About RecessionALERT

Dwaine has a Bachelor of Science (BSc Hons) university degree majoring in computer science, math & statistics and is a full-time trader and investor. His passion for numbers and keen research & analytic ability has helped grow RecessionALERT into a company used by hundreds of hedge funds, brokerage firms and financial advisers around the world.
Author Archive | RecessionALERT

The Delayed Recession

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics announced a short while back that US national unemployment rate was 3.8% in August and September, versus the lows of 3.4% witnessed in both January and April 2023. On the surface, the employment situation looks healthy. Against the backdrop of virtually every leading indicator warning of recession (for quite some time now we must add), employment appears to be “the last man standing”: The national unemployment rate in the United States is skewed by […]

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USMLEI Oct-2022 Published

The U.S Monthly Leading Economic Index (USMLEI) PDF report for October 2022 has just been published in Reports Centre. The USMLEI plunged in October from -9.3 to -19.7, printing its 4th negative print. The USSHORT (short leading index) went from +5.1 to -7.4, its first recession print.  The USLONG (long leading index) went from -32.2 to -37.8, its 7th negative print. Using the average/median lead times of the various models, together with how long they have already been in recession territory, […]

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Is this bear market in stocks over?

Without a doubt, a U.S recession appears to be baked into the cake. We can’t say it is going to be severe, but what we can say is that the indicators suggest it will be non-trivial: The big question on everyone’s minds though, is if the US stock market has fully discounted for this and if the bear market bottom is in. Our research on the common factors observed at recessionary bear market bottoms shows that only 3 of the […]

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Generation-2 Market Probability Models

For many years now, we have provided multifactor trough/peak probability models for subscribers for SP500, QQQ (Nasdaq-100), GLD (Gold), IWM (small-caps), BTC (Bitcoin), AGG (Bond market), VTI (Total market), EFA (Developed markets ex U.S & Canada), EEM (Emerging markets) and IJH (mid-caps). You can read about their methodology in this research note. Running and using these models in live market environments, and feedback from clients, has allowed us to develop a 2nd generation of these models. Although they only currently […]

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US 10-Year T-Note Probability Model

Introduction The 10-year Treasury note is a debt obligation issued by the United States government with a maturity of 10 years upon initial issuance. A 10-year Treasury note pays interest at a fixed rate once every six months and pays the face value to the holder at maturity. The 10-year Treasury yield is the current rate Treasury notes would pay investors if they bought them today. The U.S. government partially funds itself by issuing 10-year Treasury notes. The U.S. Treasury […]

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A Recession Forecasting Diffusion (RFD)

Since we originally designed and built the Weekly SuperIndex recession model, we have created fourteen other quantitative recession models for clients over the last decade. These range from broad-based short, medium, and long-term composite leading & coincident economic indicators to composites focused on Housing, Labor, Gross Domestic Product & Income and Valuations. Each of these fifteen diversified recession models are combined into a Diffusion representing how many of them are in their respective recession territories, to form the Recession Forecasting […]

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The Lowry buy-the-dip Indicator

On 26th February 2002, Paul F. Desmond from Lowry’s Research published a seminal paper titled “Identifying Bear Market Bottoms & New Bull Markets” (  download) This concept measured market breadth, namely daily advancing stocks as a % of advancing and declining stocks as well as points gained as a % of points gained and lost. The research posited that during significant market declines, panic would manifest itself as one or more days when declining stocks exceeded advancing stocks by more than 9-to-1 […]

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Valuing Bitcoin using US$ Index

Of the dozen indicators and metrics we have researched, the fortunes of the US Trade-Weighted U.S Dollar Index (TWDI) has the biggest impact on Bitcoin USD prices. When the TWDI depreciates, this boosts Bitcoin prices strongly. When the TWDI becomes stronger, Bitcoin prices face significant headwinds.  The TWDI is a weekly index created by the U.S Federal Reserve to measure value of the U.S. dollar, based on its competitiveness versus U.S trading partners. The index gives importance to currencies most widely used in […]

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Trendex Market Timing/Risk Management

1. Introduction The Trendex indicators are a suite of proprietary short, medium and long term market timing trailing stops with accompanying market peak & bottom probabilities to allow market participants to minimize as well as assess risk or opportunity for nine of the most popular U.S ETF’s commonly used in diversified portfolios. The Trendex indicators consist of the following components: A set of short, medium and longer-term trailing stops for both longs (uptrends) and shorts (downtrends) Corresponding probabilities of a […]

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Relationship between stocks & FED balance sheet

The chart below shows the size of securities held outright by the US Federal Reserve versus Wilshire Total market index as stock market proxy. We see the various quantitative easing programs that propelled the stock market higher including the massive Covid19 liquidity injection that set stocks on a never-before-seen trajectory On the surface it appears that when the size of the FED balance sheet is flat or shrinking (tapering) stock returns are either muted/volatile or negative. Similarly when the balance […]

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High-Frequency U.S. Economic Data Shows 3-Speed Recovery

Since the onset of Covid-19, there has been a lot of research (and release) of alternative (non traditional) high-frequency data to measure the extent of the economic collapse brought on by coronavirus lockdowns, as well as to measure the post-lockdown economic recovery. Think of Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL), Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) and SafeGraph geolocation data to track movement of people around workplaces and residential places, foot and transit traffic data, hotel occupancy, movie ticket sales (BoxOfficeMojo), TSA traveler throughput, seated diners (OpenTable) and so forth. We […]

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Quantifying market valuation risk – PART 3

In PART-1 we looked at how we used the RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) to determine 10-year ahead forecasts on the SP500 Total Return Index (TRI) with a better than 0.89 correlation, and how we managed to derive 5,3 and 2 year ahead SP500 forecasts with correlations of 0.8, 0.68 and 0.55 respectively. In PART-2 we examined three methods to derive 1-year ahead forecasts for the Sp500 with correlations (r-squares) of 0.27, 0.34 and 0.43 respectively. In PART-3 we use the data from […]

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Detecting SP500 BUY-THE-DIP signals

In our prior research note “Detecting tops of rapid SP500 advances” we introduced a multi-factor model (BIGTOP, available now in the Dashboard) for signaling advance warning of major (infrequent) intra-bull SP500 stock market tops. Whilst not a precise actionable signaling tool, BIGTOP appears very good at warning you of when risks of major market tops are high, allowing you to mitigate downside risk. If you recall, we opined that experience has shown us that detecting market tops is far harder […]

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Detecting tops of rapid SP500 advances

Since the bull market that commenced in 2009 there have been around 10 major rapid advances in the SP-500 that ended in not-insignificant market tops. In our ZOOM calls with clients over the last year, a lot of interest has been expressed in how to detect for preemptive warning signs of these major tops. By pre-emptive we mean warnings that are issued before any significant declines set in. A problem with many traditional technical SELL models is that conditions or […]

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A new coronavirus wave is starting in USA

One of the most accurate and reliable leading indicators we have discovered for the U.S daily new Coronavirus infections curve is the percentage of 52 US states that have an increasing or decreasing rate of new daily infections being reported. This indicator tops out before the national US infection tally and likewise bottoms before the national US infection tally. It is thus an early warning indicator for change in direction of the daily new infections curve. The percentage of US […]

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Launch of Institutional Crypto Advisory

After hundreds of client Zoom consultations over the last 6 months, the request for a fundamentally-driven macro-risk model for cryptocurrency (specifically Bitcoin), similar to the ones we provide for the US economy and SP500, was one of the many topics topics among just under 49% of the calls. The request was highest among high net-worth private investors, family offices and small funds, but we expect company treasurers and larger institutions to become more formally involved with Bitcoin as a possible […]

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Quantifying market valuation risk – PART 2

In PART-1 we looked at how we used the RAVI to determine 10-year ahead forecasts on the SP500 Total Return Index with a better than 0.89 correlation, and how we managed to derive 5,3 and 2 year ahead SP500 forecasts with correlations of 0.8, 0.68 and 0.55 respectively. In PART-2 we are going to focus solely on how we derive 1-year ahead forecasts for the Sp500. 2. Deriving 1-year SP-500 forecasts Using the RAVI index regressed to 1-year ahead SP500 […]

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Quantifying market valuation risk – PART 1

There are many metrics currently being touted that demonstrate the stock market is dangerously overvalued. Many respectable models are even forecasting double digit negative returns for the US stock market over the next 10 years. In this research note we  look at our RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) and how to interpret what it is currently saying about stock market valuations. The RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI) examines 10-year cyclically adjusted trailing SP-500 earnings, the SP-500 index level, total stock market capitalization, […]

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Stage is set for stock market gains in November

The SP500 has put in a 7.4% peak-to-trough correction since 12 October. In the last 20 years, according to our SP500 probability model, corrections of more than this magnitude have occurred only 11.4% of the time, hinting at a 88.6% probability the worst is over. The SP500 has also put in lower weekly closes 3 weeks in a row. Additional lower weekly closes have only occurred 15.9% of the time in the past, implying a 84.1% probability the worst is […]

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A new, bigger U.S Coronavirus peak now likely

For a while, it seemed we had tamed the coronavirus epidemic in the US. But new daily cases are on the 3rd surge since the epidemic hit US shores: The U.S lags most of Europe’s ‘  countries by about 4-6 weeks on the coronavirus curve. When we saw the infections picking up in Europe after lockdowns had been eased, we wondered if the US might be able to dodge a bullet, but sadly it appears a new wave of infections […]

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