By Cory
Household Stock Exposure Inches Closer To Dotcom Record
Here is another interesting post by our good friend Dan Lyons. While not the best timing indicator the increase in households exposure to equities is concerning. Especially when you consider how long this bull market has gone on for.
Here are a couple websites of Dana’s that you can check out.
The Lyons Share Pro
Dana’s free blog
…Here’s the post…
The percentage households’ financial assets currently invested in stocks has surged further, now exceeded only by the blow-off portion of the 2000 dotcom bubble.
Updating one of our favorite data series from the Federal Reserve’s latest Z.1 Release, we see that in the 4th quarter, household and nonprofit’s stock holdings jumped to 37.05% of their total financial assets. This is the highest percentage since the 3rd quarter of 2000. And, in fact, the only time in the history of the data (since 1945) that saw higher household stock investment than now was during the 2Q 1999 to 3Q 2000 blow-off phase of the dotcom bubble. Perhaps not everyone is in the pool, but it certainly is extremely crowded.
As we’ve discussed many times, this data series is one of our favorite metrics pertaining to the stock market. It is not necessarily an effective timing tool, but is what we call a “background” indicator. It provides an instructive representation of the longer-term backdrop — and potential — of the stock market. It also serves as an interesting lens into investor psychology. As we wrote in a September 2014 post:
“This is one of our favorite data series because it reveals a lot about not only investment levels but investor psychology as well. When investors have had positive recent experiences in the stock market, i.e., a bull market, they have been happy to pour money into stocks. It is consistent with all of the evidence of performance-chasing pointed out by many.
Note how stock investment peaked with major tops in 1966, 1968, 1972, 2000 and 2007. Of course, investment will rise merely with the appreciation of the market; however, we also observe disproportionate jumps in investment levels near tops as well. Note the spikes at the 1968 and 1972 tops and, most egregiously, at the 2000 top.
On the flip side, when investors have bad recent experiences with stocks, it negatively effects investment flows, and in a more profound way than the positive effect. This is consistent with the scientifically proven notion we’ve discussed before that feelings of fear or loss are much stronger than those of greed or gain. Stock investment during he 1966-82 secular bear market provides a good example of this.
After stock investment peaked at 31% in 1968 (by the way, after many of the indexes had topped in 1966 — investors were still buying the dip), it embarked on steady decline over the next 14 years. This, despite the fact the stock market drifted sideways during that time. By the beginning of the secular bull market in 1982, the S&P 500 was right where it was in 1968. …read more
Source:: The Korelin Economics Report
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