Sunday, January 25, 2026

A Welcome Sentiment Reset

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). As this site is shutting down on March 31, 2026, my inner trader is retiring so that there will be no tradings outstanding at the end of the quarter. The hypothetical trading record of the trading model of the real-time alerts that began in March 2016 to 16-Jan-2026 is shown below, and the chart will no longer be updated.
 

 
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)*
* 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.

What Positioning Rinse?

Coming into last weekend when news of Trump’s Greenland annexation demands hit the tape, it appeared that the stock market was poised for a positioning rinse. The BoA Global Manager Survey found that respondents’ cash levels had reached an all-time low, and very few managers had taken out tail-risk hedges. Investors were all bulled up, and the Greenland news was a potential catalyst to spark a correction.

The full post can be found here.

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