Last updated on Monday, Oct. 05, 2009 06:32AM EDT
If the stock market rally seems so wildly out of line with that of normal recoveries, maybe we should stop comparing it with normal recessions.
Last week, when the S&P 500 peaked at 60 per cent above its March lows (and the S&P/TSX composite index was up 55 per cent from its March bottom), Gluskin Sheff + Associates Inc. chief economist and strategist David Rosenberg pointed out that in typical recessionary bear markets, stocks don't see those kinds of recoveries until the economy has expanded by more than 5 per cent (it has only recently turned upward), U.S. employment has risen by more than two million jobs (it is still declining) and corporate profits have climbed 34 per cent (they, too, are only just turning positive).
His conclusion: This rally has far outpaced where it normally should be at this stage of the economic recovery.
But as Mr. Rosenberg and others have been keen to point out for months, this has not been a typical recession. When you compare it with other similarly unusual downturns – namely, those triggered by banking crises – both the depth of the selloff and the speed of the recovery don't look so unusual at all.
Normally abnormal
In a research report this week, National Bank Financial market strategist Pierre Lapointe took a look at the six downturns over the past 30 years that the International Monetary Fund has identified as triggered by “periods of banking-related financial stress” – in other words, the six economic events around the world that most closely resemble the financial meltdown of last fall.
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