Are we about to see U.S. financial markets go crazy? That is what Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) seems to think, and it certainly wouldn’t be the first time that great financial chaos has been unleashed during the month of October.
When the stock market crashed in October 1929, it started the worst economic depression that we have ever witnessed. In October 1987, the largest single day percentage decline in U.S. stock market history rocked the entire planet. And the nightmarish events of October 2008 set the stage for a “Great Recession” that we still haven’t fully recovered from. So could it be possible that something similar may happen in October 2019? According to CNBC, Goldman Sachs is warning that the stock market could soon “go crazy again”…
For investors taking a breather from the chaos in August, buckle up as the market is about to go crazy again, Goldman Sachs warned.
Wall Street is now inches away from reclaiming its record highs, but a rockier ride could be around the corner as stock volatility has been 25% higher in October on average since 1928, according to Goldman. Big price swings have been seen in each major stock benchmark and sector in October over the past 30 years, with technology and health care being the most volatile groups, Goldman said.
Goldman derivatives strategist John Marshall is the man behind this new warning, and he believes that there are some fundamental reasons why the month of October is often so volatile…
“We believe high October volatility is more than just a coincidence,” John Marshall, equity derivatives strategist at Goldman, said in a note Friday. “We believe it is a critical period for many investors and companies that manage performance to calendar year-end.”
And even though October hasn’t arrived yet, we are already starting to see some things that we haven’t witnessed since the last financial crisis.
For example, the Federal Reserve had not intervened in the repo market since 2008, but this week the liquidity crunch was so bad that the Fed felt forced to conduct emergency overnight repurchase agreement operations on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
And then on Friday the Fed announced that it will continue to conduct emergency interventions “on a daily basis for the next three weeks”…
The New York Federal Reserve Bank said Friday it will inject billions into the US financial plumbing on a daily basis for the next three weeks in an effort to prevent a spike in short-term interest rates.
The Fed will offer up to $75 billion a day in repurchase agreements — exchanging secure assets for cash for very short periods — through October 10, it said in a statement.
In addition, it will offer three 14-day “repo” operations of at least $30 billion each.
In essence, the “plumbing” of our financial system has gotten all jammed up, and calling out Roto-Rooter is simply not going to get the job done.
Of course Fed officials are trying to assure us that this is no big deal and that they have everything under control.
But if all this is no big deal, why haven’t they had to conduct such emergency interventions for the last 11 years?
And this comes at a time when the deterioration of the U.S. economy appears to be accelerating. In fact, on Friday St. Louis Fed President James Bullard publicly admitted that the U.S. manufacturing industry appears to already be in a recession…
The US manufacturing sector “already appears in recession” and overall economic growth is expected to slow “in the near horizon,” St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank president James Bullard said on Friday, explaining why he dissented at a recent Fed meeting and wanted a deeper, half-percentage-point rate cut.
That is a stunning admission, because normally Fed officials try very hard to maintain the narrative that everything is wonderful because they are doing such a great job of manipulating the economy.
The American people as a whole are becoming increasingly pessimistic about the economy as well, and Gallup just released some very alarming numbers…
Americans’ confidence in the economy has become less rosy this month as Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index fell to +17 from August’s +24 reading, marking the lowest level since the government shutdown ended in January.
At the same time, the public is evenly divided over the likelihood of a recession in the next year. The current expectation of a recession is nine points higher than it was in October 2007, just two months before the Great Recession began but slightly below a February 2001 reading, one month before that eight-month-long recession.
Every economic indicator that we have is telling us that big trouble is heading our way, but most Americans are partying instead of preparing.
U.S. financial markets have never been more primed for a crash than they are at this moment, and so many of the exact same patterns that we witnessed just prior to the last recession are happening again right now.
Over the past few months, my wife and I have felt a sense of urgency unlike anything that we have ever felt before. You may have noticed a difference in our tone and in the types of stories that we have been sharing. Everything that we have been doing has been leading up to this. The time of “the perfect storm” is here, and most Americans won’t understand what is happening.
The storm clouds are looming and disaster could strike at any time. This is one of the most critical times in the history of our nation, and most Americans are completely unprepared for what is going to happen next.