Trader’s Narrative

This week the markets were propelled ahead by the positive earnings of major tech companies like Intel (INTC) and Google (GOOG). Here is the sentiment summary:

Sentiment Surveys
Investor’s Intelligence results are basically unchanged so no need to delve into them. The AAII survey this week shows a reemergence of bearishness with 49% of respondents in that camp (only 30% are bullish). This is rather odd because the market has continued to go higher but part of the mysterious gloominess of the retail investor may be that the survey was completed on Thursday, before Friday’s powerful rally.

In any case, as a contrarian and a current long, I always welcome pessimism, especially when it is accompanied by higher prices.

Market Breadth
With the rise in market prices, the percentage of stocks above moving averages has also increased. The shortest time frame I use is the 10 day moving average and it now shows about 82%, very close to levels which have pushed back rallies in the past. This is where we found this indicator last October when most indexes created their swing highs.

Chart from indexindicators.com

But is is a very short term metric which doesn’t preclude the market from rising higher in longer time frames. More importantly, the percentage of S&P 500 stocks above their 50 day and 200 day moving averages are 71% and 40%, respectively. The most important is the longer metric which is still very low.

It reached eye popping lows of 15% in January and again in March 2008. We haven’t seen numbers that low since the darkest days of the last bear market. This was one of the reasons I was unapologetically bullish. As I’ve brought to your attention repeatedly, such extremely low breadth numbers have always marked the start of a new bull run.

But right now, we’re a tiny bit over extended and I wouldn’t be surprised to see the market yet again pause and/or be rebuffed at the 1400 level which has turned it back 3 previous times. The difference now is that there are more and more stocks participating in the rally, as can be seen by the number of stocks above their 200 day averages.

CBOE Put Call Ratio
After spiking higher than 1.30 the CBOE equity only put call ratio backed off this week in a hurry, falling below 0.59 - this is the lowest number since early February 2008. And yet another short term argument for the tape to run into resistance.

While the Chinese stock market bubble was brewing, a lot of people ignored it and frothed at the mouth about the over-valuation in the US market.

In keeping with that odd behaviour, while the US market has now fallen less than half the distance of the Chinese market (from their respective October 2007 tops), most people are more concerned about the US markets and again are ignoring the very real and brutal bear market in China.

Part of the explanation is that the US markets are obviously much larger and have more significance on the world stage but still, a bear market is a bear market. And over in China they are grappling with a big one.

Bubble, Bubble, Toil & Trouble
The Chinese stock market has gone through bubbles before. This time it only multiplied by a factor of 6 in less than 2 years!

But tha’s nothing compared to 1991 when it multiplied by ten in about a year. Remarkably this recent mania was so strong that it shrugged off a trading stamp tax increase last summer and continued to rally for a few months. Usually such state manipulation would have meant a quick death to the mania.

Click To Enlarge Graph:
To the left is a graph showing the S&P 500 and the Shanghai Index since March 2003, the bottom of the last bear market.

Since the bull market in Chinese shares lasted longer than most predicted, it is safe to say that the bear may last longer also. The next level of support is around the 3000 level. After that, the resistance levels from 2000-2001 will come into play at the 2000 price levels.

Probably the best timer of Chinese stocks has been the editor of the newsletter, Cabot China & Emerging Markets Report. Their virtuoso performance in BRIC emerging markets brought them the trophy of the best newsletter in 2007. For the record, they turned negative in November 2007 right after the top and are continuing to stay away.

The editor, Paul Goodwin, uses an extremely simple way to enter and exit the market: 50 day and 25 day moving averages of Halter USX China Index (HXC). That’s it. Trading doesn’t have to be complicated.

Chinese ADRs
Although there are quiet a few individual Chinese ADRs trading on US exchanges, the only way that I know to actually trade Chinese equities (the A shares) is through the Morgan Stanley A Shares Fund (CAF). It has fallen from almost $61 in October 2007 to its current price in the low $30’s.

As a trading vehicle it is an imperfect one because it doesn’t track the Shanghai index very well. But unless I’m mistaken, it is the only way to get your hands on those A shares from outside China.

I didn’t lose any money in the implosion of E*Trade, but I still wanted to take a look at what happened from a technical analysis perspective to see if I could pick out any warning signs.

Here is the chart of E*Trade Financial (ETFC) prior to any nasty stuff:

Meandering with a mazy motion and rangebound - as the moving averages show by flat lining.

Moving Averages Legend
The green line is the simple 50 daily moving average, the blue the 150 daily moving average, the red line the 250 moving average.

The next important event was on July 24th, 2007 when price approached, yet again, the floor of the trading range:

Ranges occur because people come to believe that above a certain price, a stock is too “expensive” and below one, too “cheap”. The longer a trading range remains, the more investors and traders become active participants. And the more participants, the more stop-losses which accumulate near the same obvious price points.

Lesson #1
When a range is pierced to either direction, the stop losses of one side are triggered and as the “wrong” side investors and traders scramble to limit the hemorrhage to their accounts, they in effect fuel the move… creating a strong trend.

Which is exactly what happened:

Lesson #2
The rest of the market wasn’t doing that well either at this time, so E*Trade wasn’t the only stock suffering - especially in the financial sector. But the important point is that E*Trade had no relative strength compared to the market:

Lesson #3
The warning signs were there: the “death cross” on the moving averages, the lower lows and the lower highs being carved on the chart as market swatted the shares around.

So it wasn’t surprising when the insult was added to injury and a massive gap down took the shares to the low single digits and talk of bankruptcy started to float about E*Trade like vultures:

According to technical analysis, the price itself was telling you to stay away from this (at least, from the long side!). The best thing you can do if you did lose money on E*Trade (ETFC) is to learn from the experience and apply it to the next trade.

Things are getting very stretched towards the downside and the bears are having too easy a time. That is about to change if history is any guide.

The number of lows has ballooned to critical levels which usually have presaged snapback rallies. Also, Lowry’s research into the percentage of stocks above a moving average is compelling. Specifically they say:

…a number of significant buying opportunities have been identified in the past after periods of market weakness have caused the percentage of stocks above their 10-day moving averages to drop below 10%.

For further details and a historical chart of times when this has happened, see Lowry’s research. Below is a recent chart of the Standard and Poors 500 index (SPX) showing that last week we had just slightly over 90% of the components of the bellwether index trade below their short term, 10 day moving average:

Click to Enlarge Graph:

If you look closely you’ll notice just peeking below the speech bubble on the graph that in mid-August we had a similar situation which corresponds to the intermediate lows we saw then.

Source: Stephen Whiteside at theuptrend.com

Hoo-Kay… let’s see. Why is this a buying opportunity for someone with a medium to long term time horizon?

Glad you asked.

Fund Flows
We already know that the vast majority of investor’s money is flowing oversears, eschewing the US equity market. But with the recent market decline, investors are now pulling money out in a panic. According to TrimTabs, they withdrew $7.6 Billion last week. That sort of panic is similar to what we saw in late February 2007 when investors pulled $6.5 Billion.

Insiders Are Buying
Meanwhile, insiders have been scooping up unloved shares at a pace not seen in 3 years. That was in August 2004 as stocks hit an intermediate bottom. Ask yourself, is there anything insiders know that we don’t? Who would I rather side with? insiders or Mom’n'Pop investors who are ruled by emotion?

Sentiment
Speaking of emotion, while sentiment surveys are not yet in, I suspect that we’ll see a marked decline in bullishness and a rise in bearishness. Only one is in so far and it shows a tilt towards bearishness as fear grips investors. But looking at unorthodox places like newspaper headlines and media stories we can find a lot of negative chatter.

“Usual Suspects” Show Fear
The usual indicators that most people turn to are showing fear: volatility indices and the put/call ratios. And the increasingly popular % of stocks above a moving average.

Scapegoat: Sub-Prime Mortgates
Everytime the market falls, a convenient reason is trotted out to explain it in a sound bite. Today’s is the subprime mortgage market. In the spring it was China’s fault. They sneezed. We caught a cold. While it is ugly out there in the subprime market, risk profiles are returning to more normal levels.

It is not the end of the world as we know it. According to the credit default swap market, we are in full blown panic right now. As a result the financial sector has gotten crushed to absurd valuation levels. Over the long term, this is one heck of a great buying opportunity as people panic and throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Market Internals
Popping the hood on the market and taking a peek inside we see that the internals are also showing panic and fear. At levels which historically have installed important market bottoms. Take a look at the new highs, versus new lows. The advance decline line, likewise has found a high probability buy zone here.

The Commercials
Like the insiders, they know something. They aren’t telling exactly what, but who cares? All we need to do is follow what they do. That’s the most convincing argument they can put forth: money where their mouth is. The commercials have steadfastly and consistently increased a ginormous net long position. Who do you want to side with? them or the little guy who was buying calls like crazy just before the market dove off?

Fundymentals
Let’s not give the technical tools all the fun. How abou the IBES model? It is showing that equity markets are very cheap here. Yes, very. And cheap. Don’t like the IBES? Fine. How about that the market’s forward multiple is 14.7, which is a little below its 20 year average? Still think the market is inordinantly expensive and in need of a fall?

Bond Market
A lot was made of the bond market’s fall in June 2007. But guess what, the yields spiked on the 10 year and 30 year Notes have fallen dramatically. Don’t believe me? Pull up a quote. If you’re a chart and system junkie, take a look at the 30 day rate of change for the bond market.

Traditional Technical Analyisis
Price, moving averages, trendlines and good ol’ support and resistance. The market has fallen to its 200 day moving average, where it has found footing before several times. The uptrend is still intact. And the S&P 500 is right at the support (previous resistance) line at 1460(ish) - check out the graph.

Bad News Trio
Bad news is everywhere: American Home Mortgage is in bankruptcy, Sowood Capital, imploded taking with it hundreds of millions of investor’s money. And just today rumours were swirling of Beazer Homes’ (BZH) bankruptcy. As far as I know they were unsubstantiated. But the important thing is that the negative headlines and fear is palpable. Just this week there was an article on the Wall Street Journal asking if the bull market was over? This cluster of negative articles and media attention accompanies market bottoms, not tops.

The IPO Market Speaks
When things get frothy, the IPO market goes insane. Crazy ideas are funded and taken public. Remember the turds from the bubble years? e-Stamps anyone? Right now though we have a healthy IPO market. One that is open and functioning without being irrationally exuberant. That bodes well for the market in general as this study from Thomson Financial shows.