Feeling brave enough to invest, with the bear still stalking the markets?

With markets officially in bear territory — off by more than 20 per cent — are stocks at bargain basement prices?

Or are they yet to even hit the ground floor?

It’s near-impossible to accurately pick the bottom of a sharemarket cycle, says Pie Funds chief executive Mike Taylor.

But depending on your investment horizons, the falls of the past six months may present opportunities.

Investors should always approach bear markets with caution, but clearly there were a lot of good companies trading at much cheaper prices than they were last year, Taylor said.

This month Market Watch takes a look at the arguments for and against betting that the bear won’t hang around.

The biggest argument for the bear case at the moment was that “it looks like, for a number of countries around the world, we’re very likely to go into recession,” Taylor said.

“Recessions are not good for stocks. Typically with a recession, you’re going to go down about 30 [per cent].”

Markets were already broadly off by about 20 per cent since their peak.

“So that would imply there is still another 10 per cent downside.”

There was also a great deal of uncertainty about the investment outlook while war was raging in Ukraine, he said.

Potentially, something could happen there to further push up energy prices and cause another inflation shock.

Domestic inflation also remained strong, with labour shortages still acute and higher interest rates.

Those rising interest rates, aimed at reducing inflation, were going to curb consumer spending — something that was likely to flow through and hit corporate earnings.

Having said all that, market watchers must be alert for opportunities as share prices fell, Taylor said.

“It’s very difficult to catch a falling knife and the challenge is you’ll never get the exact bottom.

“But for people who have longer investment horizons who’ve got a KiwiSaver account, this is great.

“You’re putting money into a market that is significantly cheaper than it was last year. That’s got to be a good thing if you’re thinking 10 years out.”

But for those with shorter horizons, jumping in now or next month looking for bargains would be more akin to gambling, Taylor said.

“It’s very high risk. It’s not what I’d be advocating for investors.”

However, there were some positive indicators to consider if you were brave enough to take a contrarian view.

One was that investor surveys were extremely bearish. The majority of people seemed to expect the market to go lower.

It was often at that very point when everyone expected markets to go lower that they instead started to recover, he said.

Similarly, consumer confidence appeared to be at rock bottom levels unusually soon in the economic cycle. History suggested low points in consumer confidence often coincided with market lows. There were also some positive signs on inflation. Commodity prices had actually started to fall slightly in the past month.

The big investment funds would be laser focused on signs that inflation had peaked.

It was also the case that those funds were cashed up and ready to invest when they saw that peak. In fact, fund managers’ cash holdings were now at their highest level since the early 2000s, Taylor said.

The potential for that to be unleashed in the near future added to the bullish case for markets.

Ultimately it made sense for investors to “keep a foot in both camps” for now, Taylor said.

The idea that we’d see a return of the bull market in the near future was probably overly optimistic.

But at the time that all the bad news was out and in front of us, then we could expect the market to bottom out.