Everyone take a deep breath. This isn’t 2007 again. The banks aren’t loaded with $10 trillion in “toxic” mortgage-backed securities, the housing market hasn’t fallen off a cliff wiping out $8 trillion in home equity, and the world is not on the brink of another excruciating financial meltdown. The reason the markets have been gyrating so furiously for the last couple weeks is because stocks are vastly overpriced, corporate earnings are shrinking, and the Fed is threatening to take away the punch bowl. And to top it all off, a sizable number of investors have more skin in the game than they can afford, so they had to dump shares pronto to rebalance their portfolios.
What does that mean?