ONE-TWENTY TWO: Trading Financial Markets
Exploring the poetry in financial markets for students of money and economy since the year 2000.
Purists in the financial markets often decry the “voodoo” of technical analysis. The U.S. jobs report for May, 2020 is an extreme version of how the fundamentals can also fail to provide sufficient guidance for trading and investing in financial markets. Economists and other sooth-sayers in consensus expected the U.S. economy to lose 8.3 million … Read more
The Australian dollar (FXA) tends to be correlated with the S&P 500 (SPY). The Japanese yen (FXY) tends to be inversely correlated with the S&P 500 (SPY). The exceptions to these relationships are notable because the inevitable return to these relationships usually present unique trading opportunities. The drivers of these relationships are related to trader … Read more
Back in 2012 and 2013, I wrote pieces describing some interesting daily trading patterns in the S&P 500 (SPY). The effects looked big enough to matter. In particular, Mondays and Tuesdays showed outsized performance differences from other days in the week. The performance divergences were very large in the first 5 months of 2013 as … Read more
AT40 = 9.4% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (oversold day #4)AT200 = 14.7% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs (new 34-month low)VIX = 25.6 (no change!)Short-term Trading Call: bullish (caveats below!) Commentary On Tuesday night, basketball great LeBron James, now of the Los Angeles Lakers, experienced an … Read more
It seems like the odds favor a strong bounce to close the year if only to bring the December drawdown a little closer to historic norms. At least the timing would be right given deep oversold trading conditions. Of course, a “reversion to the mean” is not reason enough to expect a strong year-end rally. … Read more
The S&P 500’s maximum drawdown for October was 9.4% on a closing price basis. That was the third worst October for the S&P 500 (SPY) on a drawdown basis since since 1951. Only the 30.1% maximum drawdown from October, 1987 and the 27.2% maximum drawdown from October, 2008 were worse. THAT is some awful company … Read more
AT40 = 9.7% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) – (as low as 7.6%) 8th day of oversold period following 4-day oversold period AT200 = 25.2% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs (as low as 22.5%) VIX = 24.2 (as high as 27.5) Short-term Trading Call: bullish Commentary … Read more
I often use the Australian dollar (FXA) versus the Japanese yen (JPY) as a proxy for the market’s risk tolerance. If AUD/JPY is rising, the market is bullish. If AUD/JPY is falling, the market is bearish. The correlation is not as consistent as I would like, so I use it with caution, caveats, and context. … Read more
October is the stock market’s second most dangerous month based on average drawdown on the S&P 500 (SPY). This year’s October is living up to the reputation after an October, 2017 that never delivered a close below September’s month-ending price. So far this month the S&P 500 has lost 5.0% with a maximum drawdown of … Read more
AT40 = 31.0% of stocks are trading above their respective 40-day moving averages (DMAs) (was as low 28.1%) AT200 = 46.7% of stocks are trading above their respective 200DMAs VIX = 14.0 (was as high as 15.8) Short-term Trading Call: neutral Commentary So much for a small bounce before continuing a decline toward oversold conditions! … Read more