Consolidating for a rally

Mid-week market update: My trading view remains unchanged. The market is consolidating for a rally into year-end (see The seasonal rally is intact). Initial S&P 500 support on the hourly chart is at about 4680, and secondary support is at 4630-4640. If the S&P 500 breaks out to an all-time high, we're off to the...

The inflation challenge

Inflation fears have been rising in the wake of the hot October CPI report. Barry Ritholz, the CEO of Ritholz Wealth Management, recently issued an open challenge to the inflationistas.     Which side of that bet would you take?     Rising inflation concerns Inflation concerns are becoming widespread. FactSet reported the highest number of...

The seasonal rally is intact

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...

Commodity weakness = Global slowdown?

My Trend Asset Allocation Model has performed well by beating a 60/40 benchmark on an out-of-sample basis in the last few years. The early version of the Trend Model relied exclusively on commodity prices for signals of global reflation and deflation. While the inputs have changed to include global equity prices, this nevertheless raises some...

Bullish and bearish signals from volatility

Mid-week market update: Volatility indexes are flashing a number of signals of interest. In the past few weeks, a yawning gap has opened out between MOVE, which measures bond volatility, and VIX, which measures equity volatility. The divergence has begun to close in the last couple of days as the VIX has risen and the...