*Sigh* Another growth scare!

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 research outlined in our post Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.

The Trend Model is an asset allocation model which applies trend following principles based on the inputs of global stock and commodity price. This model has a shorter time horizon and tends to turn over about 4-6 times a year. In essence, it seeks to answer the question, "Is the trend in the global economy expansion (bullish) or contraction (bearish)?"

My inner trader uses the trading component of the Trend Model seeks to answer the question, "Is the trend getting better (bullish) or worse (bearish)?" The history of actual out-of-sample (not backtested) signals of the trading model are shown by the arrows in the chart below. Past trading of this model has shown turnover rates of about 200% per month.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:

• Ultimate market timing model: Buy equities*
• Trend Model signal: Risk-on*
• Trading model: Bullish*

* The performance chart and model readings have been delayed by a week out of respect to our paying subscribers.

Update schedule: I generally update model readings on my site on weekends and tweet any changes during the week at @humblestudent. Subscribers will also receive email notices of any changes in my trading portfolio.


Price vs. fundamental momentum
The stock market got another growth scare last week when it weakened last Tuesday, after a dismal set of PMI reports, and ended with a Non-Farm Payroll miss in the US Employment report. I was reminded of an article by Kurt Feuerman and James Tierney Jr. of AllianceBernstein entitled Don`t Confuse Price with Business Momentum:

Momentum is a funny thing. Share price momentum isn`t necessarily an indicator of business momentum. Sometimes a stock is falling simply because investors are taking profits after its outperformance or because a portfolio is changing its risk profile in a volatile market. There are countless reasons why share prices move.

Last year's narrow market is a case in point. Investors might assume that the underperformance of a large swath of the U.S. stock market means that most companies are in bad shape. There is, however, another plausible interpretation: It could also mean that there are a lot of buying opportunities in undervalued companies, ones that have a much better business than is widely believed.

In other words, don`t confuse price momentum with fundamental momentum. So what's the trend in macro and fundamental momentum?

Oh PUH-LEEZ! How real does the latest growth scare look to you?

The full post can be found at our new site here.

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