Will the Fed pause in March?

In the wake of Powell's statements last Friday, the market now expects no changes in the Fed Funds rate this year, with a slight chance of a rate hike.     Contrast those expectations with the dot plot, which has penciled in two rate hikes this year.     The history of Fed policy is...

A rare “what’s my credit card limit” buy signal

The Zweig Breadth Thrust (ZBT) is a variant of the IBD Follow-Through day pattern, but on steroids. Steven Achelis at Metastock explained the indicator this way [emphasis added]: A "Breadth Thrust" occurs when, during a 10-day period, the Breadth Thrust indicator rises from below 40% to above 61.5%. A "Thrust" indicates that the stock market...

H1 2019 roadmap: Expect volatility

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...

A simple decision vs. a decision process

I got some pushback from a reader to my weekend post (see How to spot the bear market bottom) about the FT Alphaville article indicating that former Secretary of Defense Mattis raised concerns about how the White House lacked a decision making process. The reader went on to defend Trump's decisions. I try very hard...

How much do the bulls have left in the tank?

Mid-week market update: Happy 2019 to everyone. The post-Christmas period started off with a bang. After bottom out on December 24, the stock market enjoyed four consecutive days of gains - until today when it was spooked overnight by a series of disappointing PMI prints. The Caixin Manufacturing PMI fell to 49.7 from 50.2 (50.0...