No there’s nothing about today’s GDP report that’s good. And no, no amount of spin regarding how two consecutive quarters of a declining US economy being anything other than a recession makes reality any better. But that’s not specifically what my top takeaway is about. I want to be clear. I don’t know if the bottom is in for the stock market. That’s because I don’t know whether President Biden and Congressional Democrats will create still worse economic policies. But what I do know, is that if they do nothing, or if were to do something constructive (highly unlikely), there’s a good chance the worst of the stock market bear market is over. That’s because bad news just became good. A historic hallmark of the end of bear markets, is when key companies report disappointing results but see their stock prices pop. That happened not once but twice yesterday. Both Alphabet – which is the parent of Google and Microsoft reported earnings results that in the words of John Cougar Mellencamp, Hurt(s) So Good. Both companies reported results that missed the top line (revenue) and bottom line (earnings). That’s the kind of activity that usually results in a WWE-style beat down of sorts in the stock market. And what that means is that investors had become so pessimistic, that the absence of awful news, as opposed to merely bad news, became good news. Now, we’re in a recession and these are only the earnings estimates of two companies. That alone isn’t a lot to work with when attempting to discern if the tide is in the process of turning on what’s been the worst start to a year for stocks in over 50-years,
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