U.S. stocks posted sharp gains in another wild trading session on Tuesday, as indexes rebounded from the biggest one-day drops for the benchmark S&P 500 index and the Dow Jones Industrial Average in more than six years that stalled the market’s record run.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average had a more than 1,100-point difference between its high and low on Tuesday.
Following are comments from analysts and investors:
ERIN BROWNE, HEAD OF ASSET ALLOCATION, UBS ASSET MANAGEMENT, NEW YORK:
“We’ve been looking at this as an opportunity to incrementally add a little bit of risk – not get over our skis, but a little bit. I do think that volatility is unlikely to reset to the lows that we saw earlier this year.”
“One of the attributes of these inverse ETF products has been that the longer that volatility persisted at low levels, the more product was created, so more short volatility positions were put on. So with a lot of these positions blowing up, I think it’s going to minimize interest in the creation of these products going forward. Which means that you’re not going to have this same downward depression on volatility as we had in the past. What that means is volatility normalizes – and I think that it will continue to normalize over the coming week – I think it’s going to normalize at a slightly higher level than we have been running at.”
“One of the biggest risks that we highlighted last year was the fact that at some point we knew volatility was going to pick up. There was a lot of supply that had been created and a lot of position crowding in these short volatility derivative trades. This happening actually clears the deck and takes some of the systemic risk out of markets.”
PAUL NOLTE, PORTFOLIO MANAGER AT KINGSVIEW ASSET MANAGEMENT IN CHICAGO:
”Very slowly … this will take some time to correct and get back to more ‘normal’ trading. We can see the markets trade back down later this month before resuming an uptrend.
“The market internals looked good heading into the decline, to there wasn’t much warning. Initially it was based upon the employment report. However as volatility picked up the leveraged volatility ETFs began blowing up. This is similar to other ‘leveraged’ events like the financial crisis, tech bubble or Asian crisis/’87 crash.”
PETER CARDILLO, CHIEF MARKET ECONOMIST AT FIRST STANDARD FINANCIAL IN NEW YORK:
”Today’s market action is a classic of a market that has searched for a bottom and I believe that we put a bottom, in the sense that we were within a 900-point range from the top to the bottom, spent most of the trading session slipping in and out of plus and minus column, and this is indicative of a market that has run its course on the down side.
“I think it will (go back to where it was before the decline) but not right away, it’s going to take some time, a lot depends on what happens with the rates and bond yields.”
ADAM SARHAN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF 50 PARK INVESTMENTS, AN INVESTMENT ADVISORY SERVICE:
“The markets went into being religiously over-bought to deeply over-sold in a matter of four trading days. The sell-off over the past few days is not a ‘normal’ sell-off by any means but it is not one that warrants panic either. Now, new buyers are showing up, who were waiting for the prices to go down. They are stepping in and buying. There was a lot of money in sidelines for the market to pull back.”
ART HOGAN, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST WITH B. RILEY FBR:
”Long has been the story that in a low inflation environment, you can put a higher multiple on equities.
Once the narrative starts about recalibrating equity evaluations on a straight and higher-end inflation environment, selling starts. We saw that last week. We saw it Friday. We saw it Monday …. And the problem with that is once that selling starts, it becomes momentum, right? It feeds on itself, becomes sort of a vicious cycle of self-fulfilling selling. And the machines take over.
”There was a growing expectation that we were due for a pullback; the valuations were rich, even though the fundamental backdrop was solid.
“The selling was away from current fundamentals and much more about, what if inflation rise its ugly head, what if interest rates start going up, what if the Fed rates are four times in ‘18 instead of three or two?”
ALICIA LEVINE, HEAD OF GLOBAL INVESTMENT STRATEGY, BNY MELLON INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT, NEW YORK:
“Despite violent moves in the last couple days in the market, fundamentals in the economy are very strong and it’s not just the U.S., it’s throughout the global economy. So, we’ve just seen an uptick in growth in Europe, Japan has been strong, emerging markets are strong, and of course we’re getting higher growth in the U.S. The fundamentals are very strong. This is not 2008 where there was a dislocation in credit markets and leverage that was threatening the entire system.
“What we think happened is that price velocity on the upside got completely disconnected from how markets behave. It’s a little like what happened with bitcoin, though not to the same extreme. There’s a coherence of price action and when you get 440 days of trading without a 1 percent down day, you’re at risk for a correction.”
JJ KINAHAN, CHIEF MARKET STRATEGIST AT TD AMERITRADE IN CHICAGO:
“We were all talking about this 10-percent correction, I don’t think anybody thought it would happen over three trading days. It is probably healthy long-term for the market.
”I don’t think the volatility is over. These types of moves tend to take about three weeks to get through the system. People review their portfolios, they start reallocating. And volatility just doesn’t suddenly settle down. So I wouldn’t be very surprised if we weren’t seeing intraday volatility last for the next two to three weeks.
”Those who had shorter-term investments were looking as to when to take some profits, they wanted to wait until 2018 because of the tax rate change and they got their excuse to do so … The earnings season has played into it, by that I mean it’s been a great earnings season but it has been very difficult to understand because of the tax stuff. Or if you have this windfall what are you doing with this money.”
BILLIONAIRE ACTIVIST INVESTOR CARL ICAHN COMMENTS TO CNBC:
“I think this market will bounce back probably. Eventually, you get through this little panic thing … Ironically, even though I am bearish and we have a lot of hedges on, I am not that bearish.”
“The market is really not a place for the average person to be playing around with derivatives … Today, you have these triple-leveraged ETFs (exchange-trade funds) that are crazy.”
