The more things change...

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 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: Sell 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.

Subscribers can access the latest signal in real-time here.


Plus ça change...

The market was subjected to an unexpected shock late Thursday when President Trump announced that he had been diagnosed with a COVID-19 infection. What was unusual was the behavior of many market internals - they stayed the same.

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

In light of this development, Trump is forced to quarantine and his campaign activities are suspended or curtailed. This creates a headwind for his electoral chances about a month ahead of the election. The betting odds on a Trump victory fell in the betting markets, but the overall Republican odds of a victory was steady as the odds on the Pence contract rose.  Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

Equally puzzling was the behavior of risk. Prior to the news, the option market was discounting heightened odds of a disputed election. Average option implied volatility (IV) spiked just ahead of the November 3 election, and they remained elevated until mid-December. The shape of the implied volatility curve stayed the same after the news. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 

The technical behavior of the market was also relatively steady. Both the S&P 500 and NASDAQ 100 rallied last week and regained their respective 50 day moving average (dma) levels. Both indices remained range-bound for the week, bounded by a band of upside resistance and downside support.

The full post can be found here.