His fund is up 60% this year after he called the March bottom — now, he sees potential for a ‘severe collapse’

Is a collapse on the way? iStockphoto

Michael Gayed says he’s not trying to scare anyone, but you wouldn’t know it from his latest take.

Back in May, the fund manager warned of the possibility of two crashes: first bonds, then stocks. With his ATAC Rotation Fund ATACX continuing to deliver the goods — it’s up almost 60% so far this year to rank among the best in its category — he’s still waving the yellow flag.

“It is a wild time in the markets,” said Gayed, who also runs the Lead-Lag Report. “Despite a crippling global pandemic, where the U.S. is failing miserably at a response with daily record after daily record cases being broken, and a U.S. economy that seems to be teetering on the edge of yet another Fed Monetary Policy response, stock markets have not seemed to blink when recovering.”

Yes, 2020 is certainly unique, considering, as he pointed out, that stocks crashed by more than 30% at one point, only to rally almost 50% from there. All that in less than eight months.

After having been bullish near the March bottom, Gayed now says that leading market indicators could very well be signalling a “severe collapse” in stocks.

The yield on the 10-year Treasury TMUBMUSD10Y , for instance, is looking at around 0.5%, while the yield on the 30-year TMUBMUSD30Y is under 1.5%., which he says is setting up for a potential reversion to the mean.

“It’s often said that bond-market investors are the smart money and tend to lead the stock market in anticipating economic activity,” Gayed explained. “The fact that yields have not risen meaningfully (quite the opposite) in the very short term is quite troubling as historically such short-term movement has tended to precede major periods of equity stress.”

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Source: Shawn Langlois | MarketWatch