As dawn spreads across the fruited plain today, we’re plunging into Iceland’s Blue Lagoon. If we learn market-structure secrets here, we’ll report back next week.
Meanwhile, stocks have been emitting the effervescence of a Sunday brunch mimosa bubbling a happy orange hue. Market Structure Sentiment™ for stocks as measured daily has posted a record stretch at 6.0/10.0 or higher.
What’s that mean ahead?
Here’s back-story for those new to the Market Structure Map. We formalized what we first called MIRBI (merbee), the ModernIR Behavioral Index, in Jan 2012. Market Structure Analytics is the science of demographics in the money behind prices and volume. We can measure them in your stock, a sector, the whole market.
Correlated to prices, volatility and standard deviation, behaviors proved predictive. We built a ten-point quantitative scale from Oversold at 1 to Overbought at 10. Stocks mean-revert to 5.0 and trade most times between 4.0-6.0. Market Structure Sentiment™ has signaled nearly every short-term rise and fall in stocks since 2012, large and small.
In both late January 2018 and late Sep 2018 preceding market corrections, Market Sentiment topped weakly, signaling stocks were overbought and pressure loomed.
If corporate fundamentals consistently priced stocks, this math wouldn’t matter. Active Investment can only blunt market structure periodically. Just the way it is.
It reflects a truth about modern markets: Machines set prices more than humans. So, if you want to know what prices will do, watch the machines. Investor-relations professionals and investors must know market structure now. Otherwise we blame humans for things machines are doing.
Getting back to the future, we recorded a couple long 6.0+ stretches in 2012. They presaged plateaus for stocks but nothing else. It was a momentum market rich with Fed intervention, and European bond-buying to prop up the euro. Scratch those as comparatives.
Same drill in two 2013 instances, May and July. We had a blip, but the rocket sled was burning central-bank nitrous oxide and barely hiccupped.
After the Federal Reserve hiked rates in December 2015 for the first time in ten years, the market nearly imploded in January. This would prove – till further notice – to be the last time the Fed overtly intervened.
After stocks showed gaping cracks to begin the year, by Mar 2016 excess reserves at the Fed had soared by $500 billion. The dollar swooned. Stocks surged. And Market Structure Sentiment™ marked the longest recorded stretch above 5.0.
By Nov 1, 2016, before Donald Trump’s election, however, stocks were back to Dec 2014 levels. I think the bull market was ending but Trump’s ascendency gave it new life.
Cycles have shortened because the bulk of behaviors changing prices every day are motivated by arbitrage – profiting on price-differences. True for Fast Traders, ETF market-makers, market-neutral strategies, global-macro allocations, counterparties.
The length of trading cycles, I believe, depends on the persistence of profits from arbitrage. Volatility bets expire today, index options tomorrow, with full options expirations and index true-ups Feb 15th.
We may not yet mark a cycle terminus, but arbitrage profits are thinning. For the week ended Feb 2, spreads between sector ETFs and sector stocks totaled 10.5%. Last week it was down to 5.6%.
Further illustrating, Healthcare stocks were up 1.6% the five days end Feb 2, and down 1.6% the week of Feb 8 (and the sector is down the past five days). Real Estate and Utilities offered behavioral data saying they were market hedges – and they’re the two best performers the past five trading days.
I’m confident we’ll see this trading cycle end first in peaking Market Structure Sentiment™ (linked here for Sep 4-Feb 11). It faltered briefly but hasn’t fallen.
As to a big prediction? Past performance guarantees nothing, yet forgetting history condemns us to repeating mistakes. There’s a balance. Seen that way, this long positive run may be the earliest harbinger of the last bull run ending 6-9 months out. Machines will be sifting the data. We’ll watch them.
Now if you’ll excuse us, we’re going to slip into this wildly blue lagoon.