Back To Normal In Stocks Feels Like Trauma As U.S. Bull Run Ages

Nobody said waking up from six years of Federal Reserve-induced slumber would be easy.

In stocks, volatility is back. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which never went more than three days without a gain in 2014, has twice fallen five straight times since January. Daily equity moves exceeding 1 percent have jumped 50 percent from last year and shares tumbled 3 percent or more over four different stretches in the first quarter.

What seems like chaos is a return to normalcy for 70-year-old investor Chris Bertelsen, who says the end of Fed stimulus is long overdue in a market that has tripled since 2009. Volatility indicators bear a resemblance to 2007, the final year of the previous bull market -- which this one now exceeds by 12 months.

“We are so skewed by the readily available quantitative easing and that was the abnormal,” said Bertelsen, chief investment officer of Global Financial Private Capital LLC, a Sarasota, Florida-based wealth manager with $4.5 billion. “For many investors, particularly those that haven’t seen a period of time like this, it does create queasiness.”

The market hasn’t been this turbulent since the European debt crisis three years ago as volatility in currency and energy markets spill over to equities and Fed policy makers signal a rate increase by mid-year.

1% Move

Less than three months into 2015, the market has seen 15 days when the S&P 500 rose or fell 1 percent or more, compared with 10 days a quarter in 2014. While the index is little changed for the year and has gone 41 months without a 10 percent tumble, it’s had more retreats of at least 3 percent than any time since 2011, data compiled by Bloomberg show.

After swinging 0.53 percent a day in 2014 in the calmest year since 2006, the S&P 500’s daily move has widened to 0.71 percent, versus the average of 0.76 percent since 1928.

“What we’re seeing in the market today is a preview that this is going to a more volatile year and investors should be positioned,” said Jim McDonald, the chief investment strategist at Chicago-based Northern Trust Corp., which oversees $934 billion.

Calm is evaporating just as stocks seemed back on track, with the Nasdaq Composite Index above 5,000 and the S&P 500 at an all-time high at the start of the month. The S&P 500 fell 1.4 percent on March 6 after a surge in hiring fueled speculation the Fed may accelerate its tightening schedule.