Main Street bulls vs. Washington bears

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 test for the markets

Mid-week market comment: Arthur Hill at stockcharts recently observed that the Russell 2000 was in a tight consolidation range, which is characterized by a narrowing Bollinger Band. Such conditions tend to resolve themselves with volatility expansions which represent breakouts from the trading range.   His remarks about the Russell 2000 could also be applicable to the...

Good news, bad news from the December Jobs Report

I had been meaning to write about the December Jobs Report, which was released last Friday, but I hadn't gotten around to it. The report had elements of both good news and bad news. The good news is the December report showed a solid market. True, the headline Non-Farm Payroll figure missed market expectations, but...