The stock market has rallied nicely to start 2019 but we think there is a big problem. The major central banks, the Fed, ECB and BoJ, have pumped up asset prices since 2008 with a massive liquidity injection of $11 trillion. They kept interest rates at ridiculously low levels on the short and long end of the curve and investors were forced into risk assets. This grand experiment is known as quantitative easing. Now is the more difficult part called quantitative tightening, the central bankers are trying to normalize policy.
Wall Street strategists bullish for 2019
This is one of my favorite posts to write every year as we get to look back on Wall Street predictions and see how they panned out. We have done this in 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018 so it is a tradition to see which strategists did well and which missed the mark.
Last year, the strategists predicted a bull market for 2018 with an average target of +6%, 2850, for the S&P 500. Those predictions looked pretty good heading into the fourth quarter, but after a sharp decline, all of them badly missed the mark as the S&P 500 suffered through a terrible stretch and hit a year to date low of 2346 on Christmas Eve. The best of the best was Citibank's Tobias Levkovich and UBS's Ben Laidler who both predicted a slightly down year. Now let's take a look at their thoughts on 2019…
