Investors have finally seen the stock market behave better over the past couple of days. After having to deal with a horrible September that sent the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJINDICES: ^DJI) into bear-market territory along with the S&P 500 (SNPINDEX: ^GSPC) and Nasdaq Composite (NASDAQINDEX: ^IXIC), the first two trading sessions of October have been remarkable.
Yet as Wednesday morning dawned, investors appeared likely to have to prepare for a pause in the fourth-quarter celebration. With contracts on stock index futures down around 1%, it's clear that long-term investors will have to have patience in order to benefit from the recovery when it comes. Moreover, the next several weeks will likely bring a lot more uncertainty into the mix, making it more important than ever to have conviction in your views of the companies in which you've invested.
Hope springs eternal
Investors have had to deal with a lot over the past several years. The economic disruptions from a global pandemic forced central banks and national governments to take unprecedented actions. Changes in behavior made businesses pivot sharply, both to keep themselves in operation and to respond to the changing needs of their customers. Even as the influence of the pandemic waned and people strived to return to their former lives, the pace of recovery in various places was out of alignment with others, causing more disruptions that kept businesses from reaching optimal efficiency and capacity.
Central banks always intended the emergency measures they took to be temporary, but market participants had learned to look at such comments with a cynical eye. Even after the financial crisis of 2008 and 2009 gave way to a decade-long expansion, for instance, Federal Reserve officials were reluctant to reverse the flow of liquidity they had added to the financial system in the wake of the Great Recession.
In that context, the current Fed's insistence on raising interest rates sharply to prevent inflationary pressures from becoming entrenched in the U.S. economy stood out as a different sort of response from the central bank. In large part, the current bear market stems from investors' disbelief that the Fed would hold the line even in the face of heavy criticism not just from financial markets but also from politicians and the public at large.
Will the Fed flinch?
Movements in the broader financial markets reflected the new belief that the Fed will indeed have to reverse the sharp course of its monetary tightening moves. The abrupt reversal of government policy in the U.K. showed that foreign countries were still paying close attention to what market participants had to say about their actions. The most obvious sign that investors hoped the same would happen in the U.S. came from the big decline in bond yields, which in some ways was even more remarkable than the two-day stock market rally investors have seen.
Yet it's far from clear that the Fed will reverse course. Having staked its credibility on fighting inflation until the bitter end, even a conciliatory slowdown in its future course of interest rate increases could damage its reputation.
Meanwhile, markets will get huge amounts of information in the coming weeks about what's happening in the economy. Hundreds of companies will release their third-quarter financial reports, with many of them probably emphasizing the impacts of inflation, a strong U.S. dollar, higher interest rates, and ongoing business disruptions as factors that have held back short-term growth. Yet what investors will likely focus on is whether those companies see better times ahead.
Similarly, economic data will shed light on how entrenched inflation has already become. If falling gasoline prices send costs of other goods and services down along with them, then the Fed might not need to be as aggressive.
Investors need to prepare for continued volatility. Even if the market is beginning a longer-term recovery, it won't be obvious immediately -- and you shouldn't expect to see the market keep soaring day after day.
