Just the Beginning of Big Corporation Bad News

Another 100 points in the S&P 500 Index and the stock market will have retested its November 2008 low. It's looking increasingly likely that this is going to happen and, if so, it will have wiped out the entire bear market rally, which did have some legs.

This is a difficult time of the year, with companies preannouncing more bad news. More bad news from already weak visibility reported at the end of the third quarter last year. The economic data aren't helping either and, in spite of already revised expectations from economic analysts, most of the news is coming in below consensus expectations.

Retail sales numbers for this past December confirmed what retailers reported after Christmas: that it was one of the worst years for the retail industry in decades. According to the Commerce Department, retail sales dropped a substantial 2.7% in December, double the 1.2% drop expected by Wall Street economists.

In all of 2007, total retail sales gained some 4.1%. For 2008, retail sales gave up all of this gain to close down the year 0.1%. For December, virtually all industry sectors of retail sales showed a drop in activity, with automobile sales dropping an enormous 22.4% from 2007.

Even Wal-Mart is now saying that it has noticed there is a fundamental change in way consumers are behaving. The world's biggest retail chain expects consumers to be buying far less goods for some time to come. The retailer doesn't expect a turnaround in the economy anytime soon.

With this reality and more bad news from corporations, I think it's very reasonable to expect that the stock market will continue to head lower in the near term.

Germany's biggest bank, Deutsche Bank, just reported a substantial €4.8-billion loss in its latest fourth quarter due to bad management decisions on risk and a weakening global economy. I fear this is just the beginning of the bad news that's going to be coming from the world's major corporations.

So, all we can do is hunker down and ride out the storm once again. Despite all the attractive valuations in the stock market, I'd be very wary about taking on new positions at this time. Investment risk is just too high.

Profit Confidential

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