Market top ahead? My inner investor turns cautious

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. The turnover rate of the trading model is high, and it has varied between 150% to 200% per month.

Subscribers receive real-time alerts of model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of the those email alerts are updated weekly here.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:

• Ultimate market timing model: Buy equities*
• Trend Model signal: Neutral*
• 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 the those email alerts is shown here.


Cautionary sign ahead
My formerly bullish inner investor is turning cautious. This major change of opinion is not without precedence. The chart below is a record of my investment calls, and it shows that I have been neither a permabull or permabear. I was correctly bullish when the stock market dipped in 2015, and I turned cautious in the first half of 2015, and in early 2018.

I am now seeing the early technical signs of a developing cyclical top for the bull market that began in 2009. While this is not a call to sell everything as a bear market can take some time to develop, my inner investor is taking steps to rein in his risk exposure in preparation for a market top in the next few months.

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