Five Events That Could Cause A Market Rally

This article was written with Oliver Pursche, the Co-Portfolio Manager of GMG Defense Beta Fund. It was part of a series of articles developed under an agreement with forbes.com to work with a variety of contributors and assist them in delivering actionable investment ideas each week. The site, forbes.com is one of the top 500 sites in the world with nearly 10 million subscribers and nearly 100 million page views a month.

Markets were anxious in the weeks leading up to the Greek elections and the possibility of a Greek exit from the euro.

In my view, the outcome of the elections was almost irrelevant. Simply getting past them set the stage for other rally-inducing catalysts to take hold.

Specifically, I expect Germany to become more proactive in helping quell the crisis, and this more cooperative orientation could serve as a catalyst for a rally. For instance, the coming weeks, Germany’s upper and lower house will be voting on a resolution proposed by Angela Merkel, designed to support Spanish, Italian and to a lesser extent French banks.

After last weeks benign Producer Price Index and Consumer Price Index reading, and weaker than expected U.S. GDP growth, look for more quantitative easing as “Helicopter Ben” gets ready to drop another load. The combination of more QE (III?) with a surprisingly strong earnings season would almost certainly cause a rally in risk assets.

Lastly, after the anxiety over Greek elections subside, and the realities of low interest rates for a very long time setting in with investors, I think there will be a significant outflow from bonds, bond funds and money market funds into commodities and stocks.

So to summarize, the five events that I expect to occur over the coming month or so and that could ignite a market rally are:

Greek elections are over
Germany becomes more proactive in helping Europe
Helicopter Ben drops more bags of money on the system
Earnings season surprises on the upside
Cash and bond fund assets begin flowing into equities
The scorecard on these forecasts will come by late July.

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