Welcome and thoughts on the market. I'm Mike Wilson, Chief Investment Officer and Chief

U.S. Equity Strategy for Morgan Stanley. Along with my colleagues bringing you a variety

of perspectives, I'll be talking about the latest trends in the

financial marketplace. It's Monday, November 11th at 9 a.m. Eastern, so let's get

after it. For the last 18 months, I've held the view that global equity markets

would trade in a range for multiple years as they

consolidated their significant gain since the financial crisis.

I called it a cynical bear market in the context of a secular bull market. That range is generally held for close to 80 percent. the However, over the past few months, equity markets have rallied sharply, and last week the

S&P 500 finally made a clean break above what had been the final resistance levels I've

been monitoring.

Other important international equity markets have also rallied sharply,

although they remain well below their prior highs and key resistance. Nevertheless, they look

much better technically just like the S&P 500. Does this mean the cyclical bear market is over and the secular bull market is resumed in earnest?

It's possible but I remain a bit skeptical given the continued weak economic and earnings data this past month.

In fact, our earnings growth leading indicator which did economic and earnings data this past month.

In fact, our earnings growth leading indicator, which did an excellent job of forecasting

this year's disappointing earnings growth in the U.S. just turned lower again this past week.

It's now predicting another year of 0% earnings growth for the

S&P 500 next year, just like it was at this time last year. The potential problem that

poses for stocks is that the consensus is once again forecasting about

10% earnings growth for next year. We suspect those estimates are stale because

companies have yet to provide guidance for next year's earnings and analysts

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