Nearly half of professionals say the bear market would bottom after sustaining a loss of -25% -- a mere three percentage point loss from yesterday’s closing price. Another 34% of practitioners say the S&P 500 loss would bottom at a loss of 30% before a new bull market begins.
The poll was conducted Tuesday, June 14 at 5 p.m. EDT, at a financial economics class attended by more than 200 professionals. More than half of the advisors attending the online class responded to this and two other poll questions.
Asked if clients are more worried about this bear market now than the -50% loss at the bottom of the 2008-9 bear market, 18.5% say clients are more worried now. More than 80% of advisors say their clients are not as worried now as they were in the world financial crisis and the bursting of the mortgage debt bubble 14 years ago.
Sixty percent of financial professionals polled say clients are not as worried now as they were in the Covid bear market of February-March 2020, when the S&P 500 lost -33.9% of its value before the Covid-recovery bull market began.
While no one can predict the bear market bottom with statistical reliability, the consensus forecast of CFP®, CPA and other financial planning professionals makes sense fundamentally. Based on recent economic data, the economy is growing. The crisis that triggered this bear market is nothing like 2008-9. The inflation crisis of 2022 is not a systemic threat to the financial system. The economy is not shutting down like the onset of Covid-19.