How Experts Think About Bear Market Opportunities

Today, the majority of Americans are worried a bear market is looming.

The good news: there are silver linings. Bear markets can present bargains for investors, thanks to inefficient pricing and fear in the market. Going further, many investing greats have made key investments during market downturns including:

Q2 2022 hedge fund letters, conferences and more

How Experts Think About Bear Market Opportunities

When faced with the challenges of a bear market, how do experts respond?

1. “Whether we’re talking about socks or stocks, I like buying quality merchandise when it is marked down.”

— Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway

Just like a bargain on socks may be an opportunity for buyers, a bargain on stocks is an opportunity for potential upside. In fact, the S&P 500 Index has seen double-digit gains 85% of the time after extremely pessimistic sentiment since 1987.

Investor pessimism can be measured by a ‘bull-bear spread’. This is based on an AAII survey that measures investor expectations for the market in the next six months. It is calculated by taking the percentage of investors who are ‘bullish’ on the market minus those who are ‘bearish’.

For example, in the week of April 29, 2022:

Here’s how the S&P 500 Index performed after periods of extreme investor pessimism:

Source: Bloomberg, 5/12/22

As the above chart shows, investor pessimism is at its highest in 20 years.

Instead of thinking of how bad the market is doing, investors may be better of thinking of the market as being significantly less expensive.

2. “History provides crucial insight regarding market crises: they are inevitable, painful, and ultimately surmountable.”

— Shelby Davis, founder of Shelby Cullom Davis & Company

Bear markets hurt. On the bright side, they only account for 29% of the market environment, with bull markets making up the lion’s share (71%). What’s more, stocks have spent the vast majority of time at or near their all-time highs.

Source: Morningstar Direct, PerformanceAnalytics, UBS 4/30/2022. Based on monthly returns from 1945.

Overall, stocks have spent around two-thirds of the time at or near all-time highs.

3. “The most important lesson an investor can learn is to be dispassionate when confronted by unexpected and unfavorable outcomes.”

— Peter Bernstein, economist and financial historian

To avoid falling for the behavioral pitfalls of a market cycle, investors can identify key macro indicators of each stage. Below, we show the economic indicators and how they associate with each type of market cycle.

Source: Goulding, L. et al., May 2022. *Represents an unexpected move in monetary policy.

As the above table shows, bear markets are associated with low consumer sentiment, high unemployment, low corporate sales, and weak manufacturing performance—with a high number of macroeconomic shocks.

4. “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

— Winston Churchill, former Prime Minister of Britain

Just like bear markets can stoke investor uncertainty, rising interest rates can cause stock market disruption. However, since 1954 the S&P 500 Index has returned an average 9.4% annually during Fed rate hike cycles.

Source: Morningstar, Haver Analytics, March 2022

Not only that, the S&P 500 Index has had positive returns 11 out of 12 times during periods of rising interest rates. Despite the short-term impact to the market, stocks often weather the storm.

Finding Bright Spots

In summary, it is helpful to remember the following historical characteristics of a bear market:

Investors can find opportunities by considering a contrarian point of view and learning from the time-tested experience of investing legends.

Article by Visual Capitalist

Updated on