Echoes of the past
In a week of anniversaries, some things haven't changed, says John Stepek. Except that today's investment environment is far trickier.
This week it was the 30th anniversary of the 1987 stockmarket crash. The papers and financial websites have been stuffed with interviews with traders who were around at the time, swapping tales of fortunes lost and reputations made as the Dow Jones crashed by 23% in a single day unheard of before or since.
Meanwhile, in an eerie echo of the Great Storm of 1987, which coincided with the crash in the UK, this week saw Storm Ophelia turn the skies red over Britain. Could it happen again? The short answer, of course, is yes. What's more interesting and disturbing are the differences between now and then.
In 1987, markets were just getting used to moving at the speed of computer algorithms. Today, arguably the "plumbing" of markets is more resilient (partly because of the "flash crash" of 2010), if only because there are more circuit-breakers in place to arrest any future declines on that scale. A bigger concern though is valuations. While 1987 was frightening, it was also just a blip in a long bull market.
Subscribe to MoneyWeek
Subscribe to MoneyWeek today and get your first six magazine issues absolutely FREE
Sign up to Money Morning
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Don't miss the latest investment and personal finances news, market analysis, plus money-saving tips with our free twice-daily newsletter
Share prices had risen very rapidly during the first half (the Dow had jumped by an incredible 44% in the first seven months of the year, while the FTSE 100 had gained 40%), but as Russell Napier points out in his classic Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street's Four Great Bottoms, just five years earlier, in 1982, US share prices had hit record-low valuations.
In 1987, the market certainly needed a breather and the financial innovation of portfolio insurance made the crash far worse than perhaps it would have been otherwise but once the Federal Reserve stepped in to promise as much liquidity as the market needed, stocks bounced back fast.
Today's environment is in many ways far trickier. The level of volatility is quite extraordinary, in that there's virtually none. Equities are far more overvalued than in 1987, and on some measures even than in 1929 these days the tech bubble is the only time in history that you can convincingly point to where equities were significantly more expensive than they are now. That makes investing very tricky for today's investors. From bonds with minimal yields to stocks to property, nothing is cheap.
Given that backdrop, holding a larger-than-usual amount of cash makes sense to us. However, there's also the problem that, if our interviewee Jim Mellon is anywhere near correct, we're all going to have to plan for a much longer life, and that means we'll need ever-bigger retirement pots too, particularly if robots have pinched all our jobs. So if you're also looking to grow those pots, you might want to look at some of the stocks that Jim suggests will profit from increasing longevity.
Sign up to Money Morning
Our team, led by award winning editors, is dedicated to delivering you the top news, analysis, and guides to help you manage your money, grow your investments and build wealth.
John Stepek is a senior reporter at Bloomberg News and a former editor of MoneyWeek magazine. He graduated from Strathclyde University with a degree in psychology in 1996 and has always been fascinated by the gap between the way the market works in theory and the way it works in practice, and by how our deep-rooted instincts work against our best interests as investors.
He started out in journalism by writing articles about the specific business challenges facing family firms. In 2003, he took a job on the finance desk of Teletext, where he spent two years covering the markets and breaking financial news.
His work has been published in Families in Business, Shares magazine, Spear's Magazine, The Sunday Times, and The Spectator among others. He has also appeared as an expert commentator on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, BBC Radio Scotland, Newsnight, Daily Politics and Bloomberg. His first book, on contrarian investing, The Sceptical Investor, was released in March 2019. You can follow John on Twitter at @john_stepek.
-
Review: The Store, Oxford – purveyors of excellence
MoneyWeek Travel The Store is a luxurious, new hotel in Oxford that has set up shop in a former department store in the heart of the city
By Chris Carter Published
-
Seven ways the Budget could hike inheritance tax or capital gains tax at death
Chancellor Rachel Reeves could target death taxes by raising IHT and/or levying CGT on inheritances. We look at some potential moves in the Autumn Budget
By Ruth Emery Published
-
Beat the cost of living crisis – go on holiday
Editor's letter As inflation rages, energy bills soar and the pound tanks, what’s a good way to save money this winter? Go on holiday, says Merryn Somerset Webb.
By Merryn Somerset Webb Published
-
How capitalism has been undermined by poor governance
Editor's letter Capitalism’s “ruthless efficiency” has been undermined by poor governance, a lack of competition and central banks’ over-enthusiastic money printing, says Andrew Van Sickle.
By Andrew Van Sickle Published
-
Don't be scared by economic forecasting
Editor's letter The Bank of England warned last week the UK will tip into recession this year. But predictions about stockmarkets, earnings or macroeconomic trends can be safely ignored, says Andrew Van Sickle.
By Andrew Van Sickle Published
-
The biggest change in the last 17 years – the death of the “Greenspan put”
Editor's letter Since I joined MoneyWeek 17 years ago, says John Stepek, we’ve seen a global financial crisis, a eurozone sovereign debt crisis , several Chinese growth scares, a global pandemic, and a land war in Europe. But the biggest change is the death of the “Greenspan put”.
By John Stepek Published
-
The wolf returns to the eurozone’s door
Editor's letter The eurozone’s intrinsic flaws have been exposed again as investors’ fears about Italy’s ability to pay its debt sends bond yields soaring.
By Andrew Van Sickle Published
-
Things won't just return to normal – that's not how inflation works
Editor's letter You might think that, if inflation is indeed “transitory”, we just need to wait and everything will return to “normal”. But this is a grave misunderstanding of how inflation works, says John Stepek.
By John Stepek Published
-
Car hire and the strangeness of the post-pandemic economy
Editor's letter A global shortage of hire cars and unusually high hotel occupancy rates sum up the post-pandemic global economy in a nutshell, says Merryn Somerset Webb, with enhanced demand meeting restricted supply.
By Merryn Somerset Webb Published
-
Why we need to get a grip on our government
Editor's letter Our government is trying to do too much, enacting policies that are destructive to the private sector. It needs to drop the the feel-good nonsense and create policies that lead to long-term wealth, says Merryn Somerset Webb.
By Merryn Somerset Webb Published