in countries like Singapore, Hong Kong, and even Estonia. It took the realization by both parties that lower tax rates with almost no deductions would actually produce more revenue. Moreover, the elimination of incalculable and massive \u201cfriction costs\u201d for millions of businesses and individuals, trying to adhere to and\/or game that beastly labyrinth known as the tax code, is quickly catalyzing real economic growth. This is in contrast to the 2010 to 2014 counterfeit version that rolled off the Fed\u2019s printing press.<\/p>\n<p>By 2014, the US was ranked a lowly 32nd out of 34 countries in terms of tax fairness and efficiency. Yet, now, thanks to last year\u2019s drastic tax reform, US corporations are no longer fleeing in droves to other countries, using such tax dodges as inversions (buying out foreign companies and assuming their country of corporate citizenship to access lower tax rates). They have even begun to repatriate their trillion or so of offshore profits since the formerly onerous tax rate of 35%, the highest in the developed world, has been reduced. And, thanks to the eradication of the aforementioned legalized tax dodges, corporate tax receipts are actually beginning to rise sharply, despite the fact that our economy is in the early stages of recovering from the latest recession.<\/p>\n<p>As we all know, the rationalization of our national business model involves much more than even the essential aspect of tax code simplification. At long last, meaningful tort reform has been enacted. No longer will the rule of lawyers be allowed to dominate the rule of law. The enormous, but insidiously hidden, costs of a subsector of the legal system whose chief mission is to squeeze unjustifiable sums from the private sector is finally being reined in.<\/p>\n<p>Similarly, regulatory overkill is also being addressed by the very entity that created this monster in the first place: the government itself. Absurd, overlapping, and often conflicting directives that hobbled the most essential element of the private sector \u2013 small businesses \u2013 have been abolished, replaced by a much simpler and unified set of rules.<\/p>\n<p>Even America\u2019s dysfunctional and wasteful healthcare system is being revamped using rational economic solutions, rather than by piling on more incomprehensible rules, requirements, and panels. Consumers can now easily compare prices among service providers thanks to technology as instituted by for-profit providers. Along with significantly improved visibility, they also now have far greater control over how their healthcare dollars are spent.\u00a0 Medical outlays are now in a decided downtrend.<\/p>\n<p>Incredibly, Congress is actually beginning to behave like a representative of the people rather than an ATM dispensing taxpayer money to the most politically connected. The intense implosions of the multiple bubbles the Fed intentionally inflated triggered a backlash of voter ire toward its legislative enablers. Since then, we\u2019ve seen a dramatic House \u2013 and Senate \u2013 cleaning. This new \u201ccoalition of the thinking\u201d is now following the proven path to recovery that numerous countries \u2013 such as Germany, Sweden, and Canada \u2013 blazed when their economic and financial systems hit previous roadblocks. As in those nations, moving away from excessive socialism, while simultaneously supporting the business community, rather than vilifying and hindering it, is already beginning to elevate America out of its long stagnation.<\/p>\n<p>Collectively, these sweeping reforms are as dramatic as those seen in the 1980s and promise to unleash a growth boom equally as powerful as the ones that followed those overhauls. Yet, despite these dramatic and highly promising changes, investors remain hunkered down in their bomb shelters.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Fool me once, fool me twice, fool me thrice!<\/strong>\u00a0 After the third devastating bear market since 1999, investor hostility toward stocks has reached a level unseen since the 1970s. Far too many were lured in by the last up-leg of the great bull market that started in the depths of pessimism in March of 2009. As the market resolutely climbed higher and higher, even beyond the five-year length of most bull cycles, millions of investors succumbed to either greed or complacency.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 204px; height: 317px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/pdf\/Image_2_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Indicative of the feverish conditions prevailing then\u2014despite the widely disseminated myth that it was the most hated bull market of all time\u2014headlines like those shown below, and graphics such as the one above, began to dominate the financial press.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 143px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_3_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Remarkably, at least to me, investors once again ignored warnings from the savviest savants, almost all of whom had waxed cautious about the tech and housing manias: Bob Shiller, Jeremy Grantham, Rob Arnott, John Mauldin, Seth Klarman, and John Hussman. As the esteemed Mohamed El-Erian had prophetically written in June of 2014, \u201cIn their efforts to promote growth and jobs, central banks are trading the possibility of immediate economic gains for a growing risk of financial instability later.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Conversely, Janet Yellen didn\u2019t do her legacy any favors by uttering these words in July, 2014: \u201cBecause a resilient financial system can withstand unexpected developments, identification of bubbles is less critical.\u201d At the time, I was pretty sure she would come to regret that statement as much as Ben Bernanke did his equally ill-advised assurances back in 2007 that the problems in sub-prime mortgages were contained. Based on how fragile the \u201cresilient financial system\u201d turned out to be, I\u2019ll say no more.<\/p>\n<p>It did surprise me that despite having called out those previous bubbles, as well as several others including the 2008 blow-offs in commodities and Chinese stocks, I received such intense resistance from other professionals and even clients. After awhile, I was getting so much push back I started to feel like the nose of a commercial airliner being readied for take-off.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Ignorance wasn\u2019t bliss.<\/strong> Another aspect of the late stages of the last bull market was how many investment professionals \u2013 who should have known better \u2013 dismissed Robert Shiller\u2019s namesake P\/E. To clarify, Shiller believes (as did Warren Buffett\u2019s mentor, Ben Graham) that the stock market needs to be valued based on normalized earnings, not bottom- or top-of-the cycle profits. Despite the unassailable logic of this approach, a legion of perma-bulls repeatedly sought to discredit Shiller and his valuation methodology. Some even went so far as to deride his process as \u201cShiller Snake Oil,\u201d notwithstanding Dr. Shiller\u2019s Nobel Prize and, more meaningfully in my view, the fact that he had forewarned of both the tech and housing bubbles \u2013 unlike almost all of those throwing stones at him back in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>The main criticism from those who were \u201chatin\u2019 on\u201d Shiller in 2014 was that his P\/E had produced only two buy signals over a 25-year period. This was a valid critique but it missed an essential point: Despite the reality that the stock market from 1990 to 2014 traded at valuations far higher than it had in any previous quarter-century timeframe, the Shiller P\/E accurately predicted future returns. In other words, when the Shiller P\/E was very elevated \u2013 like in the late 1990s, 2007, and 2014 (so far) \u2013 stocks went on to generate extremely disappointing future returns (it also did so in decades going all the way back to the 1920s but this was not the era that the Shiller debunkers were criticizing). The graphic on the next page vividly illustrates this fact, even though it was created before the most recent bear market further underscored the danger of ignoring high Shiller P\/Es. (<em>See Figure 2<\/em>.)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 442px; height: 238px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_4_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>It also shocked and dismayed me at the time how many contortions Wall Street strategists, and even money managers, performed in order to dismiss concerns about the extreme variability of earnings. Somehow charts like the one below from Capital Economics were blown-off despite (or, perhaps, because) it so clearly highlighted the tendency of corporate profits to return back down to the long-term trend-line of nominal GDP growth, with stocks closely following. As we all now know, this time wasn\u2019t different. (<em>See Figure 3.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 444px; height: 286px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_5_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The legions of market cheerleaders also ignored the heavy reliance on profits from the financial sector, a notoriously unstable source of earnings. This proved to be a disaster in 2007 and, unsurprisingly, was again once the Fed\u2019s \u201cGreat Levitation\u201d fell victim to gravitational forces. (<em>See Figure 4.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 600px; height: 184px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_6_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Even David Rosenberg, one of the few economists who saw the housing debacle coming, but who briefly flirted with drinking the Fed-spiked bubble-aid in 2014, noted that 60% of earnings growth from 2010 through 2013 came from share buy-backs. He calculated that the market\u2019s \u201corganic\u201d P\/E, backing out the influence from share repurchases, was over 20, even prior to normalizing for peak profit margins. Additionally, the reality that corporations buy the most stock at high prices, and the least at low prices, was forgotten \u2013 another costly oversight. (<em>See Figure 5, above.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p>It was also overlooked during this era of Fed-induced euphoria, that low interest rates \u2013 so often cited by bulls as a justification for lofty P\/Es \u2013 historically coincided with lower earnings multiples. (<em>See Figure 6.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 490px; height: 289px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_7_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>As Japan and Europe have repeatedly shown over the last two decades, when low interest rates are a function of chronic economic stagnation, P\/Es actually contract, not expand. The fact that the latest recession has reduced America\u2019s anemic 1.8% annual growth rate since 2000 to even lower levels is a key reason why stocks have been thrashed over the last couple of years, despite interest rates on the 10-year treasury note falling to 1%.<\/p>\n<p>Another massive mistake was to overlook the strident warning from Evergreen\u2019s favorite valuation metric, the price-to-sales (P\/S) ratio. By the summer of 2014, the median stock in the S&amp;P 500 was trading at its highest P\/S ratio on record. Sadly, this attracted little attention. (<em>See Figure 7.<\/em>)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 573px; height: 264px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_8_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>But perhaps the most egregious oversight of all was to forget the theorem from the late, great economist Hyman Minsky who long ago warned that stability breeds instability. As was the case from 2002 through 2007, the exceptionally low volatility of the years leading up to the latest crisis numbed market participants to the steadily rising risks. Even professional investors convinced themselves they could get out in time once conditions became unstable, an arrogance that has been severely punished, as well it should. Alas, we\u2019ve had to learn Dr. Minsky\u2019s lesson the hard way, once again.<\/p>\n<p>But let\u2019s close this EVA by focusing on the stunning opportunity for investors created by the Fed\u2019s latest misadventure\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>Investors, start your engines! <\/strong>It is certainly understandable that US investors are thoroughly disenchanted with the stock market. The fact that the powers-that-be, or at least used-to-be, allowed securities trading to become so heavily dominated by computers was, like the tolerance of the Fed\u2019s asset inflation, inexcusable. The influence of computerized, black box trading was unquestionably a huge factor in the speed-of-light-in-a-vacuum drop in stock prices. Also as feared, many ETFs poured kerosene on the fire as investors became terrified by the nearly overnight erosion in these prices, causing them to sell en masse. The plethora of ETFs holding illiquid underlying securities were particularly crushed, with many simply halting trading for long stretches. Now, instead of rapturous paeans about the wonders of ETF liquidity and low costs, the financial press is full of horror stories about their fundamental flaws (fortunately, higher quality and more liquid ETFs, performed as expected during the worst of the panic).<\/p>\n<p>Further, based on the failure of the Fed\u2019s desperate maneuver to stabilize stocks after their first big break, by launching another $1 trillion QE, this time directly buying US shares, investors have rationally lost faith in the Fed\u2019s ability to make stocks dance to its tune. While QE 4 did cause a sharp counter-trend rally after it was initially launched, the supportive effects soon waned, as we all are now painfully aware. The resumption of the bear market after the Fed\u2019s frantic triage effort was reminiscent of Dorothy, the Tinman, the Lion, and Toto discovering that behind the green curtain was a scared old man instead of The Wizard of Oz.<\/p>\n<p>The extreme negativity by investors toward the stock market today is reflected in the high level of outflows being seen from equity mutual funds, including ETFs. Cash levels are high everywhere as institutional and retail investors, as well as corporations, have become excessively risk averse. This provides the rocket fuel for the next bull market which might just be much closer than almost everyone believes.<\/p>\n<p>Rampant investor pessimism is also being manifested in the drop in the Shiller P\/E to the mid-teens from 26 at the peak of the last bull romp.\u00a0 As a direct result, future returns on stocks are now projected by the aforementioned Jeremy Grantham and John Hussman to be in the low double digits over the next seven to ten years.\u00a0 Yet, no one seems interested. Even Warren Buffett\u2019s ragingly bullish comments, which were considerably premature, are being attributed to the ramblings of a soon-to-be nonagenarian.<\/p>\n<p>Naturally, I have considerable empathy for Mr. Buffett because, as usual, Evergreen was early to shift into bullish mode. We waited much longer than most people and actually did a fairly commendable job of cutting back into the Fed\u2019s QE4 driven rally, after raising our equity exposure during the initial steep sell-off. But once stocks fell hard after that sugar-high wore off, we were guilty of our typical \u201cpremature accumulation syndrome.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>However, we did the same thing way back in October of 2008 when we published our client newsletter, \u201cA Bull is Born\u201d (and wrote a series of \u201cbuy the panic\u201d EVAs), only to watch the market slide another 30%.\u00a0 Yet, buying when almost the entire world was in liquidation mode, much of it forced, in the fall of 2008 proved to be extremely lucrative over the next two years. We are convinced the same will be true following this latest episode of market mayhem.<\/p>\n<p>From a longer-term standpoint, a perspective most investors seem unwilling to take given their still-fresh pain and suffering, conditions look highly encouraging. In addition to the previously described remedies our policy makers are belatedly adopting, many of the key positive trends the bulls used to justify over-the-top valuations for stocks back in 2014 are still in place. Admittedly, the enthusiasm got ahead of reality but the energy renaissance continues apace in the US, despite the well-publicized fracking problems. Re-shoring of manufacturing, which has been slower than the uber-optimists forecast, appears to be now accelerating. Relatedly, robotic adoption is rapidly spreading through the US industrial base, supporting Evergreen\u2019s belief that re-shoring is a reality, not a fantasy. Yet, there\u2019s even more to like.<\/p>\n<p>Nanotechnology and solar power innovators continue to provide breathtaking breakthroughs. Today, nanotech is becoming as ubiquitous as the microprocessor was a decade ago. Meanwhile, solar power, thanks to miniaturization advances similar to Moore\u2019s Law, has achieved \u201cgrid parity,\u201d or even lower, in over a dozen US states. Power is becoming increasingly cheap and abundant and that\u2019s terrific news for humanity.<\/p>\n<p>Finally, and perhaps most significantly, we are far closer to achieving that wondrous, if slightly scary, state known as \u201csingularity.\u201d As most us now know, this means that humans are becoming one with computers. The proliferation of wearables has essentially elevated the intelligence of anyone who can afford to spend $150 for an iWatch or Google Glass, to the level of a supercomputer. We now take for granted being able to whisper a few instructions into our watches, like Dick Tracy, and have all the information of the Cloud at our disposal. (It may soon be feasible to actually have a computer implanted into our brains, possibly even curing Alzheimer\u2019s.) Clearly, the implications for productivity are nearly limitless. Already, we are beginning to see this in the data and we believe we are in the very early innings of a true revolution \u2013 with no apologies to gloomsters like Northwestern University\u2019s Robert Gordon who believed, and still do, that the era of radical innovation ended long ago.<\/p>\n<p>One of the biggest challenges a professional investor faces is the tyranny of current prices. When they are relentlessly rising, as they were back in 2013 and 2014, clients extrapolate those indefinitely, and, for a long time, they are right to do so. The same thing happens on the downside in periods such as we are in right now.\u00a0 But rising markets always turn down and falling ones always turn up. Those are unquestionable facts. We are getting closer to the point where this bear goes back into its cave for a nice long nap while a powerful young bull is ready to bust out of the pen it\u2019s been cooped up in for what seems like an eternity. Get out your checkbook \u2013 it\u2019s time to bet on the bull!<\/p>\n<p><strong>Back to the here and now. <\/strong>A wise man once said that if you are going to predict that something will happen, don\u2019t be so foolish as to say <em>when<\/em> it will happen. You may have noticed, I\u2019ve followed that advice, perhaps to an irritating degree, mainly because I truly have no clue when our current bull market, already so long in the horns, will succumb.<\/p>\n<p>It also goes without saying, but I will anyway, that the sequence and details of future financial events are almost certain to be dramatically different than what I\u2019ve suggested in this EVA edition. However, I believe the broad outline is likely to be roughly along these lines, including my exceedingly optimistic long-term outlook for America.<\/p>\n<p>It dawned on me as I wrote the section about tax, tort, healthcare, and regulatory reforms that many readers were probably thinking: \u201cNot in my lifetime \u2013 and I\u2019m only 50!\u201d First, of all, let me say that I\u2019m jealous you\u2019re just 50. Second, it is highly unlikely stocks will remain in a long-term bull market, or even continue to hover at such generous valuations, unless our country makes some truly dramatic changes. It can\u2019t remain business as usual, persistently avoiding essential reforms, relying almost totally on the Fed.<\/p>\n<p>Believe me, I will be a bull again, and likely a very lonely one at that. But it\u2019s going to take a combination of lower valuations and a serious makeover of how this country operates. We can do it and I\u2019m convinced we will do it. Hopefully, I\u2019ll be able to convince some of you the next time fear is on the rampage.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"width: 144px; height: 227px;\" src=\"http:\/\/d21uq3hx4esec9.cloudfront.net\/uploads\/newsletters\/Image_9_20140924_OTB.gif\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Like\u00a0<em>Outside the Box?<\/em><br \/>\n<span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/go\/udn46-2\/PIP\">Sign up today<\/a><\/span> and get each new issue delivered free to your inbox.<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s your opportunity to get the news John Mauldin thinks matters most to your finances.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/go\/udn77-2\/PIP\"><strong><em>Important Disclosures<\/em><\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"xvMdV95u77zU\" style=\"clear: both;\">The article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/go\/udns8-2\/PIP\" rel=\"permalink\">Outside the Box: Future Bull<\/a> was originally published at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mauldineconomics.com\/go\/udnv9-2\/PIP\">mauldineconomics.com<\/a>.<\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"clear: both;\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By John Mauldin In a conversation this morning, I remarked how rapidly things change. It was less than 20 years ago that cutting-edge tech for listening to music was the cassette tape. We blew right past CDs, and now we all consume music from the cloud on our phones. Boom. Almost overnight. A lot has [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61094","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","no-post-thumbnail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61094","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61094"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61094\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61094"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61094"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.investmacro.com\/forex\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61094"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}