Sunday, December 14, 2025

Celebrate the Season of Saturnalia


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 prices. This model has a shorter time horizon and tends to turn over about 4-6 times a year. The performance and full details of a model portfolio based on the out-of-sample signals of the Trend Model can be found here.

  
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 is 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 (Last changed from “sell” on 28-Jul-2023)*
  • Trend Model signal: Bullish (Last changed from “bearish” on 27-Jun-2025)*
  • Trading model: Neutral (Last changed from “bullish” on 26-Nov-2025)*
* 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. I am also on X/Twitter at @humblestudent and on BlueSky at @humblestudent.bsky.social. 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 Bulls Throw a Party

Some historians have argued that early Christians adopted the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which was a festival to celebrate the winter solstice. It was a Bacchanalian period of drinking and excess. Today, that period coincides with the Christmas season.


It is in the spirit of Saturnalia that the bulls are throwing a party. The accompanying chart shows my risk appetite indicators, which are all tracking the strength of the S&P 500. In particular, the ratio of high beta to low volatility stocks (red line) recently exhibited a bullish divergence by rising to an all-time high.


The spirit of Bacchus lives this Christmas season and the markets are following the template for a rally into year-end.

The full post can be found here.

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