Get Out Now: SocGen Predicts Market Crash, Bear Market For The S&P

While the charade of sellside analysts releasing optimistic, and in the case of Barclays and Goldman “rationally exuberant”previews of the year ahead…

… is a familiar, long-running tradition on Wall Street, rarely has the intellectual dishonesty and cognitive dissonance been quite so glaring: take Goldman, which while admitting that valuations have never been higher, and the upside case never more reliant on just one piece of legislation which has a significant chance of not passing (GOP tax reform for those unaware), Goldman still has to temerity to predict not only no bear market in the next three years, but goes so far as to suggest an “irrationally exuberant” target of 5,300 in three years.

And as of this morning, the penguins are on full parade, with virtually not a single big bank predicting the market will drop in the coming year. Here are the latest S&P price targets, EPS forecasts and implied PE multiples, for the year ahead:

Bank of Montreal, Brian Belski, 2,950, EPS $145.00, P/E 20.3x

UBS, Keith Parker, 2,900, EPS $141.00, P/E20.6x

Canaccord, Tony Dwyer, 2,800, EPS $140.00, P/E 20.0x

Credit Suisse, Jonathan Golub, 2,875, EPS $139.00, P/E 20.7x

Deutsche Bank, Binky Chadha, 2,850, EPS $140.00, P/E 20.4x

Goldman Sachs, David Kostin, 2,850, EPS $150.00, P/E 19x

Citigroup, Tobias Levkovich, 2,675, EPS $141.00, P/E 19.0x

HSBC, Ben Laidler, 2,650, EPS $142.00, P/E 18.7x

Good luck with all those 20x P/Es in a world in which rates are rising and central bank balance sheets will start contracting in one year.

Luckily, there is the occasional honest bank, like Macquarie (whose Victor Shvets has become one of our favorite commentators for hiw objective, no nonsence analysis) and – as of this morning – SocGen, whose strategist Roland Kaloyan has written a note which warns that with bond yields rising (see the crash in China overnight, where the Shanghai Composite tumbled the most in 17 months on the realization that rising rates is bad for stocks), there is effectively no upside left in stocks, which coupled with the prospect of a US economy recession in 2020 will “crimp returns in 2019” Furthermore, in light of the record vol shorts, SocGen jumps on the VIX-squeeze crash bandwaon, warning vol positioning could “strongly deteriorate the risk reward profile of equity markets.”

In not so many words: with little stock upside left, with the threat of rising interest rates slamming P/E multiples, with the economy in deep in late cycle, with equities trading at record valuations, with everyone short vol and just begging for a vol short squeeze, SocGen’s advice is simple: get out now.