For years I have been updating a 1920s comparison chart on this site, until mid 2015. That’s when the current bull market started falling behind compared to the 1920s, as reported in this post. I want to revisit this chart today and the reason will be clear from this updated chart:
The current bull market has reached the point where it is just as long as the great 1920s advance. And the market is at new all time highs. The recent run-up has not been nearly as spectacular as the final push in 1928-29, but the price pattern still shows a nice similarity over this entire period.
Of course, there is no law that says that bull markets have to be equally long. But I zoomed in a bit more closely and compared the recent price action to the final year before the 1929 peak. This is what I got:
Daily price action doesn’t get much more similar than this, especially in the final 7 months. A six month sideways phase gave way to a final rally that lasted a little over three months. Even the smaller six weeks sideways before the final three weeks upward thrust to the top gets repeated. If this is not a mere coincidence then we are now within days of a major top.
The gains are smaller (which is not abnormal in a bull market that “only” triples from its starting lows), but the price pattern is almost a photocopy.
What could go wrong? Well, it’s never good to get married to a price pattern. There is also another possibility to consider here. In the 1920s the final runaway mania stage didn’t start until the Fed had really started hiking interest rates several times in a row. Bonds are not a place to be when rates are going up (which pushes bond prices down), so more investors started getting into stocks (which happened to be going up every day, making them hard to resist).
This time the Fed has waited longer to hike rates, so the final runaway stage may just be getting started now. We will know if the market keeps going up in March and April. In the 1920s an acceleration came once the market had more than tripled from its lows and we are now very close to triple again. This could be a sudden “phase change” just like water starts cooking at a certain temperature. Vapor behaves differently from liquid water, and just so a market that goes into blow-off mode behaves very differently. Buying begets more buying and people who stayed in bonds start feeling stupid compared to their friends who are driving nice new cars they bought on the back of their stocks market gains. It starts feeding onto itself.
Sure, some people will keep warning about overvaluations. But investors won’t listen. Why not? Because it is well known that most investors suffer from “superiority bias“. Just like almost 90% of drivers think they have above average driving skills, investors typically believe they have above average investing skills. If you happen to think that your investing skill is below average then you will probably keep your money in a savings account, or hand it over to a money manager (who is usually having even more superiority bias than a retail investor). The result is that participants in the stock market are almost invariably believing that they will be able to get out before stocks go down.
This may happen again and we are probably close to the point where this phase change can start.
The bitcoin crash
Posted by Dan on February 5, 2018
All eyes have been on Bitcoin BTC and other crypto currencies recently. After reaching a peak near $20000 BTC is now down to $8000. So what’s next?
Here is what I wrote about bitcoin last August:
Here we are. BTC reached $20k and is dropping quickly, but investors are not really panicking (yet) and that’s a reason for concern. So, let’s have a good look. Here is an update of the long term chart I posted in August:
The rate of change is slowing down, which is normal after a move of this magnitude. The best case scenario is now a continued climb within the more sustainable pale green trend channel. But that would mean a drop to $2000 if the lower bound of this channel is to be tested. A failure to hold this channel would probably tell us that BTC is going to near zero. That’s the big picture.
Of course, Bitcoin has come back from similar drops on several occasions. But that’s the problem here. Too many investors/speculators seem to believe that will happen again and that’s why there is little or no panic, even after a 60% crash. Many traders are just doubling down on their losses, encouraged by “expert” predictions that keep talking about $50k, $100k BTC in the near future (e.g. https://www.buzzfeed.com/rabbiyitziweiner/21-bitcoin-experts-share-their-predictions-about-t-37p3h)
Small investors’ enthusiasm and confidence has become too high and that never ends well. As I pointed out on Twitter near the highs in December, Bitcoin has become more popular than SP&P 500 ($SPY) on sites like Stocktwits:
10 Days later BTC printed its current peak. But traders’ appetite for BTC has not cooled down on Stocktwits. The 7 day average message volume is now regularly above 30,000 and there are 85,700 people who are watching BTC. That’s more than the 73,500 investors who watch SPY (S&P 500 etf) on the site. By the time BTC finds a real bottom I would expect those numbers to be a lot lower.
Ongoing popularity in the face of a significant drop is usually a sign that there is more pain to come. This has happened before in other popular manias and it typically ends in a similar fashion. A first 50% crash is met with denial and after a few months of stabilizing prices (which many traders interpret as a last chance to buy before the next explosive rally) the so-called “waterfall declines” start, often ending 70-90% below the peak prices.
Classic example include the Dow in 1929:
Gold in 1980:
Nikkei in 1990:
Nasdaq in 2000:
And even individual stocks or sectors. Remember 3D printing in 2014:
We always see the same thing. A huge run-up that triggers traders’ imagination of easy riches followed by a 50% crash that is seen as the next great buying opportunity. A few months of stabilizing and rebounding prices convince the remaining skeptics that the bull market is continuing. And that’s how the stage is set for the second phase of the crash.
If Bitcoin follows the same pattern by bottoming in the coming weeks followed by what looks like a healthy rebound then remember those charts and be careful. I will keep posting my observations on Twitter until I do another post on crypto here on the blog.
Good luck to all.
PS: Good question by a reader: Could it be that BTC moves quicker and that we are already in the waterfall declines? A: Yes, that’s possible. Here is a daily chart, 50% drop and a one month rebound:
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Posted in Market Commentary | Tagged: Bitcoin, crash, mania | Leave a Comment »