Hussman Weekly Market Comment: Taking Distortion at Face Value

March U.S. Non-Farm Payrolls +88,000 (payroll survey, median expectation was 175,000)

March U.S. Civilian Employment -206,000 (household survey)

March Canadian Employment -54,500 (worst print in 4 years)

March German Unemployment +13,000 (surprise increase)

Companies issuing negative earnings preannouncements for Q1 2013: 78% (h/t Josh Brown)

One of the striking features of the recent market advance has been the nearly triumphant confidence that there is zero risk of a U.S. economic recession. Back in January, I observed:

“The economic data are wrestling between two likely possibilities and a third less likely one. The first of the likely ones remains that the U.S. already entered a recession in the third quarter of 2012. While I expect the full third-quarter GDP figure of 3.1% to remain positive post-revision, it’s not at all clear that fourth-quarter GDP (estimated to come in about 1.5%) will survive those eventual revisions – ditto for the marginal bounce in industrial production. The second likely possibility is that the enthusiasm about QEternity (combined with a positive jolt to personal income from special dividends to front-run the fiscal cliff) represented another successful round of “kick-the-can” to push a weak economy from the verge of recession for another few months. When we look at the broad evidence from a variety of good leading and coincident indicators, that’s actually the possibility that I am starting to lean toward. The unlikely possibility, in my view, is that the economy has started to walk on its own” (see Puppet Show).

With a few months of additional data in hand, the evidence further supports the "kick-the-can" interpretation. Specifically, enthusiasm about QEternity, coupled with a positive jolt to personal income from special dividends, can probably be credited for another successful round of “kick-the-can,” pushing a weak economy from the verge of recession for another few months, but not durably so.

My impression is that we have once again arrived back at that can. While there is no shortage of smug observers who believe that recession risk does not exist and never did, the fact is that the strongest leading indicators, as well as the most timely coincident data, have deteriorated and danced along the border between economic expansion and economic recession for more than two years. Meanwhile, repeated rounds of QE have produced little but short-lived bounces to defer a recession that historically would have followed such deterioration more quickly.