A recent Bloomberg article was titled”Pandit “near death” hoard signals lower bank profits“, and stated that Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. were hoarding cash as if another crisis were on the way. Also, a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Jittery Companies Stash Cash“ showed cash on the balance sheets of S&P 500 companies was the highest in 40 years.

The chart below, courtesy of economist David Rosenberg of Gluskin Sheff & Associates, shows that credit is still contracting as banks go through the painful process of repairing their balance sheets. As indicated, bank lending has now declined for 21 weeks in a row and over this entire period a total of $216 billion (15% at an annual rate) of loans and leases has vanished.

“The contraction

I concluded a post on stock markets over the weekend saying: “After equities’ seven-month climb, stock markets certainly look vulnerable for a decline. Two downside reversal days - on Wednesday and Friday - would seem to indicate that stocks could commence a pullback to work off the overbought condition, allowing fundamentals to reassert themselves.”

Global stock markets, as well as other risky assets, closed sharply lower over the past few days as concerns mounted over the sustainability of the global economic recovery and the outlook for central bank policy.

The performance of the major asset classes is summarized by the charts below, with the top one showing the period from the March 9 stock market lows until October 19 peak and the second one the subsequent period. The numbers indicate an all-change pattern in the performances as risk aversion re-entered financial markets and government bonds and the US

The stock market has become overheated since exploding off its March lows and could be in for a strong correction, economist David Rosenberg told CNBC.

“It is overvalued by at least 20%,” Rosenberg, formerly chief economist at Merrill Lynch and now with Gluskin Sheff & Associates, said in an interview. “But it comes down to what your view in corporate earnings (is) going to be. By the time you’re up 60% from any egregiously oversold low, you’ve already got the earnings recovery.”

Source: CNBC, October 27, 2009.

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David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist of Gluskin Sheff & Associates, discusses the outlook for the stock market in the video below.

“My view is that we are still in a secular bear market … My big concern is that the market has gotten ahead of the economy. The S&P is pricing in $85 dollars of operating earnings which would be a doubling from where we are right now, and it usually takes four to five years to double earnings off a recession low … The market has clearly overshot the fundamentals,” said Rosenberg.

Source: CNBC, October 19, 2009.

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The stock market assessment below comes from highly regarded David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist of Gluskin Sheff & Associates.

The S&P 500 is trading north of a 26x P/E multiple on trailing operating earnings and history shows that at these high valuation levels, the market declines in the coming year 60% of the time.

All we know is that we have a trailing P/E multiple (operating earnings) on the S&P 500 of 26.5x - a record eight multiple point expansion from the low over a six-month span. Take note that this is the highest P/E multiple since March 2002, which is right around the time that the bear market rally at that time (also premised on post-crisis V-shaped recovery hopes) began to roll over. It took a good year for the fundamental bottom in the market to be put in, and that was heresy back then

The stock market assessment below comes from highly regarded David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist of Gluskin Sheff & Associates.

We may well be in an entirely new phase right now. For months, the equity market had this uncanny ability to rally on any good news, as the psychology took hold that less-negative data was a positive (like having your golf score go up but at a slower rate). Any adverse data that caused a retracement from March to August was treated as a buying opportunity.

But having gone from pricing in -2.5% real GDP growth at the lows to +4.0% now, it looks like Mr. Market is becoming a little more discerning in terms of interpreting the economic data. Even before yesterday’s [Tuesday] selloff, the equity market was no longer rallying on “good news”, and there were many such data points that rallied the economics community

Since joining Gluskin Sheff & Associates from Merrill Lynch a few months ago, the daily research reports from chief economist and strategist David Rosenberg have been a breath of fresh air in the world of the “dismal science”. His notes yesterday on the typical macro-economic environment prevalent once the stock market has rallied by 49%, and how the current landscape stacks up against the historical average, are proof of the useful input that has regularly been forthcoming from Rosenberg. The paragraphs below are excerpts from his report.

We can understand that there is a growing list of economists calling for the end to the recession, and that may or may not be the case actually, judging by the performance of all four ingredients that go into the NBER decision-making wheel. But let’s be charitable and assume that the herd is correct this time around - a 49% rally

I yesterday published a short post on Chinese equities and said: “… it looks if more downside is in store for the Shanghai Composite Index and it would not come as a surprise if lower Chinese equities serve as the catalyst for a well-deserved pullback in global stock markets.” With the MSCI World Index, the MSCI Emerging Markets Index and the major US indices coming off the boil yesterday, China may already have started leading world markets lower.

On a number of occasions recently I have asserted that the stock market has become disconnected from the economy. Mohamed El-Erian, CEO and co-CIO of Pimco, yesterday shared this view in an interview with CNBC. He said: “The stock market has gotten way ahead of the reality on the ground.” Arguing that markets are on a “sugar high”, he added: “Stock investors are making overly optimistic assumptions. The key

I published “Bob Farrell’s rules for investing” and “More on Bob Farrell’s rule #8” a few days ago, and these posts attracted a large number of readers, obviously in search of some guidance at this juncture in the markets.

Today, I consider rule #9, “When all the experts and forecasts agree, something else is going to happen”, in the context of the current situation.

Firstly, David Rosenberg, chief economist and strategist of Gluskin Sheff & Associates, quoted a CNBC poll of Tuesday showing that 90% of Wall Street economists believed the recession had ended. “It is highly unlikely that 90% of the economics community can be right on the same thing at the same time,” he said. Also, a Bloomberg survey showed that the consensus sees real US GDP expanding at annual rate of at least 2% for the next four quarters, leading Rosenberg to

I published a post a few days ago on the issue of whether stock markets were in a secondary (i.e. cyclical bull) or primary bull market.

I quoted a research project by Ned Davis (Ned Davis Research) in which he identified seven dimensions one could use to compare the March 9 low with secular lows of the past. The research showed that only one of the seven criteria indicated a secular bull was in place, whereas three were neutral and three were bearish. Although Davis believed the nascent rally had more upside potential, he concluded, like Richard Russell, that we were dealing with an extended rally (cyclical bull phase) within a secular bear market.

Davis has now turned his focus to what criteria would signal that one should exit the rally. His yardsticks were reported by Mark Hulbert on MarketWatch and