Trader’s Narrative

Today’s market strength isn’t surprising as we looked at different breadth measures that suggested that in the short term, the market was approaching oversold.

But today’s strength notwithstanding, looking out further along the time horizon, we are probably going to see lower prices. According to the latest report from Lowry Research, their proprietary Buying Power Index, which measures the demand side of the market, has falling dramatically.

Concomitantly, the Selling Pressure Index - their proprietary measure of supply - is now heading up after meandering for a few months. These two taken together mean that the stock market may even retest or go through the March lows.

The usual script for a new bull market is very shallow retracements and an immediate and aggressive bounce from any oversold condition. We are not really seeing that, at least so far - which leads many to conclude that we are not in a bull market but rather continue to trundle through a brutal bear market.

Although Lowry Research is probably best known for Paul Desmond’s seminal study of the role of 90-90 days in the birth of bull markets, they themselves follow their two proprietary supply and demand indicators for guidance on future market prices. To read more about Lowry’s methodology and charts of Buying Power and Selling Pressure indexes, see this: Lowry Research On Current Market Conditions.

You can also watch Paul Desmond’s recent CNBC interview where he mentions basically the same arguments for a defensive position going forward.