Craptastic Projection for Today. Pooptastic Projection for the Year.

Following up on this post, and this post, how about some more turbulent market outlooks?

Todd Harrison from Minyanville via Marketwatch is wary of what is to come in '09:

When asked about my year-end price target on the S&P, my answer is constant. Tell me what the dollar will do and I'll offer an educated guess on stocks. Indeed, since the beginning of 2002, our financial machination has operated through the lens of "dollar devaluation vs. asset class deflation."

My sense for 2009 is that -- all else being equal -- we'll see wild movements and a wide range, perhaps with the S&P 600 as a nadir and one (if not two) 20% bear market rallies filled with false hope and empty promises.

The Jan. 20 transfer of power is an important inflection point, for if we can collectively navigate past that date without geopolitical conflict, stocks have room to run into March or April, when the bloom begins to fade on the new administration's rose.

...

This is no garden-variety one-and-done recession; it will be a prolonged process as we attempt to regain respectability on a global stage after eight years of mismanaged affairs. It would be myopic to expect a V-shaped recovery despite the historic stimuli being injected into the marketplace. Keep it in perspective, no matter what comes our way.

Joe Weisenthal at Clusterstock posted today's craptastic outlook before the market opened this morning (key bits in bold):

Earnings seasons gets going in earnest soon, but right now we're in the heart of pre-announcement season. Alcoa (AA0 announced layoffs and a production rollback, Time Warner (TWX) just announced a massive writedown as well as a worsening ad market, and now Intel (INTC) says its Q4 revenue will be down 23% from last year, or 20% sequentially. That's what you call falling off a cliff.

Now the rally will be tested.