We are not going to see the world’s best businesses this cheap for a long time, says Dan Denning. He says it’s not hard to imagine another round of global rate cuts and a massive stimulus package in the US. And then there is the ‘Obama effect’. In other words, if you don’t want to own these equities now, why bother being in the market at all?

This from The Daily Reckoning Australia:

Around noon yesterday here at the Old Hat Factory, a little daemon whispered in your editor’s ear, “The bottom is in for the year of the ASX.”

“Huh?” We looked around to try and spot the little green devil. He’s been in our ear before. But he was nowhere to be found. We could still hear his voice.

“Think about you fool. It is now safe to be dogmatically bearish on the front page of the newspapers. The hedge funds have been forced to liquidate. The mob followed on the fund industry’s heels, sold everything, and headed for the hills. The hills are full! Can’t you see what this means?”

“No.”

“The selling has exhausted itself for the year you moron! Roubini recommends a $400 million stimulus package. It’s a sign. The liquidation of the long commodities/short dollar and yen trades has got to be nearly over. The moves in the currency markets have been massive. It can’t go on. And if it does…well if it does then this is the second Great Depression and you’ll have other things to worry about.”

But what if you’re wrong?

“Then I’m wrong. If you’re going to be in the equity markets at all for the next year, you should own the world’s best businesses. You’re not going to see them this cheap again for awhile. If you don’t want to own theses businesses, why bother being in the market at all?”

God may not whisper in everyone’s ear. But we find daemons more than willing to have a chat, usually when our judgement is most in doubt. Still, we couldn’t help following through the thoughts of our little green devil to their logical conclusion. And in his own way, he makes perfect sense.

Bob Prechter and the Elliott Wave theorists (if we’re not mistaken) believe that ’social mood’ is what determines the direction of the stock market. And the market then leads the economy. But what leads the social mood?

Well, that’s a tough one. At the Border’s on Chapel Street this weekend, we noticed that Bill Bonner and Lila Rajiva’s book, Mobs, Messiahs, and Markets had moved up to number seven on the hardback best seller list. People are trying to understand why investors act like a flock of birds or a school of fish, all seeming to move in the same direction at once, without cause or explanation.

People are wacky. The great mistake of market analysts (and most socialists) is to assume that people are rational and make economic decisions after calm, rational calculation. This is a figment of the rational imagination.

People often take leave of their senses. And these days, it’s hard to say just why some people are selling and no one is buying. As we’ve said here, we think it’s the massive unwinding in leverage that’s forcing stocks to be sold. There are simply not enough buyers to sop up all the selling (at least not until last night in New York, when some of that cash got back in the game).

It doesn’t help that you have a slowing global economy and a credit crunch. When you combine all that, the social mood turns decidedly sour. The beer goes flat. The smoke, rather than being a pleasant cloud in the lungs and making everyone look sophisticated and cool, just burns the eyes.

What our little daemon told us yesterday, we think, is that the social mood couldn’t possibly get any more sour. “Consumer confidence drops to record low,” reports Bloomberg this morning. There was dust and tumbleweeds blowing through the markets this week. It was fast becoming a barren wasteland.

But yesterday in New York, the first intrepid investors popped their head out from above their fallout shelters. Squinting in the sun, they found that perfectly healthy world-class businesses were lying around in the street for the taking. They were taken. The Dow was up double digits.

Don’t get us wrong. This still feels like the beginning of the 50% rally the Dow experienced in late 1929 and early 1930. But a man can take only so much depression in one quarter.

It is not hard to see a simultaneous round of global interest rate cuts, a massive stimulus package in the U.S., and the election of Obama in the States (did somebody say Messiahs?) as just the things to turn the social mood around. And that’s what makes for a rally.

Source: The Root of All Financial Evil