Sunday, January 14, 2018

Bubbleology 101: How to spot the top in a market melt-up

Preface: Explaining our market timing models
We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.

The Trend Model is an asset allocation model which applies trend following principles based on the inputs of global stock and commodity price. This model has a shorter time horizon and tends to turn over about 4-6 times a year. In essence, it seeks to answer the question, "Is the trend in the global economy expansion (bullish) or contraction (bearish)?"


My inner trader uses the trading component of the Trend Model to look for changes in the direction of the main Trend Model signal. A bullish Trend Model signal that gets less bullish is a trading "sell" signal. Conversely, a bearish Trend Model signal that gets less bearish is a trading "buy" signal. The history of actual out-of-sample (not backtested) signals of the trading model are shown by the arrows in the chart below. Past trading of the trading model has shown turnover rates of about 200% per month.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:
  • Ultimate market timing model: Buy equities*
  • Trend Model signal: Bullish*
  • Trading model: Bullish*
* The performance chart and model readings have been delayed by a week out of respect to our paying subscribers.

Update schedule: I generally update model readings on my site on weekends and tweet mid-week observations at @humblestudent. Subscribers will also receive email notices of any changes in my trading portfolio.


Come over to the Dark Side
I have a confession to make. I've gone over to the Dark Side. Valuation doesn't matter. Excessively bullish sentiment doesn't matter. Overbought readings don't matter. The only thing matters is the Melt-Up (see Embrace the blow-off, but with a stop-loss discipline and Jeremy Grantham's call for a market melt-up).


If the market is indeed undergoing a blow-off rally, then investors should be mindful of Bob Farrell's Rule #4: "Parabolic markets go up further than you think, but they don't correct by going sideways."

Nevertheless, there are a number of simple techniques of spotting the top in a parabolic move.

The full post can be found at our new site here.

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