Trader’s Narrative

The Coppock Guide. Just a while ago no one knew it even existed. I’m willing to bet even if you mentioned it in a room full of TA buffs, you would get quizzical looks all around.

But now suddenly it is the belle of the ball! Everyone is talking about it. There is a buzz in the blogs, Bloomberg, MarketWatch (WSJ) have stories on it and even CNBC’s Fast Money, which normally has the attention span of a fruit fly gives it a mention (see below for video). To be honest this is exactly what I was afraid of when I first hesitatingly brought it to your attention in Conditions of a Bull Market. I’d rather it remain the esoteric indicator it used to be (hopefully everyone will forget all about it).

The question remains: is it useful?

I tend to think so but some disagree.

Mark Hulbert looks back all the way to 1896 and calculates the success of Coppock Guide signals on the Dow (see article). His conclusion is that the returns are not indicative of an edge.

However, what Hulbert doesn’t point out is that although the Coppock Guide for the Dow Jones Industrial may be a poor indicator, that doesn’t mean that it is for other, more respectable indexes like the S&P 500. What Hulbert does point out in a subsequent article is that even for the Dow Coppock numbers, the two false signals in the 1930’s skew the results and if we look at more recent data, the indicator does have an edge. So the question is how relevant is the 1930’s to the current market?

Guy’s analysis at the Technial Take also falls into the same trap as Hulbert by looking at the Dow Jones Industrial. I don’t want to rehash why the Dow is inferior to the S&P 500 (price weighted vs. capitalization weighing and small sample size of 30 vs. 500). The only time I give the Dow more respect is in the Dow Theory analysis of the market.

On the other side, there are those that see the Coppock Curve as a valuable guide:

James Stack of InvesTech is one of them. Formerly an engineer by training (who worked for IBM) Stack’s whole approach is a blend of quantifiable edges (whether technical or fundamental) and sentiment analysis. But he doesn’t rely on the Coppock exclusively.

Another is Steve Leuthold of Leuthold Weeden Capital Management. He calculates a similar indicator that he calls the VLT Momentum (”very long term”). I consider Leuthold as one of the ‘grey beards’ who get my respect for their successful navigation of the market over decades. Recently Leuthold has turned even more bullish (after nailing the March low).

Next is Jason Goepfert of SentimenTrader. Recently Jason did a complete analysis of the Coppock signals (using the S&P 500) and showed that it has a definitive edge, especially on a risk adjusted basis. To see the data get a 14 day free trial and take a look.

In the end, the headline is rhetorical because I’m not really going to defend this or any other indicator.

First of all, it is just that, an indicator, with all the inherent flaws and limitations. I don’t expect anyone to exclusively trade off it. In fact I think that would be nuts.

Second, one has to just look at the data. How you want to take advantage of the Coppock Curve, if at all, is really up to you. Above you’ll find enough information to make up your own mind. But treat it as a starting place and do your own research. Then drop me a note - whether positive or negative.

Finally, the Coppock Curve is just one of the conditions for a new bull market - I’ll cover the others soon. I pay much more attention to the weight of indicators, rather than just any one in particular, no matter how impressive its historical performance may be.

Here’s an incredibly shallow analysis of the Coppock Guide (what else did you expect from CNBC?):

Back in November 2008, when the market was just days away from making that year’s lows I pointed out an ominous double top formation on the S&P 500 index.

The market managed to bounce from that support but when it was tested again last week, it wasn’t strong enough. The double top formation has unquestionably completed. The only remaining quandary is will it complete?

Before I showed a log scale chart (see above link), so here’s an arithmetically scaled chart of the double top:

If we take the neckline to be 776 on the S&P 500 (the 2002-2003 bear market low) and the top to be 1576 reached in October 2007, then a measured move would be meaningless because it would require the market to drop 800 points - something it can’t do right now. Unless we invent a way for stocks to go into negative integers.

Even half-way completing such a measured move would mean utter catastrophe for the stock market and by extension the global economy. Especially if it happens suddenly.

Before you think that is completely impossible, consider the reality that a long term Japanese investor faces:
Continue reading ‘Are We Headed Back To 1980?’

The beginning of the year is a special time that rightly attracts much attention. The January effect is mostly over by now and hopefully you were able to trade this phenomena profitably. It is too bad it only comes around once a year.

There are a few other similar patterns for January. Probably the best known is “as January goes, so goes the year”. Another says that the first 5 trading days determine the market’s returns for the whole year ahead. And another says that how January performs predicts the direction of the market for the remaining months of the year.

Mark Hulbert showed a few days ago in this column that the 5 first trading day pattern simply isn’t true. In fact, the only one that does have validity historically is the third one listed above. The January Barometer says that the performance for the first month has a predictive quality for the returns generated between the second and twelfth months.

Because of the positive bias of the market, this indicator works best when it predicts a bullish scenario for the remaining 11 months of the year. From 1940 to 2008, January’s return was positive 43 separate times. Of these, 86% of the time the next 11 months were also positive. On the other hand, in only 40% of the cases when January was negative was the rest of the year also negative. The overall accuracy of the January Barometer within that time range was 73.9%.

So with an almost 75% historical accuracy rate, we’ll have to wait until the end of this month to see what it augurs for the rest of the year.

Below is a look at the raw data from 1940 to 2008:
Continue reading ‘The January Baromoter’

Wow, what a ride! The AMEX Gold Bugs Index (HUI) rallied 100% within two months. I was bearish on gold in October 2008 but saw technical support around 175 which is where the most recent rally lifted off from.

The funny thing is that gold has clearly shown itself to be just another commodity to be traded and not “real money” during this crisis. You can’t but help notice the resemblance of gold stock prices to general stock market prices. If you are still a dyed in the wool $2000 an oz. gold bug, then you have to re-examine your stance when the threat of total global credit and financial meltdown can’t push gold up.

In any case, looking at gold sentiment, it seems that this recent rally has given too many, too much optimism about the metal. And this usually means that it is the end of the ride.

According to the Hulbert Gold Newsletter Sentiment Index (HGNSI), the average exposure that market timing newsletters are suggesting for gold is 75.2%. To put that in perspective, that’s an almost 4 year high. It is even more gloomy when you consider that when gold was nearing $1000, this same sentiment measure was only 64.3%. Obviously gold is now much lower, but this 100% rally has made many people become “believers” yet again.

Another sentiment measure is also finding too much excitement for gold. The chart below shows the Central Gold Trust (GTU) share price with the premium/discount to NAV plotted below. Since the trust simply holds gold and silver, it is easy to calculate what it should be trading at. But right now, people are paying astronomical amounts over and above the real value of this security:

You can read more about Decision Point’s discussion of gold here.

Usually I have trouble parsing Cramer’s advice. But just a while ago he was surprisingly lucid. I’m referring to Cramer’s call for people to take out money that they would need in 5 years’ time. Remember that? Here it is again, in case you missed it:

Well, it turns out a very reliable indicator is now flashing buy. The funny thing about this indicator is that it isn’t a short term buy signal. But whenever it has indicated a buy point, as it is now, the market has been higher four years in the future.

VLMAP
The indicator is the Value Line’s Median Appreciation Potential which is the median measure of how much higher or lower a large sampling of stocks will be trading as indicated by Value Line’s analysts. VL itself frowns on using it as an indicator but according to a market timing system devised by others, VLMAP signals a buy when it rises above 100 - meaning that in 4 year’s time, stocks will be trading higher by 100%.

As Mark Hulbert reports (link above) the last two times that VLMAP has given a buy signal were after the tragic events of 9/11 and at the bear market bottom in 2002. It also gave a signal in mid-July when the markets spiked lower.

Hulbert was kind enough to send me the in depth study he cites in his article. It concludes:

While it is clear from the above regressions and analysis that VLMAP is not a perfect predictor of the market, it is also true that VLMAP does have strong statistically significant forecasting powers. …The Value Line Composite Indexes, especially the geometric version, have the best track record in comparison to VLMAP. During the decade of the 1990s, the Russell 2000 is the best market measure as predicted by VLMAP.

While VLMAP may not represent the long sought after Holy Grail for predicting the market, it nonetheless proves to be beneficial and worthy of investors’ attention.

You can download & read the whole report in my Free Trading Resources section (under Reports & Articles). But be careful you don’t get stuck there rummaging through all the other free stuff there.

I don’t have a crystal ball and this indicator is, like everything else, far from an iron-clad guarantee that the market will indeed be higher… but watching Cramer put in that sober performance, I couldn’t help but think that he will regret it. It was a gut feeling but now there is quantifiable data to back it up.

But of course, considering the short term memory of the average “Cramerican” within four years, even if the market is higher, they won’t bother to remember it. Just like they ignore his call at the top of the tech bubble cheerleading bloated stocks even higher or his most recent disasterous calls:

In March, he said Bear Stearns “is not in trouble.” After Bear Stearns tipped over, he wrote in his New York magazine column that the bottom had finally come. “I feel the bear has been tamed, and the worst of the clawing is over,” he said. And on Sept. 15, he hosted his friend Robert Steel, chief executive of Wachovia, and suggested that its $10.71 share price was a bargain. Two weeks later, it was at $1.84.
Source: Cramer Retreats Along With The Dow

Booya?