This year many technical and macro warning signs were ignored by investors and Wall Street alike.
Long gone is the record optimism that permeated the landscape not only in January but even as late as August and September. Wall Street analysts kept raising price targets on key stocks such as Apple AAPL, -2.32%[1] and telling investors to buy every dip. Only now are they downgrading those same stocks by 20%-25% from where they were in September.
With a record 90% of asset classes down for the year and almost half of S&P 500 Index SPX, -0.92%[2] components in a bear market, hopes are for a Santa Claus rally to save what’s left of a terrible investment year. And while markets may still see sizable rallies, the warning signs are still all around us, and they send a clear message: The 10-year bull market will come to an end, and the investing and trading climate is changing dramatically, possibly, for years to come.
Read: Frustrated traders say ‘neither bulls nor bears’ are in charge now[3]
I’m outlining several of these key technical and macro warning signs as they are important to understanding what investors and traders have to contend with into 2019.
First, let’s be clear what happened in 2018: After liquidity infusions of $5 trillion in record global central bank intervention between 2016 and 2017 and the U.S....