Here comes the blow-off!

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 the 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: Bullish*
• Trading model: Bearish

* 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 will also receive email notices of any changes in my trading portfolio.


Party on!
Friday's November Jobs Report highlighted a number of important bullish data points for the stock market in the weeks ahead. The headline non-farm payroll release came in ahead of expectations, while average hourly earnings missed. At the margin, tame wage pressure which will restrain the Fed from becoming overly aggressive in raising rates.

As well, Thursday's release of initial jobless claims also underlined the remarkable inverse correlation between initial claims (inverted scale) and stock prices. So far, the continuing improvement in initial claims is supportive of higher equity prices.

In his latest update of high frequency economic data, New Deal democrat painted a bright picture for the near term, and an improving long term outlook:

The nowcast and the near term forecast remain very positive, with only relatively strong oil prices juxtaposed with relatively weak commodity prices as flies in the ointment. The longer term forecast, which I briefly downgraded to neutral, is weakly positive again.

Throw in the anticipated corporate tax cuts, it is difficult to contain our short-term enthusiasm. This week, I review my Recession Watch indicators and find that the current snapshot of recession risk is receding, though there are still some key risks on the horizon (also see Things you don't see at market bottoms: Rational exuberance edition).

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