Strategist Says Market Fully Valued, Growth Could Be Slow for 10 Years

For old-timers that were around in the go-go tech 1990s, years of double-digit market gains looked like they were here to stay, until the tech wreck of 2000 and 2001 ended all that. Then growth took off again only to be halted by the Great Recession and sell off of 2008 and 2009. Since the low in March of 2009, the S&P 500 is up over 200%, and we broke out into a real secular bull market when the S&P 500 cracked through 1,500 in 2013. One strategist on Wall Street thinks the party is over and could be for some time.

Barry Bannister, the well-respected market chief equity strategist at Stifel, has hardly been a perma-bear over the years, but he makes the case that the S&P 500 is pretty much fully valued, and he sees 2,100 on the index as the top end for 2016. With earnings slowing, and multiples again stretched, this is hardly some doom and gloom call. Without earnings growth, multiples cannot be extended.

In a new equity strategy research report, Bannister and his staff layout a very slow growth scenario that could last for a decade, and the report highlights seven key points investors may want to consider.

1. Again, the Stifel team feel the S&P 500 is fully valued and the index should close around 2,100 this year. They also ask whether earnings will grow with the Federal Reserve raising rates.
2. The taper was actually a tightening, and the Stifel team feels the Fed is two years into a rate cycle that could lead to a 2017 S&P 500 bear market.
3. The global cyclical trade is fading. They think that banks could rally if reflation actually does get some traction by next year.
4. If global economies get more in sync with each other, that helps the Fed exit the low-rate era. However, they note if the Fed raises rates too fast, that will strengthen the dollar and could cause trouble.
5. Oil has hit Stifel’s $50 target, a level they feel could hold there or a little higher for some time.
6. While commodities had a nice first half of 2016 bounce, the Stifel view is the CRB commodity index could remain flattish and range bound to 2029.
7. Lastly, they see the S&P 500 total return at a skimpy 5% per year until 2025, 2% from dividends and 3% from price appreciation. That figure is half of what the historical levels are.

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Again, while hardly grandiose, it’s not like Bannister and the Stifel team are calling for any sort of massive long-term depression. What they are saying, and it remains very possible since our recovery from the Great Recession has been one of the worst on record, is that we could be in for years of slow and tedious growth, just like what we are currently experiencing. That is a scenario in which stock picking instead of indexing will be much more in vogue.