Mid-week market update: Market internals are showing signs of a wash-out. Readings are normalizing after an extreme oversold condition against a backdrop of extreme fear. Stock prices should advance from here. However, the S&P 500 just experienced a "death cross", where the 50 dma falls below the 200 dma. Notwithstanding today's negative surprises from...
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...
Bloomberg’s U.S. chief economist Anna Wong published a chart outlining the impact of Trump’s tariff pivot. Trump raised tariffs on China and cut the “reciprocal tariff rate” to 10% for all others, except USMCA members Canada and Mexico, for 90 days. The resulting weighted tariff rate is not substantially different from the “Liberation Day” rates...
Mid-week market update: Is this Donald Trump's Liz Truss Moment? In the fall of 2022, UK prime minister passed a series of unfunded tax cuts. The bond market rebelled and sold off hard, especially in the long end of the yield curve. The massive sell-off forced a number of "hedged" pension funds into technical insolvency,...
Just a quick update in a day with a fast moving market. Trump's tariffs are eliciting a reaction among key supporters and the real economy. Pittsburgh based Howmet Aerospace, a key supplier to Airbus and Boeing, declared force majeure on its contracts owing to the new tariff regime. Force majeure is a legal practice allows...
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...
What should investors make of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs, which was characterized as “worst than the worst-case scenario”? Instant analysis from several sources shows that the weighted average tariff rate is now higher than the rates from the Smoot-Hawley era of the 1930s. Trump claims that his tariffs will raise $6 trillion over the next...
Mid-week market update: The market approached Trump's "Liberation Day" tariff announcement all beared up. Trading desk surveys indicate that most retail and institutional market participants had reduced risk coming into the announcement, with outright bears outnumbering the buy-the-dip crowd by 7%. While the ultimate outcome of the Trump tariffs will move markets, there's...
Special Announcement: Humble Student of the Markets will cease publishing a year from now, on March 31, 2026. (This is being published on March 31, 2025 and it is not an April Fools joke). Here's some history. I began writing Humble Student of the Markets in 2007. I had left Merrill Lynch to begin...
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...
Markets were rattled by policy under Trump 1.0 by his unpredictable and chaotic nature. Trump 2.0 promises to be more of the same. Other than the transactional nature of Trump’s deal making, what’s his ultimate end game? It’s to undo the effects of globalization. The political backdrop can be explained by Branko Milanovic’s famous...
Mid-week market update: The stock market’s relief rally arrived this week when the WSJ reported over the weekend that Trump’s “Liberation Day” reciprocal tariffs due to be announced on April 2 will be narrowly focused. The S&P 500 rallied to regain its 200 dma. The index pulled back below the 200 dma when Bloomberg reported...
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...
The latest FOMC statement and subsequent press conference were full of references to “uncertainty”. Most notably, the FOMC statement changed the language related to the Fed’s goals being “roughly in balance” to “uncertainty around the economic outlook has increased”. Not only is uncertainty elevated, but also the risks to inflation, GDP growth and...
Mid-week market update: Four weeks ago, I rhetorically asked in a post, "Who's Left to Buy?" The BoA monthly Global Fund Manager Survey had shown cash levels at a 15-year low. In addition, a Schwab survey of customer accounts showed cash at similarly historical lows. It was the case of an accident waiting to happen....
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...
It’s an old political trick. Engineer a recession in your first year and blame it on the previous occupant of the White House. Then take credit for the subsequent recovery. President Donald Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent recently rattled the markets with the same message of short-term pain for long-term gain. Bessent began...
Mid-week market update: Everyone calm down. It's not the end of the world. A clear-headed approach is to analyze the roots of the pullback from the perspective of the positioning of different market participants. How each reacted, and what might come next. First, U.S. equities were overvalued. It just needed a bearish catalyst. ...
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...
I sounded a warning in late January about a possible long-term market top, based on a negative divergence of the 14-month RSI. It wasn’t a “sell everything” signal, but a cautionary sign of a topping pattern. It is said that “bottoms are events, but tops are processes”. That’s because market bottoms tend to...
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