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Notice: This is an excerpt from a reply to a post in Daily Speculations, Investments Office took the liberty to add a title to it ("71 reasons to be bearish from 1934 to 2005").
One of my prized possessions is a chart of stock market returns in Venita Van Caspel's book "The Power of Money Dynamics." Each year is annotated with a reason to have been bearish that year:
1934: Depression
1935: Civil war in Spain
1936: Economy still struggling
1937: Recession
1938: War clouds gather
1939: War in Europe
1940: France falls
1941: Pearl Harbor
1942: Wartime price controls
1943: Industry mobilizes
1944: Consumer goods shortages
1945: Post-war recession predicted
1946: Dow tops 200 - market "too high"
1947: Cold war begins
1948: Berlin blockade
1949: Russia explodes A-bomb
1950: Korean war
1951: Excess profits tax
1952: U.S. seizes steel mills
1953: Russia explodes H-bomb
1954: Dow tops 300 - market "too high"
1955: Eisenhower illness
1956: Suez crisis
1957: Russia launches Sputnik
1958: Recession
1959: Castro seizes power in Cuba
1960: Russians down U-2 plane
1961: Berlin Wall erected
1962: Cuban missile crisis
1963: Kennedy assassinated
1964: Gulf of Tonkin
1965: Civil rights marches
1966: Vietnam war escalates
1967: Newark race riots
1968: USS Pueblo seized
1969: Money tightens; market falls
1970: Cambodia invaded; war spreads
1971: Wage-price freeze
1972: Largest U.S. trade deficit in history
1973: Energy crisis
1974: Steepest market drop in four decades
1975: Clouded economic prospects
1976: Economic recover slows
1977: Market slumps
1978: Interest rates rise
1979: Oil prices skyrocket
1980: Interest rates at all-time highs
1981: Steep recession begins
(Van Caspel, 1983, pp. 124-125)
Unfortunately, I have the 1983 edition, so the chart ends there.
A modest attempt to bring the record up to date:
1982: Double-digit unemployment
1983: Record budget deficit
1984: Technology new issues bubble bursts
1985: Dollar too strong
1986: Dow at 1800 - "too high"
1987: Stock market crash
1988: Worst drought in 50 years
1989: Savings & loan scandal
1990: Iraq invades Kuwait
1991: Recession
1992: Record budget deficit
1993: Clinton health care plan
1994: Rising interest rates
1995: Dollar at historic lows
1996: Greenspan "irrational exuberance" speech
1997: Asian markets collapse
1998: Long Term Capital collapses
1999: Y2K problem
2000: Dot-com stocks plunge
2001: Terrorist attacks
2002: Corporate scandals
2003: Gulf War II
2004: High oil prices
2005: Trade deficit
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