For many years now we have published a quarterly data file as described in this note. The old quarterly data file was extremely popular among institutions, particularly those that were using it for standard recession forecasting ensemble implementations or even custom ensembles to fit their investment approach. Also many clients were using the file as a single consolidated view or dashboard of all 15 of our econometric models. This popularity drove request for more timely information and we announced last […]
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The Average Liquidity Index (ALIX)
The Average Liquidity Index (ALIX) has been published daily for our clients for over 5 years. This document serves as a brief overview. ALIX is the average of the medium-term liquidity index from the VMCOS chart (EMA(21) of VMCOS), the short-term liquidity index from the VMCOS chart (EMA(10) less EMA(21) of VMCOS) and the short-term liquidity index derived from the HILO chart (EMA(10) less EMA(20) of Net 13wk less Net 52Wk highs). It is designed to gauge short-term market liquidity […]
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McClellan Liquidity Indices
This is a complete short, medium and long-term stock market liquidity risk-management tool derived from the McClellan Oscillator methodology applied to daily advancing and declining volume on the SP-500. It has been depicted as a daily updated chart for standard subscriptions for over 7 years now. Each day, we compute daily advancing volume (sum of volume traded of all shares that rose in price) less daily declining volume to get daily net advancing volume. This is very volatile and unusable […]
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New Probability Models
Following on from extensive client feedback since the launch of the SP-500 trough probabilities and SP-500 Trendex trend-following model, we have decided to target the models at the six largest investable U.S Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) categories by assets under management (AUM) as depicted below, for a total of 50.1% coverage of the total U.S ETF market by AUM: Except for the SP-500, the largest ETF’s by AUM are used in the models to proxy the respective sectors in question. […]
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SP-500 Probability Model (SPM) V1.0
Introduction NOTE : Subsequent to this research note, we also launched an SP-500 Probability Model that measured probability of market tops (peaks). The MARKET-TOP probability model uses the inverse logic of the MARKET-BOTTOM probability model discussed in this research note. In other words, we look at low volatility instead of high volatility from the VIX component, we look at gains instead of drawdowns, consecutive up-weeks instead of consecutive down weeks, we look at duration of rally as opposed to duration […]
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Google Search Trends as Recession Forecasting Tool
With the emergence of Google as the dominant internet search engine, its search-term usage can provide a real-time view of current public interests in numerous issues such as economics, politics, health and so forth. Thus, if large groups of people are entering certain economically-linked search terms, this could provide a clue about the general public’s financial stress levels and the onset of a recession. Whilst there are several search-terms that effectively provided warning of the 2008 U.S recession, we need […]
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Global Economy affects U.S stock market returns
The global economy is currently in the depths of a synchronized global business-cycle contraction, first highlighted by us in June 2018. In March 2019 we followed up with Global Economic Activity slowing at the fastest pace since 2011. The chart below highlights the Global Leading Economic Indicator together with the percentage of countries tracked that have a rising Leading Economic Indicator: The percentage of countries with a rising LEI is an excellent 2nd-derivative, leading the global LEI consistently through the […]
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Adjusting Fed Funds Rate for QE to predict rate cycle direction changes
The Federal Reserve Funds Rate (Fed Funds Rate) is the interest rate that banks charge other banks for lending them money from their reserve balances on an overnight basis. By law, banks must maintain a reserve equal to a certain percentage of their deposits in an account at a Federal Reserve bank. Any money in their reserve that exceeds the required level is available for lending to other banks that might have a shortfall. The chart below tracks the Fed Funds […]
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The improved, de-trended Composite Market Health Index (CMHI)
One of our oldest and most consulted indicators by our institutional clients is the Composite Market Health Index (CMHI – see research paper ). By de-trending this index around its long-term regression mean we can obtain far earlier bear-market warnings and signalling for the U.S stock markets. You can see this index updated every day from the CHARTS>MACRO>CMHI interactive chart. Clicking on the “hamburger icon” on the top right of the chart lets you download all the data into Excel […]
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Impact of monetary policy & yield curve on future volatility
This research note investigates the relationship between the yield curve (US 10-year less US 1-year constant-maturity treasury spread) and the Federal Funds Rate (monetary policy) on the future readings of the CBOE VIX index. The 10’s vs. 1’s yield-curve and U.S recessions in the post-war era are displayed below, where it is clear that the nine recessions since 1956 were predicted by yield-curve inversion, with one false positive in 1966. The smallest lead-times to recession average 8 months, the median […]
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A new U.S Residential Housing Index
According to many market watchers, there is no better barometer on the health of the U.S. economy than residential housing. It’s an industry that encompasses many vital sectors of the economy such as banking, manufacturing, commodities, construction, durable goods, international trade, transportation and, of course, consumer spending. So it’s not surprising the Federal Reserve closely monitors housing trends in the course of setting monetary policy.Sound economic growth in the U.S. is not possible without a robust residential real-estate market and […]
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Yield curve inversion & recession forecast
There is naturally a lot of focus on the U.S yield-curve at the moment, as it moves relentlessly toward inversion (when short-term rates are higher than long-term rates.) Can the history of the yield-curve inversion provide for useful forecasting as to the start dates of the next U.S recession? The 10’s vs. 1’s yield-curve and U.S recessions in the post-war era are displayed below, where it is clear that the nine recessions since 1956 were predicted by yield-curve inversion, with […]
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Revisiting an old favourite
One can examine so many charts during the course of a bull market and only realize upon hindsight how effective some of them can sometimes be. This often happens with the breadth metric derived from the percentage of SP500 shares trading higher than their 50-day moving average. You can find this chart updated daily from the CHARTS>BREADTH>MA50% tab: Clicking the blue round “i” (info) button on the top right of the chart reveals discussion on various uses of this indicator, […]
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A new monthly leading US index
Many monthly leading indices published for the U.S have about 10 indicator components, and we wanted one that had at least double this. The components of the new index are all monthly time series and are as follows: 01.Labor Market Composite (19 indicators) 02.Housing Market Composite (6 indicators) 03.Enhanced Yield Curve (EYC) 04.Money Supply Aggregate 05.Stock Market 06.Margin Debt 07.Treasury/Corporate Bond market 08.Inventories & Sales 09.Sales of heavy duty trucks 10.Manufacturing : Durable Goods 11.Manufacturing : Weekly Overtime hours 12.Manufacturing […]
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A U.S Weekly Leading Economic Index
RecessionALERT.com has constructed a Weekly Leading Economic Index (WLEI) for the U.S Economy that draws from over 20 weekly time-series from the following broad categories Corporate Bond Market Composite Treasury Bond Market Composite Stock Market Composite Labor Market Composite Credit Market Composite Mortgage backed securities (MBS) The first five are shown below: Being a weekly growth index, it provides data with at most a 1-week lag, which is far timelier than the lag found on monthly economic indicators. Additionally, it […]
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The SP-500 200-day average “Goodbye Kiss”
The SP-500 today has met back with its 200-day moving average after spending a “protracted period” of 46 trading days below it. Contrary to popular belief, history since 1972 shows this to be a bearish event, with more downside likely. Many participants on the stock markets like to use the 200-day moving average (200dma) to determine if we are in a bull or bear market. We deploy far more robust, diverse and accurate models as described in our highly popular research […]
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Global Slowdown – Does it affect the U.S?
There is no question that the Global Economy is languishing. Now, with weakness in US economic data starting to filter through, the big question that arises is if the U.S will be dragged down by the global economy. The U.S is a very insular economy and whilst there can be no doubt that global economic slowdowns do have an effect on the U.S economy, we show that the correlation between global recessions and U.S recessions is surprisingly low. EXHIBIT-A : Global […]
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RecessionALERT Valuation Index (RAVI)
PART-1 There are currently 4 mainstream models used to forecast 10-year total returns on the SP-500 (dividends re-invested) The Shiller CAPE ratio (PE10) The Warren Buffet Indicator Tobin’s Q-Ratio Average Investor allocation to stocks The non-linear quarterly correlations between these four models (x-axes) and achieved 10-year future total returns (y-axes) on the SP-500 since 1970 are shown below: Whilst there have been successful variations that improve long-run 10-year return correlations slightly (such as John Hussmanns’ Peak Earnings version of the Shiller […]
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Fingerprints of a short-term market top
The SP-500 has rallied sharply since the 15th October bottom, recovering all her losses in a shorter time than it took to incur them. It was a very rare display of the opposite behavior to the norm where “the bull climbs the staircase and the bear comes down the elevator”, since in this case, the bear came down the elevator but the bull climbed up on a rocket. The question that now naturally arises is if this rally has gone […]
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Great Trough Detector Improvements
You will notice a new layout for the Great Trough Detector (GTR) chart as shown below. The Signal Panel has been revised to be more intuitive and we have added a new count panel below that: 1. The Signal Panel The first task of this panel is to highlight your two main opportunities: Class-B : When the 13Wk New Hi/Lo breadth signal prints a reading below 27.4 “Correction Warning” Class-A : When the 13Wk New Hi/Lo breadth signal prints a […]
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