Trader’s Narrative

With today’s close the S&P 500 index arrived at a new high for the year. So far, it has risen 22.8% - not bad at all compared to the average historical return. And the year isn’t even over yet. If we look at the performance from the very bottom of the lows in March, it is even more remarkable at 63%.

But even as the stock market continues to power ahead, and longevity of this rally continues to strain all credulity, we can’t ignore that the market breadth is down right horrible. Usually, the measure of advancing vs. declining stocks rises and falls like a tide, keeping a rhythm with the indexes.

Right now however, the 20 day average of Nasdaq’s daily advancing and declining issues is acting the way it would at intermediate lows - even though we’ve well into an uptrend:

This means that fewer and fewer stocks are pushing the averages higher. When we start to see less participation from the wider spectrum of stocks trading on the exchange, we don’t have a healthy rally. My hunch is that most of gains can be laid at the feet of the large caps either because of their international sales exposure or because of the dollar carry trade (sell the dollar and buy anything risky). Check out the Russell 2000 - it has yet to confirm a new year to date high as the S&P 500 index. The same can be said for the equal weight S&P 500 index.

Another cause for concern is just how quickly the index has been able to rise on the back of fewer and fewer rallying stocks. For a bull market to be considered healthy, it has to have staying power. This is an endurance run after all, not a sprint. I measure the speed of a rally by comparing the closing daily price to the long term trend as measured by the 200 day moving average.

While the 200 day moving average has been rising, it hasn’t been able to climb as fast or faster than the price it tracks. So the distance between them as a ratio has increased. With today’s strong close, the S&p 500 index is now 19.3% higher than its long term trend line. That’s slightly more than the last time this same metric made me raise the caution flag: Stocks Have Little Room to the Upside.

That was 11 points lower than we are now. Running the numbers with a 20% and 21% ceiling, we get 1117 points and 1127 points respectively. So imagining that we leapfrog 8 to 18 points from here, we will have hit an invisible wall. Check out the previous link above to see a chart.

So odds are that we either correct here (again) to give the long term moving average a bit of time to catch up. Or prices meander to and fro, not really going anywhere and boring both bears and bulls. There is very little probability, from a historical study of the market, that we will see a rush higher.

While we all like to think of ourselves as rational beings, making decisions based on sound judgment, the truth of the matter is much more unsettling. We are, for the most part, rather peculiar creatures, prone to irrational and emotional biases. What makes this even more disturbing is that the edifice of our economic and financial system is built on the foundation of a rational, utility maximizing individual.

The most recent sentiment overview shows an amazing turn of events. Even as the stock market has gone on to rise almost 60% from its dark depth 8 months ago, a moderate correction was enough to plunge the majority of retail investors into a new state of capitulation.

Even more curious, instead of investing more as the stock market recovered, which is the norm, the US retail investor has completely given up on equities. Here is an updated chart which I originally shared two months ago (Equity Mutual Fund Outflows):

If anything, the exodus of US retail investors (mutual fund owners) has intensified. The data for the full month of September shows redemptions of almost $13 billion - the most since February, just before the spring rally started. And to make it even more bizarre, the frenzy of bond buying is getting even more frenetic with net purchases of $55 billion (in September).

The data for the latest data (3 weeks in October shown in darker colors) promises a continuation of the same trend, if not a new record. So far, October had net equity redemptions of $11.5 billion.

Almost the same can be seen from insiders trading activity. These more ‘in the know’ individuals have continued to sell shares of their company’s stock almost as fast as they could. While there are many reasons for an insider to sell (diversification, divorce, etc.) the fact that we aren’t seeing an uptick in purchases is telling.

So why is there so much pessimism around this latest stock market rally?

Loss Aversion
A concept from behavioural finance offers a possible explanation for the bizarre fund flows pattern, bearish investor sentiment and insider selling. “Loss aversion” is a concept from prospect theory which explains that people prefer to avoid losing, rather than take a proportional risk to receive a gain.

Think of it this way. Given an event which triggers either a loss or a gain of the same amount, for some strange reason, we prefer to avoid a loss, rather than receive a gain. In other words, we prefer to keep what we have (not lose some or all of it), rather than add to what we already have. For most people, losing is much more painful than gaining is pleasurable.
Continue reading ‘What If Wall St. Threw A Party, And Nobody Came?’

While I think the S&P 500 has more room to the downside, the bounce today wasn’t unexpected. If you listen to the mainstream media, the explanation is the the positive GDP numbers, which at 3.4% blew away expectations.

While it will take a few days for the whole report to be dissected, it is more likely that it was an excused used to run up prices, rather than the actual rationale. Especially since many have pointed out reasons at the beginning of the third quarter why the recession may be over. I attribute the bounce today to the extremely oversold breadth - in the very short term.

One of the best measures for this is the percent of S&P 500 stocks above their short term (10 day) moving average. This metric sharply fell to just 6% yesterday. At the start of the week it was 20.4% and on Tuesday it was 14.4% and then it fell below the important 10% level which marks extreme short term oversold levels. This is the level that was mentioned in the recent Lowry report: Turbulence Ahead.

The oversold level was clearly visible across many important sectors. Many of which had equal or worse breadth than the general market proxy. The transports were especially hard hit for example. As were the gold stocks, which as I’ve repeatedly mentioned, tend to follow the general market.

Another measure of short term breadth is the ratio of daily new highs to new lows on the Nasdaq:

As the chart shows, the last time new lows increased this much and new highs dissipated this much was back in early July, which launched the second leg of the spring rally. As Lowry’s report mentioned it is quite possible to experience a short term set back within a primary uptrend. Things to watch for are how the market responds to this oversold condition. If the market weakens significantly in spite of poor breadth, then it will need to trade lower to find a strong bid. If on the other hand, the S&P 500 can rally immediately off such a short term extreme, then we know that the uptrend is intact.

An important part of this is the medium term outlook. The percent of S&P 500 stocks above their 50 day moving average has managed to put in higher lows each time as the chart below shows:

Since October 2008, medium term breadth for the S&P 500 index has been stair stepping higher. It needs to remain above 30% to maintain the uptrend, which it seems to have done already.

And the very long term breadth measure - the percentage of S&P 500 components above their 200 day moving average - remains at peak levels. With today’s strong showing, it moved once again above 90% where it has been since August 2009. This is reminiscent of the rally we saw in late 2003. I’ve detailed this here: Comparing Market Breadth To 2003’s Bull Market.

Breadth is an important element of technical analysis that usually gets ignored for pure price action. But every once in a while, it is helpful to pop the hood and take a look at what is driving the price action in the indexes.

A simple way to measure breadth is to look at new 52 week highs relative to new 52 week lows. A healthy bull market will have a persistent bias towards new highs as most shares on exchanges trades to make new highs.

The indicator below is the New Highs New Lows Index for the Nasdaq. And it is based on a basic formula: new 52 week highs divided by the sum of the new highs and the new lows. It varies from zero to 100. When it is zero, it means that we have absolutely no new 52 week highs (with every single stock trading at a new 52 week low). This is a very rare and exceptionally oversold market. The reverse would be 100 with all shares at 52 week new highs.

Naturally, it is a very good timing indicator which I’ve used before to find inflection points in the market: Can the New High New Low Indicator do it again?

Since it can be rather volatile, I’ve used a 10 day simple moving average to smooth it out and provide a more meaningful chart:

We’ve moved very quickly from the extreme lows in March (where the 10 day moving average was 0.48%!) to 88% in recent trading.

Historically, when the 3000 or so constituents of the Nasdaq Composite start trading at 90% new highs, the market has a tough time moving up. We either enter into a range to work out the overbought or fell lower. Often times significantly lower.

The only exception to this in recent history was the powerful new bull market in 2003. New 52 week highs, relative to 52 week lows, as measured by this indicator continued to levitate at the extreme edge, reaching almost 100% for about 12 months as the stock market powered ahead.

The other interesting portion of the chart is the divergence shown in 2000 as the market was topping. Even as priced reached for the heavens, there was a complete collapse in the number of stocks reaching 52 week highs. You can see a similar divergence happened in mid 2007 as the S&P 500 once again climbed over 1500.

So the question continues to be: is this another bear market rally or like early 2003, the start of something much more?

The only way to know is to watch for price action in the face of overbought indicators like this one. If the S&P 500 continues to trade higher, shrugging off this and other indicators pointing to an overbought condition, then it is clear that what we are seeing is not just a regular bear market rally.

A few days ago I featured the charts of the new 52 week lows for the Nasdaq and the NYSE showing that we’d have to go back all the way to 1998 to find higher extremes.

Contrary to what some might suspect, a spike to record heights in fresh stocks plumbing the depths of annual lows is actually good news for the stock market. It means that we have a washout of selling, a euphoria of panic. That is where the market finds its legs again.

But one of the comments I got was that since the number of stocks trading changes over time, this isn’t a very valid argument to make. For all we know the only reason there was such a record now is that we simply have more stocks trading and therefore more probability that of that population, a higher sample would hit 52 week lows.

Makes sense to me. So to check it out I looked at another set of statistics: the ratio of new highs to new lows.

If we follow the same argument, of the larger population of stocks being traded, there should be as much chance of stocks hitting new 52 week highs as 52 week lows. So by comparing the ratio of the two, we can normalize over time and compare apples to apples.

Note: I’ve inverted the charts to make it similar to the new 52 week lows chart I showed previously - so a spike up marks a bottom

Ratio of 52 Week Highs to 52 Week Lows for the Nasdaq:

Ratio of 52 Week Highs to 52 Week Lows for the NYSE:

So we can rule out that anomaly. It seems that the extreme reading is legitimate. Although I would take the NYSE data with a wheelbarrow of salt since more and more non-common stocks (but rather interest rate sensitive synthetic securities) are trading there.