We published a sell signal for the S&P 500 in our October 4th article, “Who is Pushing the Stock Market.” Several fundamental and technical reasons were laid out. The fact that that the market topped out the very next day and sold off by 9% in the last month leads me to believe that this decline may have run its course. The easy money on the sell side has been made and perhaps, we should start looking at the buy side of the market.
Separating the, “what happened” from the “why did it happen” is always tough. Throwing political variables like the election and the Euro crisis into the mix along with individual accommodations for the fiscal cliff and estate planning leaves us with very real macro and micro implications currently in play. We’ll take a brief look at these and see why the odds may be stacking up in favor of the buy side of the market.
The markets clearly viewed the election results in a negative light by selling off 6.3% in eight trading sessions. I think the markets were fully prepared for an Obama victory prior to the debates however Romney’s debate performance was just enough to make it a bit of a race. Therefore, investors chose to hold on through the election just in case Mitt pulled it off. Had Mitt won, we wouldn’t have seen the selling pressure. Obama’s victory guarantees higher taxes going forward. Therefore, many people are rebalancing their portfolios to take advantage of the tax laws as they stand in 2012. That answers some of the, “why” for the decline.
Commercial traders greeted the sell off in the markets with open arms. Traders in the Nasdaq and Dow Jones were major buyers, doubling their net long position in the Nasdaq and increasing their position in the Dow Jones by more than 50%. The major surge in commercial buying has pushed momentum back in favor of the bulls. Furthermore, combining the recent sell off with commercial trader buying has provided us with a Commitment of Traders buy signal. This is the methodology I presented at the World Traders Expo in Chicago last month.
Further bullish indicators focus on the extremely bearish sentiment of the trading public. Without getting into too much detail, many of the indicators that measure investor sentiment are exceptionally bearish. These readings typically mean the opposite is about to happen because the investing public typically does the exact opposite of what they should do. This one of the primary reasons we follow the commercial traders, rather than the small speculators.
Technically speaking, there are two key points. First of all, the sell off pushed us to a new three month low. Secondly, the about face reversal the market pulled provided indication of a major rejection of that low. The rally on the 19th was so strong that 90% of roughly 2,800 stocks traded on the NYSE closed higher. That kind of rally provides a statistically valid bottoming signal. Merrill Lynch was the first to capitalize on the statistical relevance stating that since 2006 there have been 1,733 trading days and this type of day has been observed only 62 times. The relevant pattern is that we should pause for a couple of days before resuming our climb through the 10, 20, 30 and 65 day moving averages which come in at 1372, 1388, 1404 and 1417 respectively.
One last piece of evidence of the rejection of the new three-month low made on the 16th is that the market immediately opened .5% higher and continued to climb another 1.5% for the day. The strong rally off the multi month low has only occurred 9 times since the Daily Sentiment Report has been tracking this and their research shows 7 of the 9 led to multi week bull runs. The two that didn’t pan out were both in the months following the tragic events of September 11th.
The sell off that we anticipated came to fruition however, I believe it’s much harder to turn around and buy the market when the media is so full of naysayers. To them, I would concede that not coming to an agreement on the fiscal cliff would send the stock market much lower. However, I believe that they will reach some type of settlement. The market will gyrate according to the most recent piece of news but ultimately it will climb higher. Finally, we cannot let sentiment overrule quantitative analysis. To ignore the facts would be choosing to live in ignorance.
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