It’s been a rocky few weeks on Wall Street—but according to JPMorgan’s top strategist, things could be about to get a whole lot worse.
In an interview with CNBC’s Fast Money on Thursday, Marko Kolanovic, JPMorgan’s chief market strategist and co-head of global research, said America’s biggest bank is maintaining a “somewhat negative” outlook for stocks.
“[We’re] not necessarily calling immediate sharp pullback, but we do think that recession will eventually happen,” he said. “I’m not sure how we’re going to avoid [a recession] if we stay at this level of interest rates.”
He acknowledged that the U.S. labor market was still strong, but noted cracks were beginning to show when it came to American consumerism.
“Rates could go a little higher, which [would be] problematic for a lot of people,” he said. “This [recession] will eventually come…the upside versus downside in stocks is not that great.”
This economic uncertainty meant choosing cash at a 5.5% return was an attractive defensive position, according to Kolanovic.
“Could there be another five, six, seven percent upside in equities? Of course… But there’s a downside,” he explained. “It could be 20% downside. Compare that to cash: 5.5%. So how much equity upside above 5.5% [is there]?”
The so-called Magnificent Seven stocks—Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Apple, Tesla, Microsoft, and Nvidia—would be particularly hard-hit by a recession, Kolanovic predicted. Those stocks have led the gains on major U.S. indices this year—but the JPMorgan strategist warned they were susceptible to “catching down”to the rest of the stock market and sectors like consumer staples and utilities.
Stocks got off to a good start in the first half of this year, with the S&P 500 logging a return of more than 16% by the end of June. As traders geared up for 2023, equities were coming off of their worst year since the financial crisis.
However, stocks have found themselves on shakier ground in recent weeks, with investors spooked by the Federal Reserve’s higher-for-longer interest rates warning and concerned about how long the U.S. economy can maintain its resilience.
Turbulence in the market has seen the S&P 500 shed almost 6% since the start of September. Some calculations suggest that the S&P 500 is headed below 3,000 points—which would be at least a 30% decline from current levels.
Kolanovic isn’t a lone voice on Wall Street when it comes to bracing for things to take another downward turn.
Albert Edwards, a global strategist at French investment bank Société Générale, warned recently that markets were currently mimicking the run-up to 1987’s stock market crash. He argued in a note on Tuesday that there was “plenty of evidence to suggest a recession is imminent.”
“All you can do is brace yourself and hope for the best,” he said.
Barclays too
Meanwhile, Barclays analysts wrote in a note to clients this week that an equities crash was needed to rescue the flailing bond market.
“We can think of one scenario where bonds rally materially: if risk assets fall sharply in the coming weeks,” they said.
Bank of America said at the end of September that investors were dumping stocks at the fastest rate since the end of 2022. The lender’s most recent survey of global fund managers found that while institutional investors are not quite “extremely bearish,” they aren’t feeling bullish either.
Wall Street bulls Goldman Sachs and Citigroup, meanwhile, have lowered their year-end price targets for the S&P 500 index.
Some staunch bulls are standing their ground, though.
Ed Yardeni, the founder of Yardeni Research, predicted earlier this month that a Santa Claus rally would take hold of markets toward the end of 2023, lifting the S&P 500 to somewhere near 4,600 points—8% higher than current levels.
