Peering into 2020: New decade, new paradigm

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 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 those 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: Bearish*
• 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 receive real-time alerts of trading model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of the those email alerts is shown here.



The remarkable FAANG run
Technology stocks, and FAANG in particular, have had a remarkable run in the last decade. The chart below reveals the level of dominance.

The top panel shows the relative performance of the NASDAQ 100 (NDX) in the last 15 years (blackline). Not only is the NDX dominating the market, the NDX has also been steadily beating the equal-weighted NDX (green line), indicating that large caps within that index have outperformed small caps. The bottom panel also shows the relative performance of large cap technology (black line) and small cap technology (green line) against their respective indices. Both have led the market in the past decade.

As we peer into 2020 and the next decade, numerous signs are appearing that this cycle of technology and FAANG leadership may be coming to an end.

The full post can be found here.