Beware this stock market rally because it’s reminiscent of what led up to the 2008 crisis, JPMorgan Asset Management CIO says

• The stock market’s ongoing rally is the calm before the storm, according to JPMorgan Asset Management’s CIO.

• Bob Michele told CNBC that current market conditions remind him of the March-to-June period of 2008.

• “We’re seeing things that you only see in recession or where you wind up in recession,” he said.

Investors should be wary of the ongoing stocks rally because it doesn’t reflect looming economic risks, and is reminiscent of the months that led up to the 2008 financial crisis, according to JPMorgan Asset Management’s chief investment officer.

Bob Michele told CNBC on Friday that the current market conditions remind him of the March-to-June period in 2008.

“We’re seeing things that you only see in recession or where you wind up in recession,” Michele said, referring to the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest-rate increases, the credit squeeze caused by banking-sector stress, risks tied to commercial real estate, and the inverted bond-yield curve, which is widely regarded as a recession indicator.

He also pointed to the series of regional bank collapses of the past few months, with JPMorgan taking over First Republic Bank after it failed – as it did with investment bank Bear Stearns in March 2008.

“The markets viewed it as, there was a crisis, there was a policy response and the crisis is solved,” he told CNBC, referring to market events of 2008. “Then you had a steady three-month rally in equity markets.”

Michele’s warning comes as the bear market in the S&P 500 has ended, setting the stock market up for a new bull market. The threshold was reached on the back of better-than-feared corporate earnings, a resilient economy and job market, and the expectation that the Fed will pause rates at its meeting this week.

Trends since 1980 suggest recessions tend to begin over a year and one month after the US central bank’s last interest rate hike, according to Michele. The Fed raised rates for the 10th consecutive time last month, and has lifted them from nearly zero to upward of 5% since last spring in a bid to tame historically high inflation.

He thinks it would be a “miracle” if the US economy avoided a recession once the Fed’s rate hike campaign ends.

Read the original article on Business Insider