Accurately Forecasting Multi-period Stock Market Returns

I recently posted a paper, “Transforming Stock Market Forecasts with Variable Expected Returns,” on the SSRN online repository.  This paper resolves an issue that has been bugging me for years. The link is: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=495384 This paper is not about making money, but rather about a fundamental theoretical error regarding stock market forecasts that has been present for many years.  The flawed methodology generates overoptimistic multi-period …

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Guest Post: Breath Divergence Nov 2016—Signaling the End of a Bull Market? By Frank Roellinger

Much has been written since the election about the stock market’s future.  I have long been convinced that certain hard, cold measures of the market are of far more value in estimating the market’s future than qualitative speculation based on political or economic developments.  The most important consideration for a long-term investor arguably is the likelihood of a severe bear market in the near future.  My approach, which I describe in The Modified Davis Method  has revealed some facts that I think have definite value in that regard.

The most important harbinger of danger in the market that I have found is the behavior of the NYSE daily cumulative advance-decline line relative to the S&P 500.  In the early stages of a bull market, both advance dramatically.  Corrections occur along the way, and for a time the recoveries are strong enough to propel both to successive new highs. However, eventually the smaller stocks begin to falter, and the S&P makes a new high while the cumulative a-d line does not.  This phenomenon, which I call “breadth divergence”, has occurred prior to the end of virtually every bull market since 1929, and there is no reason to think that it will be any different this time.

My method doesn’t rely just on breath divergence.  It takes other factors going red before I trigger a short trade.

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High Sigma Events—They’re Not All Black Swans

After every crash or major geopolitical event that roils the market we are exposed to graphics like this one containing sigma numbers: The message associated with these charts is usually, “We should be very worried because the events that just occurred were really unlikely.” The reader, on the other hand, should be thinking: the person that wrote this really doesn’t understand statistics or Black Swans. …

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Modified Ned Davis Method—Breadth Divergence April 2016, by Frank Roellinger

Over the years I have developed a lot of respect for the condition of breadth divergence, when an index such as the S&P 500 is rising and the NYSE daily cumulative advance-decline line is not.  In January 2016 I listed the performance of my method on the short side as a function of the number of consecutive weeks of divergence at the time of the …

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Frank Calls the Corrections with His Modified Ned Davis Method

In September 2013, I published a post written by Frank Roellinger on his stock market trading system—a modification of the Ned Davis system first published in the 80s. Since Frank’s work was first published here he has shifted his Russell 2000 positions 11 times, each move reported here and on my twitter account.   His hypothetical portfolio value has increased  from 1658 to 1936 (+16.7%)—impressive given …

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