Trader’s Narrative

More than a year ago I called it: We are in a recession!

It was rather foolhardy to go out on a limb like that but with the help of hindsight we now know that that was quite a prescient call. What I didn’t expect was that we would be entering one of the most serious recessions we’ve seen in recent history.

Since the National Bureau of Economic Research has been keeping track of them, we’ve had 22 recessions (including this one). However, only 4 have been longer in duration:

Source: Chart of the Day

It may be just as foolhardy to now do an about turn and declare that the ‘Great Recession’ is over. But we are seeing some indications of that. The bad news is that the sharp contraction in inventories that we’ve seen has been unprecedented in recent economic history. The good news is that such drawdowns have historically signaled the end of recessions:

Souce: Doug Kass at theStreet.com