2020 is over, what's the next pain trade?

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 Asset Allocation Model is an asset allocation model that 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 a trading model, which is a blend of price momentum (is the Trend Model becoming more bullish, or bearish?) and overbought/oversold extremes (don't buy if the trend is overbought, and vice versa). Subscribers receive real-time alerts of model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of the email alerts are updated weekly here. The hypothetical trading record of the trading model of the real-time alerts that began in March 2016 is shown below.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:

• Ultimate market timing model: Buy equities*
• Trend Model signal: Bullish*
• 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 mid-week observations at @humblestudent. Subscribers receive real-time alerts of trading model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of those email alerts is shown here.

Subscribers can access the latest signal in real-time here.


The next pain trade

Now that 2020 is over, what's the next pain trade? I have a few candidates in mind. The latest BoA Global Fund Manager Survey taken in early December described the top two most crowded trade as long technology stocks, and short USD.

Another source of vulnerability is the expectation of a steepening yield curve. If history is any guide, heightened expectations of a steepening yield curve have resolved with market upsets of differing magnitude.

As a reminder, this survey was taken in December. After the Georgia special Senate elections gave the Democrats the trifecta of the control of the White House, Senate, and House of Representatives, the 10-year Treasury yield surged to over 1%, and the yield curve steepened even further.

All of these vulnerabilities are connected from a cross-asset perspective - the steepening yield curve, long technology stocks, and short USD. 

The full post can be found here.