Probably not, but both amateurs and pros could be getting the odds wrong.
It's the $64 trillion question-will there be a stock market crash soon?
Even getting the timing somewhat right could save you, or make you, a fortune. What active trader hasn't fantasized about stepping out of their time-traveling DeLorean in October 1929, 1987 or 2007 with a wad of cash? And what is it about October?
Lacking a flux capacitor, or a crystal ball, crashes are sort of like major earthquakes for stock portfolios: We know they're rare and almost impossible to predict, yet we still pay attention to people who claim they sense tremors.
The best approach is to build a sturdy financial foundation and to treat crashes the way insurance companies do natural disasters-know the odds and accept that they happen every so often . Three smart financial thinkers recently did some handicapping for us.
Elm Wealth's Victor Haghani and James White have a sophisticated clientele for their money management firm. They asked readers of a report about crashes on their website to estimate the chance of one-a 30% drop in the S&P 500-within 12 months. The average guess was 31%.
But talk is cheap. People who bet actual money via the options market only give it an 8% chance, according to Elm's math. Steven Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard, points out that 8% to 10%, or once every 10 to 12.5 years, is the historical probability.
The last crash was barely six years ago when Covid-19 shut down the economy. That doesn't mean we're free and clear.
While not forecasting one, Blitz points out that crashes occur more frequently when the Misery Index (inflation plus unemployment) is rising, and less when it is falling. The period from 1966 to 1982, for example, was more crash-prone. The next 18 years weren't.
We're now in a more dangerous stretch because those unwelcome statistics are both rising, which should make stocks cheaper relative to the economy. Add to that the fact that stocks have almost never been as expensive relative to their earnings as they are now, and the odds could be even higher this year.
Put another way, both the options market and insurance companies may be good at telling us the odds of an event happening on average, but sometimes bad things happen in streaks.
The most interesting takeaway might not be the slightly elevated chances of a crash but the way that people who read Elm's entire analysis of their frequency reacted. Those who made a second prediction still said the chances of a crash were 15% in the next year.
That could cost them. As star fund manager Peter Lynch observed: "Far more money has been lost by investors trying to anticipate corrections, or trying to time the market, than has been lost in the corrections themselves."