Deja vu? Well not quite. Although the big event of the coming week is likely to be Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke’s address at the Jackson Hole central bank talk-fest, he may be unable to say the kind of things he did last year that helped send world stocks up as much as 45 percent.
It was at Jackson Hole, in Wyoming, last year that Bernanke brought up the idea of the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program that became known as QE2.
That pumped money and confidence into markets.
There are some who now hope to hear about a QE3, particularly against a background of investment bank downgrades of US growth, albeit with the traditional reluctance to predict a recession.
But the politics have got more complicated, with Texas Governor Rick Perry, a Republican candidate for President, raising the stakes by saying he would consider it “treasonous” if Bernanke “prints more money between now and the election” in 2012.
The Fed, typically, tries to keep a low profile in presidential election years.
Primary dealers set the chances of QE3 in the next six months at less than 40 percent in a recent Reuters poll.
That may be one reason that investors have felt free to dump riskier assets at a sometimes alarming rate this month.
MSCI’s all-country world stock index has lost more than 13 percent over 15 trading days.
Those who believe a bear market is designated by an index falling at least 20 percent from its most recent high will have noted that the MSCI index hit that level earlier in August, bounced back a bit and then headed back toward it again.
No surprise, really, that 10-year US Treasuries, downgraded though they now are, have seen yields dip below two percent in a rush for safety.
There are plenty of reasons behind the summer plunge, including the euro zone’s serial failure to stop its debt crisis spreading — or at least to stop debt market bears lurching from one indebted country to another.
Worries about European banks are likely to continue into the coming week.
But it is the weakening US economy that has really set the ball rolling. The past week’s plunge in the Philadelphia Federal Reserve’s index of business conditions has particularly rattled investors.
Karen Olney, head of European thematic research at UBS, says markets are now pricing in a mild recession.
“When you start to see the United States, the global engine of growth, (roll over) people do get worried about a whole different thing,” she said.
“Much more attention will be turned on to the US.”
The coming week offers a few markers for investors including July durable goods on Wednesday followed by the August consumer sentiment survey and another look at second quarter gross domestic product figures on Friday.
Europe, reeling from poor second quarter growth data from supposed powerhouse Germany, provides a first glimpse of how the economy is faring this month with Tuesday’s euro zone flash purchasing managers’ report.
Investment banks, some of which have in the past had a spotty record of predicting a recession, have started downgrading growth forecasts.
But they are holding back from predicting contraction.
Morgan Stanley, for example, cut its global GDP forecast to 3.9 percent growth from 4.2 percent for 2011, and to 3.8 percent from 4.5 percent for 2012.
It said the US and euro zone economies were close to recession, but added that was not part of its base scenario.
JP Morgan said much the same about the US economy.
ING, meanwhile, said its traditional recession barometers were “pointing to ‘change’ not ‘storm’.”
The rub for many investors is that there is little clarity about what they are facing.
For every bullish report saying stocks are cheap and a “buy,” there is one predicting something akin to the Apocalypse.
The coming week probably won’t offer much to change that.
