Buy Yom Kippur! SPX 2500 by Passover?

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 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 to look for changes in direction of the main Trend Model signal. A bullish Trend Model signal that gets less bullish is a trading "sell" signal. Conversely, a bearish Trend Model signal that gets less bearish is a trading "buy" signal. 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 the trading 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.


Positive seasonality ahead
Recently, Jonathan Krinsky of MKM Partners highlighted a bullish seasonal pattern with a likely market bottom in early October (chart via Marketwatch, annotations in red are mine).

Jeff Hirsch also documented the trading results from the trader's adage of "Sell Rosh Hashanah, buy Yom Kippur", as well as the returns from Yom Kippur to Passover, which occurs in the spring.

Normally, I don`t give a lot of weight to seasonal patterns in my investing and trading, but it appears that macro-economic, fundamental, and technical factors are all lining up for the positive seasonal pattern for the remainder of the year.

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