Did the Mainstream Just Wake Up? Jeffery Gundlach Sparks Talk of a Bear Market

The mainstream has finally uttered the B-word.

I mean bear. As in bear market.

DoubleLine Capital founder Jeffrey Gundlach sparked mainstream talk of bears on Monday when he asserted that we have indeed entered a bear market during an interview on CNBC. 

I’m pretty sure this a bear market. I mean, people like this definition of 20% down is a bear market, but that’s obviously very arbitrary. I’ve been around for over 35 years in this business, and I’ve seen a number of bear markets. And it’s more about kind of how you lead into it, how it develops and how the sentiment changes. And I think we’ve pretty much had all the variables that characterize a bear market.”

Gundlach’s comments quickly rippled through the various financial news networks. Reuters made it a headline. Oliver Pursche, chief market strategist at Bruderman Asset Management in New York, called markets emotionally drained an subject to selloffs.

It’s really about sentiment, and the Gundlach statement didn’t help the market.”

There is some actual evidence to back up Gundlach’s assertion. While the S&P500 as a whole is technically still in correction territory, more than half of the individual stocks on the index are officially in a bear market.

Peter Schiff has been calling this a bear market since last spring.

To me, if it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck – it’s a duck. And this market is looking like, walking like and quacking like a bear market.”

Meanwhile, on Monday, stocks did exactly what they do in a bear market. They plunged. The Dow Jones fell 507.53 points. That dropped the Dow 10% below its record high. The S&P500 hit a 14-month low. The latest slide also erased the NASDAQ’s slim gain for the year. US stock markets are experiencing their worst December in over 80 years, according to a Reuters report.

Healthcare stocks led the way down with concern over a federal judge declaring Obamacare unconstitutional. But as Peter has said about tariffs, any excuse will do to send stocks lower during a bear market.

Gundlach said we’ve watched one sector after another give it up over the last year.

The global stock market peaked January 26th and so did the New York Stock Exchange composite on January 26th. But the Dow Jones Industrials, the NASDAQ, the S&P 500, all these things, one by one, started to roll over.”

Perhaps the mainstream is starting to get it. That remains to be seen. But as Peter has been saying, this isn’t just about the stock market. There are fundamental problems in the economy that are behind the market selloff.

The economy is fundamentally weak. It’s been propped up by artificially low interest rates. Interest rates are still artificially low. But they’re not low enough and the whole thing is imploding.”

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