Despite the recent surge in the stock market, JPMorgan Chase and their advisors aren’t feeling the warm fuzzies about the prospects of the future. Despite having bearish forecasts so far this year, they suddenly are changing course. A team of advisors led by JPM Chief Global Markets Strategist Marko Kolanovic is now forecasting a potential mass selloff due to an unforeseen and unknown cause.
With the proclamation of “the risk of another unknown unknown resurfacing appears high,” the team channeled former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s 2002 briefing about the situation in Iraq. “There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know, we don’t know.”
This cryptic messaging is based on companies like Nvidia overperforming at a record level as the stock market continues to march on across a desolate course. While bulls have latched on to the signs they see as a great upward momentum, these strategists see the high potential for this to be false hope. They worry that people won’t be able to see the unknown-unknown coming and that the surges in interest rates will send underperformers crashing and dragging down the markets.
Many see JPMorgan Chase and its advisors as mystics who can accurately predict the future of the market. Given their returns and the number of people who choose to listen to their advice over others, they must be doing it right. With rock bottom an unknown-unknown, the market will be providing ample opportunities to lose a lot of money and make some too.
