Lite statistik från Goldman

I korthet säger Goldman i dagens morgonbrev att aktieuppgången kan och borde fortsätta om mönstren från tidigare huskrascher följs. Detta gäller särskilt USA:

Lessons from post-housing bust recoveries: recoveries tepid - double-dips unusual – equities trough at worst point in growth & continue to move higher despite tepid recoveries – interest rates stay lower several years after worst point in growth – US following this template.

(i) It is normal for recoveries from housing busts - particularly severe ones - to be relatively tepid. Even after passing the worst point in growth, economies have tended to operate with very substantial spare capacity for a long period. The oft-heard story that deeper US recessions are followed by sharper recoveries misses the fact that this is overwhelmingly not the case in the typical housing bust. At the same time, the much feared double-dip is also not too common. Once economies began to recover, even after busts, in general the recovery continued - even if the pace was often slow.

(ii) So far, the recent US recession looks to be deep relative to many prior busts; but the trough was reached at roughly the normal time and our forecasts for the recovery (a slow, extended one) look pretty consistent with the experience elsewhere.

(iii) The asset market lessons are at least as interesting. Equities have tended to trough around the worst point in growth and in the large majority of cases have continued to move higher (albeit sometimes modestly) despite a lacklustre recovery.

Those who argue that the recovering equity market ignores the fact that the US is in a post-bust environment may themselves be missing some key lessons from busts elsewhere. At the same time, with lots of slack in the system for a sustained period, interest rates have generally remained under downward pressure for several years beyond the worst point in growth as sluggish recoveries only gradually eat into spare capacity. As a result, the kind of moderate positive equity returns alongside continued low rates and yields that we forecast is fairly typical of economies recovering from housing busts.

(iv) It is important to stress that, of the major economies, only the US clearly crosses the threshold used to identify and analyse housing busts. So the lessons from these episodes are primarily lessons for the US economy. For that reason, we expect further divergence between the path of the recovery and the onset of tightening between the US and many others as the year progresses.