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This is what could happen after the next market correction

Earnings per share have grown 119 percent faster than corporate profits.

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I hate to be so cynical, but the markets love to fool as many people as possible, bulls and bears alike. This is especially true at key turning points and even more so in extreme bubbles like the one we’ve been in since late 1994, with this final phase – and it’s unprecedented QE and tax cuts – since early 2009.

This final rally (since 2009) is all “hot air.”

This recovery has been the weakest ever in real GDP, capital spending, employment growth, and productivity. The Fed has created what I call “markets on crack” by printing free money and pushing short- and long-term rates down artificially.

Earnings per share have grown 119 percent faster than corporate profits due to companies’ ability to buy back their own stocks with cheap money from the Fed. Such free money policies always create or amplify bubbles that only burst dramatically!

Be warned — there are NO soft landings to such extreme bubbles. 

After the January 2018 peak, that looked like a potential final bubble top, we didn’t get that classic 40 percent sharp crash in the first two to three months. We haven’t seen that since the slightly higher high on October 3, but that didn’t look like a classic bubble top.

So, what’s the most likely scenario now? A final blow-off rally: what I call a Dark Window.

But — and this is me being cynical here — first, we’ll see a scary crash.

That’s exactly what occurred in the last great bubble peak into March 2000. The Nasdaq crashed 34 percent sharply into late 1998, then turned around and made the greatest final blow-off rally in history into March 2000.

I love it because it fakes out the bulls first, and then kills the bears, just before the crash of a lifetime, like 1929 to 1932, into 2020 to 2022.

Here’s the chart for that ultimate scenario that would still be in play even if the Nasdaq crashed down to as low as 5,500 in the coming weeks, down 32 percent from its all-time high ahead of most markets in late August — just like the late 1998 scenario.

©Harry Dent

This isn’t carved into stone yet but is still the most likely scenario so take it seriously because the greatest short-term profits would precede the greatest long-term crash and create the most profitable trades of a lifetime.

DISCLAIMER: This article expresses my own ideas and opinions. Any information I have shared are from sources that I believe to be reliable and accurate. I did not receive any financial compensation for writing this post, nor do I own any shares in any company I’ve mentioned. I encourage any reader to do their own diligent research first before making any investment decisions.

Harry S. Dent Jr. studied economics in college in the 1970s, receiving his MBA from Harvard Business School, where he was a Baker Scholar and was elected to the Century Club for leadership excellence. Harry grew to find the study of economics vague and inconclusive and became so disillusioned by the state of his chosen profession that he turned his back on it. Instead, he threw himself into the burgeoning new science of finance which married economic research and market research. Identifying and studying demographic trends, business cycles, consumers’ purchasing power and many other trends empowered Harry to forecast economic and market changes. Over the last three decades, he’s spoken to executives, financial advisors and investors around the world. He’s appeared on “Good Morning America,” PBS, CNBC and CNN/FN. He’s been featured in Barron’s, Investor’s Business Daily, Entrepreneur, Fortune, Success, U.S. News and World Report, Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, American Demographics and Omni. He is a regular guest on Fox Business’s “America’s Nightly Scorecard.” Harry has also written numerous best-selling books over the years, such as The Great Boom Ahead, The Roaring 2000s, the Roaring 2000s Investors and The Demographic Cliff. In his most recent book The Sale of a Lifetime: How the Great Bubble Burst of 2017 Can Make You Rich (2016), Harry looks at the upcoming economic crisis and reveals how it could be the single greatest chance to build wealth we’ll ever see and how we can capitalize on such a unique and historical opportunity. He explains how many of the richest Americans in history have used this same kind of opportunity to quickly accumulate incredible amounts of money, in a short period of time.