The S&P 500 rebounded sharply yesterday, rocketing past 1,900 on the last day of the third quarter. Volume was above average, but suspiciously light given the size of yesterday’s move and the traditional end of quarter repositioning.
It would be great if there was a solid reason behind these gains that we could build a sustainable rally on. Unfortunately this was another example of the U.S. markets taking their cues from overseas traders. Strong gains in Asia and Europe early Wednesday morning lead to our gap higher at the open yesterday. While there are plenty of reasons to believe in the U.S. economy, linking our stocks to overseas economies is not healthy. Few believe China and Germany are done falling into their respective holes and if we continue pricing US equities based on how foreign markets trade, yesterday’s rebound will be undone in a matter of days.
The most important thing we need to see is our markets decouple from the rest of the world. Normalcy will return when we start trading on traditional metrics like earnings, revenues, employment, and GDP. There is a good chance this will happen over the coming weeks as US employment and third quarter earnings season diverts our attention from how the DAX or Shanghai traded overnight. The first sign the correlation is breaking down will be the end of these wild, one and two percent gap openings. Next will be more days where our trade bears little resemblance to the moves in Asia and Europe. No one payed much attention to foreign markets a couple of months ago and it is only a matter of time before traders stop looking at their terminals in the middle of the night before deciding to buy or sell US equities.
Without a doubt, overseas weakness is a headwind, but a 10%+ correction has done a good job pricing it in. Europe and Asia have been slowing for a while and if they posed a serious threat to our economy, it would have shown up in our numbers already. Resilient third quarter earnings will prove that fears of overseas economies dragging us down are unfounded. When that happens, it will kick off our year-end rally as international traders move their money to the most attractive economy on an ugly block. In the meantime, expect elevated volatility as long as our markets remain linked to overseas trade.