My stock market index predictions for 2019

There are far worse bear attack videos online, but I'm not going for the gore today.  The bear is the stock market in the next several months, the cage is your 401k or investments, and the guy is you.  Like the bear handlers say, "Get ready to brace yourself." 

These predictions below are numbers I think the four major stock indices will hit, almost certainly in 2019, but possible slightly later.  I'm not saying these numbers will be the bottom of the markets.  But I think if you are looking for a bottom before these numbers are reached, you're going to be disappointed.  But hey, I'm just a homeless artist/blogger guy, what could I possibly know about the stock market, right?

Here are my predictions (I've rounded to the nearest dollar):

Dow Jones Industrial Average: 
Peak- 26,828
Prediction- 17,025

Nasdaq:
Peak- 8,110
Prediction- 4,702

S&P 500:
Peak- 2,931
Prediction- 1,833

Russell 2000:
Peak- 1,741
Prediction- 1,046

Let's see how close I get...

Even Jim Cramer thinks it's a bear market now

It's the Monday morning after Thanksgiving weekend, and CNBC show host, analyst, and morning commentator, Jim Cramer, is now calling this fall's stock drops a bear market in this clip.  The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 350 points out of the gate.  But Cramer sees it dropping back within a few days.  How does he really feel?

"It's Not a good time."
"Every time you try to make money, it (this market) cuts your heart out."
-Jim Cramer in the clip above.

Just for the record, I don't hate Cramer.  He's a longtime stock trader, he knows that world, and he's really entertaining (usually).  But his job on CNBC is not to make you the most money.  His job is to keep you in the stock market, even when you probably shouldn't be in it.

The Dow is at 24,616 as I write this, up 330 points this morning, but down from it's high of 26,828 on October 3rd.  It's down over 8% in under two months.  The Dow is an average of 30 "industrial" stocks, and has been the benchmark of the U.S. stock market since 1885.  Here are the other major averages:

Nasdaq:  High- 8,109 (8/30/18)  Today (11/26/18)- 7,041  It's down over 13% in 3 months
Index of 100 stocks, primarily tech stocks
S&P 500: High- 2,930 (9/20/18)  Today- 2,664  It's down over 9% in just over 2 months
Index of 500 different stocks
Russell 2000: High-1,740 (8/30/18) Today- 1,508  It's down over 13% in 3 months
Index of 2,000 different stocks

Meanwhile, I'm a currently homeless artist/blogger and lifelong amateur futurist.  I look a big, long term things happening in our world, and try to figure out where we're heading as a society.  In an August 10th, 2018 post I wrote this:

"There WILL, without a shred of doubt, be a serious recession in the next year or so.  This next recession WILL be as intense as the Great Recession of 2008, and it will likely be worse."

Here's that full post: "It's Time to get off the Titanic, a brief history of our future 

The Dow was at 25,313 when I wrote this post.

In the stock market, a "correction" is a drop of 10% from the recent high mark.
A"bear market" is a drop of 20% or more over a time period of two months or more.

Still think I'm full of crap?   Or maybe there's a point to looking a super long term trends.

Stocks about to plunge?

If you want deeper background into why the entire financial system is screwed, here's Nomi Prins, a former quant (super math geek) at Lehman Brothers and Goldman Sachs, explaining it fairly quickly.  As a rule, I don't embed RT (Russian Television) clips, and with today's Trump/Putin fiasco, I hate to use it.  But all of her other talks are really long.  She explains this better than anyone right now, and this is the shorted version I could find.

Two things have been holding the stock market up from a major collapse after the DOW's January peak this year:  The "FANG" stocks (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google- officially called Alphabet now), and corporations buying back their own stocks with money they got largely form the Trump "tax cut" (corporate welfare).  Basically, things should have gone into a really big downturn back in early February in the stock market.  But these few tech stocks, nearly all by themselves, kept going up, and made the stock markets look much better than they actually were. 

But in this CNBC article today, Facebook, Alphabet (Google), and Netflix had big issues today, which is the F, A, and G in FAANG stocks, and shares headed lower.  Now, if these few stocks that have been going up big this year peak and turn down, major investors don't have very many other good options of where to put lots of money.  And that could be the straw that breaks the camel's back that so many of us have predicted.  It could finally send tech stocks quite a bit lower, and that will likely further reduce major investor confidence in the stock markets in general, which could send it into a serious bear market, and send us into the long overdue Next Great Recession, which is primed to happen.  We'll see what happens tomorrow. 

Watch Germany's Deutsche Bank as well, it's floundering and will likely be a domino in the financial crash we've been teetering on the brink of for more than a year now.