All Posts by Jani Ziedins

Follow

About the Author

Jani Ziedins (pronounced Ya-nee) is a full-time investor and financial analyst that has successfully traded stocks and options for nearly three decades. He has an undergraduate engineering degree from the Colorado School of Mines and two graduate business degrees from the University of Colorado Denver. His prior professional experience includes engineering at Fortune 500 companies, small business consulting, and managing investment real estate. He is now fortunate enough to trade full-time from home, affording him the luxury of spending extra time with his wife and two children.

Oct 04

CMU: The obvious trade everyone screws up

By Jani Ziedins | Free CMU

Welcome to the new Cracked.Market University educational series. Look for new articles every Monday and Wednesday.

Everyone knows the market moves in waves. Unfortunately most traders forget this important fact when planning their next trade.

All of us come to the market with biases. Extrapolating trends is human nature and we cannot help ourselves. Bulls insist the economy is fine and the rally will continue for as far as the eye can see. Bears believe wholeheartedly the economy is a sham, the market has gone too-far, too-fast, and we are on the verge of collapsing.

While all of us feel one way or the other, the question we must ask ourselves is how often does the market actually rally for as far as the eye can see? How frequently do prices collapse? If these are such rare events, why do most traders think extreme events are around every corner? The rarest predictions is the market will go a little higher before it goes a little lower, or a little lower before it goes a little higher. Who dares make such boring predictions?

I have read claims the market trades sideways 60% of the time. While I haven’t verified it myself, twenty-years of experience trading stocks tells me this number is definitely in the ballpark. Prices go up for a while, then they go down for a bit. Sometimes they make higher highs, other times lower lows, but the market always moves in waves.

The problem is most traders convince themselves every move higher or lower will continue indefinitely. When the move goes the direction of their bias, their confidence swells as the market’s price-action confirms their ideas. This confidence causes them to rush headfirst into a big position before they miss the trade they have been waiting for. Unfortunately most of the time their confidence doesn’t come until the market has already made a sizable move in the direction of their bias. In the bull’s case, when the market is making a higher-high. The problem is confidence is highest just as the last of the buyers are rushing into the market and prices are about to slip back into the trading range.

When a new trade falls into the red so quickly, confidence is shattered and replaced by uncertainty and fear. Traders initially convince themselves they can hold through a brief pullback because they are still believe they are right. When that doesn’t happen, doubt grows until vulnerable traders bail out because the pain of regret grows too strong. This selling pressures prices further, causing more nervous owners to sell, further pressuring prices. The downward spiral continues until we exhaust the supply of nervous sellers. Unfortunately for these reactive sellers, prices rebound not long after they bailout.

On the other side, bears have been emboldened by this dip and they start loading up on shorts just as the market starts making fresh lows. Their predictions of a collapse are coming true and they don’t want to miss out on all the money they will make. Yet just like the bulls, their timing is all wrong and no sooner than they jump in, prices rebound and they start losing money.

These waves of greed and fear occur in every timeframe from minutes to years and they suck in novices and pros alike. But it isn’t all bad. The stock market is largely a zero-sum game, meaning one person’s loss is another person’s gain. Those of us who us who understand the psychology behind these moves and can control our impulses profit by selling greed and buying fear. While that sounds easy, executing it successfully is one of the hardest things to do in trading.

The problem is we are herd animals and our survival instincts wired us to adopt the mood of the crowd around us. When everyone is happy, those feelings of calm and complacency are hard to resist. When everyone is scared, we grow fearful and the fight/flight instinct dominates our thoughts.

The most important thing to remember about dips is they always feel real. If they didn’t, no one would sell and the market wouldn’t dip. Cognitively acknowledging most dips bounce is the first step in overcoming our primitive instincts. Same goes for surges in price. Just when everything feels the most safe is when we should be the most nervous.

In August the crowd was predicting doom-and-gloom. They were wrong. Several weeks later we are making new highs and everything looks good. That said, I have little doubt these gleeful bulls will prove to be as wrong as the overconfident bears were several weeks ago.

Never forget the market moves in waves. It always has and it always will. After several weeks of nearly non-stop gains, it is normal and healthy for the market to slip back to support. But just like how this breakout isn’t racing to the moon, don’t fall for all the predictions the next few down days will lead to the next market crash.

There are so many exciting ideas I only briefly touched on in this post that I look forward to expanding on in future posts. No matter what the fundamentalists and technicians claim, market prices are driven by human psychology and understanding that is the first step in unlocking the market’s next move. Sign up for Free Email Alerts to be notified when my next piece is published.

Jani

f you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Oct 03

Is it finally safe to buy?

By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis

End of Day Analysis:

The S&P500 finished higher for the sixth consecutive day and fourteen out of the last seventeen. There was no real news driving this strength, instead we continue rallying on “no news is good news”.

August was a rough month for stocks as repeated selloffs threatened to break this market. North Korea, political gridlock, and hurricanes all weighed heavily on the market’s mood. The news didn’t get any better in September, but amazingly enough, the market stopped caring and prices firmed up. For those of us that were paying attention, this was a powerful signal life was still left in this rally.

I did my best to warn Bears in my September 7th free blog post, very creatively titled, “A warning for Bears”. In it I cautioned a market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. I also encouraged bears to cover their shorts while their losses were small. The market closed that day at 2,465. A few weeks later we find ourselves 70-points higher in what looks like a painful short-squeeze.

Figuring out what the market is going to do isn’t hard once you know what to look for. In this case a market refusing to go down on bad news. The problem is too many people arrived with a bearish bias. This rally was “too old” and had gone “too far, too fast” and “a pullback was long overdue”. Bearish headlines convinced them it was only a matter of time before they would be proven right.

Blinded by confidence, Bears failed to recognize the significance of this counterintuitive strength because they were too busy arguing how dumb the market was. Unfortunately that’s not how this game works. When the market disagrees with us, without a doubt we are the ones who are wrong and it is best to get out of the way before we get run over.

But that was then and this is now. What most readers want to know is what’s comes next. Given how many up-days we’ve had over the last three weeks, the bears might finally be partially right. We won’t see the widely predicted crash, but 70-points in three weeks is a big move for this slow-moving market. At the very least we should prepare for a normal and healthy pullback to support.

One-direction moves are often fueled by bears scrambling to cover their shorts. This creates a flurry of near-term buying, but short-sellers are a relatively small group and they don’t have the buying power to drive larger moves. After a certain level most bears have capitulated and then it is up to other buyers to keep a move going higher.

Only big money has the resources to keep a larger directional move going. But the thing to know about big money is it hates chasing prices higher. Most of them have been doing this long enough to know that if they are patient, the desperate buying will subside and they will be able to jump in at lower prices. In many ways this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy because if enough traders wait for a pullback, the lack of buying actually causes the pullback.

Without a doubt the path of least resistance is higher, but we know markets don’t move in straight lines. We need to mix in a few down days to keep this market healthy and sustainable. When a red-day happens, don’t freak out and start calling a top. If this market was going to crash, it would have happened weeks ago when headlines and sentiment were far more dire. Instead, expect the rate of gains to slow and for the market to spend a few weeks consolidating recent gains. We can keep going up for a few more days, but the higher we go, the harder we fall during the normal and healthy down wave. But either way, this is definitely a better place to be taking profits than adding new positions. Buy-and-hold investors can keep holding, but traders with profits should start thinking about locking them in, and those with cash should resist the temptation to chase.

Jani

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts.

Oct 01

Monthly Scorecard: Cracked.Market blog hits a grandslam in September

By Jani Ziedins | Scorecard

Welcome to Cracked.Market’s Monthly Scorecard:

This post includes a summary of last month’s market developments, links to several key blog posts, and critical analysis of the accuracy of each post. 

Part 1: Monthly Analysis

September is historically the second worst month for stocks, just barely beating October’s abysmal performance. Unfortunately anyone who used that historical track record as an excuse to skip September missed an impressive surge to all-time highs. Who would have guessed using the rearview mirror to figure out where the market is headed is a bad idea?

All too often traders fall for these statistical anomalies, a bad habit often perpetuated by the financial medial that loves repeating these nearly useless facts. “Sell in May and go away”, “October is the worst month for stocks”, “This is the longest we’ve gone without a 3% pullback since 1928”, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. These facts are little more than trivia and just as useless as knowing how many movies one actor was in with another actor. You can impress your friends with these facts, but they are of little practical value when it comes to timing trades.

No doubt there are quirks to the calendar that makes some of these statistical anomalies pop up, such as options expiration, end of quarters, and calendar years. But the thing to remember about these patterns is they are far weaker than current events and price-action.

This September’s price-action was dominated by a decisive rebound from August’s North Korean pullback. This relief rally was far more powerful than September’s traditional seasonal weakness. What happened yesterday, last week, and last month is always far more significant than what happened last year, last decade, and last century.

Looking ahead to October, the recent dip and churn in ownership created a strong foundation to build on. Volume returned in September as big money came back from vacation. Rather than lock-in profits, big money is more inclined to buy these highs. If this market was fragile and vulnerable, we would have plummeted weeks ago. This is a strong market and I expect it to only get stronger as underweight money managers give up waiting for a dip and start chasing prices higher into year-end.

In the next section I analyze all eight of my free blog posts from September.
How do you think I did? Tell me in the comments.

Click the title to read the full post.

Part 2: Scorecard

Tuesday September 5th: 
Why this selloff is no different

[Is] the rebound really dead? Three things tell us not to be so hasty.

 

First the late-day rebound put us back above key support. The 50 day moving average was a ceiling for most of the last few weeks. But overhead resistance often turns into support after we break through. Today’s late recovery suggests that is the case here. Rather than spiral out of control, supply dried up when we tested this key support level.

 

Second, volume was one of the highest days we’ve seen in recent weeks. All the other sharp down-days also included elevated volume. But rather than portend of worse things to come, these high-volume days were capitulation and we rebounded within a day or two.

 

Third, all of these headlines are recycled. There is nothing new here. If one of these stories was going to take us down, it would have happened already. Selloffs are breathtakingly fast. Hesitate for a moment and it is too late. Sell first and ask questions later is the first rule of surviving a crash. But this North Korea selloff is going into its fourth week. The market never gives us this much time to think rationally and act calmly before a punishing selloff.

Score 10/10: September 5th’s weakness was the lowest point in all of September and we rebounded decisively for the remainder of the month. The 5th’s dip was nothing more than one last head fake before humiliating every reactive seller during its surge to record highs.

My regular readers got the memo, did you? Sign up for Free Email Alerts so you don’t miss out next time.

Scorecard

Thursday September 7th:
A warning for Bears

For nearly a month this market has withstood one bearish headline after another. We slipped under the 50dma for a brief period. All of this selling cleared out most owners who could be convinced to sell. Now all that is left is people who don’t care about these headlines. No matter what people think “should” happen, when there is no one left to sell a headline, it stops mattering.

 

This is an important thing for bears and most especially shorts to understand. You have been given a golden gift in this relentless barrage of negative headlines. There has been more than enough to cripple a vulnerable market. But the thing to keep in mind is selloffs are breathtakingly quick. Sell first and ask questions later is the only way to survive a market crash. Yet here we stand nearly a month into this “selloff”. If we were going to crash, it would have happened by now. If this relentless barrage of headlines couldn’t scare owners into selling, I don’t know what it will take.

 

Anyone who is still short this market is probably only a little in the red. Rather than hope and pray for the selloff that isn’t happening, a smart trader admits defeat and takes his losses while they are small. This bearish trade has been given every opportunity to work, but this simply isn’t the right environment to be short. Be proactive and close a trade that isn’t working when the losses are small, rather than wait until the pain of losing money gets so strong it forces you out.

Score 10/10: What else is there to say? I told bears to close their shorts for a small loss before things got worse. I doubt many listened, but they had every opportunity to save themselves a big chunk of money. The key to surviving the market over the long haul is recognizing when you are wrong long before the pain of loss forces you out. Once you get good at this, some of my bad trades were actually closed for a profit because I recognized my mistake before prices turned against me.

Did the market trick you? Sign up for Free Email Alerts so you don’t miss out next time.

Scorecard

Tuesday September 12th:
Why bears got it wrong


There is no magic to this. Basic market psychology and supply and demand told us the path of least resistance was still higher. In early August we tumbled when Trump and North Korea fell into a war of words that quickly escalated into North Korean missile and nuclear bomb tests. Then the Trump administration endured a rash of turnover in its senior ranks and at the same time exchanged barbs with senior Republican leaders. And finally two hurricanes did their best to pummel the Gulf Coast. Any one of those things would have crushed a vulnerable market. Put them all together and it creates a storm only the strongest market could endure. Yet that is exactly what we did.

Score 10/10: A market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. The writing was on the wall all month long. I hope you saw it.

Sign up for Free Email Alerts so you don’t miss out next time.

Scorecard

Thursday September 14th:
North Korea still doesn’t matter


But just as things were starting to look good, North Korea launched another missile over Japan after Thursday’s close. Fortunately the stock market is reacting less and less to each successive provocation. In after-hours trade the S&P500 only dipped 0.2%. That’s because stock owners who fear this story sold weeks ago. These nervous owners were replaced by confident dip-buyers who demonstrated a willingness to hold these headlines. If there is no one left to sell the news, it stops mattering.

 

Once we traverse this latest North Korean speed bump, expect the slow drift higher to continue. Confident owners don’t want to sell no matter what the headlines say and their conviction is keeping supply tight. Conventional wisdom warns us about complacent markets, but what it often forgets to mention is these periods of complacency last far longer than anyone expects.

 

Few things calm nerves like a rising market. Expect these steady gains to shift the focus from fear of a crash to being afraid of being left behind. Recent sellers and underweight money managers will start realizing the dip they predicted isn’t going to happen and they will be forced to start chasing prices higher. Last week’s seller will be next week’s buyer. And that’s how the slow grind higher will continue.

Score 10/10: Hopefully you are starting to see a trend develop here. Hindsight is 20/20 and this analysis seems obvious now. Luckily for those who were paying attention and knew what to look for, it was painfully obvious as it was happening too.

If you didn’t see it, sign up for Free Email Alerts so you don’t miss out next time.

Scorecard

Tuesday September 19th:
Stick with this Bull


As we saw today, the North Korean rhetoric no longer matters to the market and we can safely ignore it. Next item coming up is the Fed’s policy statement on Wednesday. Consensus is the Fed will start winding down its balance sheet. This is an anti-stimulus move, but the market is largely ready for it. Yellen and the Fed have done a great job telegraphing their moves to minimize disrupting financial markets. While we should expect a brief bout of volatility, it’s been years since a Fed decision affected the market in a significant and lasting way. I don’t expect tomorrow to be any different.

Score 10/10: North Korea and the Fed couldn’t dent this rally, but readers of this blog already knew that.

Sign up for Free Email Alerts so you don’t miss out next time.

Scorecard

Thursday September 21th:
Don’t fear a routine and healthy dip


On Thursday the S&P500 experienced the largest drop in over two-weeks. As dramatic as that sounds, we only lost 0.3% in a relatively benign pullback to support. This was the lowest volume day this month and the first time trade has been below average since August.

 

As far as pullbacks go, this one was as mild as they get. There are two ways to interpret this. Either this dip was the best bears could manage in such a resilient and strong bull market. Or these are the first cracks in what is about to become a larger selloff.

 

If a person thinks a bull market needs to go up every single day, they should be worried about this price-action. For the rest of us, we know markets moves in waves and down days are a normal and healthy part of moving higher. Prior to today the S&P500 was up seven out of the last eight days and a routine down day was long overdue.

Score 10/10: A little dip after a long string of up-days was nothing more than catching our breath on our way higher.

Scorecard

Tuesday September 26th:
Why smart traders ignore today’s price-action

Tuesday September 26th: Why smart traders ignore today’s price-action

In a directional market, a late fizzle like this would be a big red flag. It warns us there is no follow through and support is crumbling. But this isn’t a directional market and traditional trading signals don’t apply.

 

We have been stuck in a predominantly sideways market most of this year and every breakout and breakdown has been a false alarm. Anyone who failed to realize this has been making the exact wrong trade at the exact wrong moment. Buying the breakout just before it fizzles and selling the breakdown just before it rebounds.

 

…ignore today’s late fizzle because it is meaningless. Just like last week’s breakout didn’t mean anything, and the fizzle before that. We are stuck in a market that refuses to go down nearly as much as it refuses to go up. Don’t fall for these tricks by reading too much into this meaningless price-action.

 

While we are in a mostly sideways market, the path of least resistance is definitely higher. Headlines have been resoundingly bearish over the last several weeks and the market has flatly refused to breakdown. If this market was fragile and vulnerable to a crash, it would have happened weeks ago. The fact we withstood wave after wave of bearish headlines means this market is far more resilient than most people realize. A market that refuses to go down will eventually go up.

Score 10/10: September’s bearish looking fizzle turned out to be nothing, exactly as I expected. One of the most important things about trading is knowing what rules to use when, and when to ignore those rules.

Scorecard

Thursday September 28th:
The bull that refuses to die


Earlier in the week we dipped under support, but rather than sell this technical violation, many traders rushed in to buy the dip. Ignore what the bears are saying, this market is healthy and poised to continue higher. August’s basing pattern refreshed the market by chasing off weak owners and replacing them with confident dip buyers. Given how long we have been holding near the highs tells us few owners are taking profits and most are confidently waiting for higher prices. As long as confident owners keep supply tight, expect the drift higher to continue.

 

August’s 2% pullback was quick and shallow. The market likes symmetry and as a result the subsequent rebound has also been equally unspectacular. There is nothing wrong with that, but it also isn’t a surprise or a concern how slow the breakout has been. Recent sellers are still nervous and it will take a little longer before they conceded selling last month was a mistake and buy back in. But few things calm nerves like rising prices and soon the fear of losses will be replaced by fear of being left behind.

Score 10/10: The next day we surged to record highs and September ended on a strong note. If big money was going to take profits, we would have seen that selling show up in the price-action. Expect October to be another good month for stocks and keep buying the dips.

Knowing what the market is going to do is the easy part. Getting the timing right is where all the money is made. Have insightful analysis like this delivered to your inbox every day during market hours while there is still time to act on it. Sign up for a free two-week trial.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you again next week.

Jani

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 29

Weekly Scorecard: Why this breakout was inevitable

By Jani Ziedins | Scorecard

Welcome to Cracked.Market’s weekly scorecard:

This post includes a summary of the week’s market developments, links to the free posts I published, and analysis on how accurate each post was since I wrote it. 

Weekly Analysis

This week’s theme was “no news is good news”. After several weeks of dire headlines, this week produced very little on the news front. That reprieve from bad news was all this market needed to surge to record highs. As I’ve been saying since early August, a market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. This proved to be the week we’ve been patiently waiting for.

This is a mild breakout as far as breakouts go, but there is nothing wrong with that. The market likes symmetry and last month’s 2% pullback was modest. As a result we should expect an equally modest rebound. This is a healthy market and there is nothing wrong or unusual with these slow and methodical gains.

Few things calm nerves like rising prices. Many of last month’s sellers are quickly going from fear of a crash to fear of being left behind. Underweight money managers are who were waiting for a bigger pullback are starting face the possibility it isn’t going to happen. If this market was vulnerable and fragile, last month’s headlines would have sent us tumbling. Standing strong through both the figurative and two literal storms tells us the path of least resistance remains higher. Gains will continue to be slow and choppy over the near-term, but expect the pace of gains to pick up later in the year as big money starts chasing performance into year-end.

Tuesday September 26th: Why smart traders ignore today’s price-action

In a directional market, a late fizzle like this would be a big red flag. It warns us there is no follow through and support is crumbling. But this isn’t a directional market and traditional trading signals don’t apply.

We have been stuck in a predominantly sideways market most of this year and every breakout and breakdown has been a false alarm. Anyone who failed to realize this has been making the exact wrong trade at the exact wrong moment. Buying the breakout just before it fizzles and selling the breakdown just before it rebounds.

Unfortunately the market fools traders with these tricks far more often than people are willing to admit. That’s because it is nearly impossible to come to the market without a bullish or bearish bias. Many traders cognitively know the market trades sideways 60% of the time, but in the moment they always think prices are either about to take off, or on the verge of collapse.

Score 10/10: In a more typical market, Tuesday’s weak close would have been big red flag and an attractive entry for a short trade. But this isn’t a typical market and we must ignore traditional trading signals. Just as I suspected, Tuesday’s weak close was nothing more than a false alarm and the next four trading sessions saw us charge to record highs.

Thursday September 28th: The bull that refuses to die

Volumes have been average or above since Labor Day. Big money finally returned from vacation and is getting back to work. It is encouraging to see they are more inclined to buy this strength than sell it. Fragile and vulnerable markets tumble quickly. Sticking near the psychologically significant 2,500 level for nearly three-weeks tells us the foundation under our feet is solid.

Earlier in the week we dipped under support, but rather than sell this technical violation, many traders rushed in to buy the dip. Ignore what the bears are saying, this market is healthy and poised to continue higher. August’s basing pattern refreshed the market by chasing off weak owners and replacing them with confident dip buyers. Given how long we have been holding near the highs tells us few owners are taking profits and most are confidently waiting for higher prices. As long as confident owners keep supply tight, expect the drift higher to continue.

Score 10/10: Big money is buying this market, not taking profits. The path of least resistance remains higher and Friday’s surge into record territory confirms it. Without a doubt this market wants to go higher and it is running over anyone who doubts it.

Cracked.Market University:

I started a new educational series and will publish new articles each Monday and Wednesday. Sign up for Free Email Alerts to be notified when new articles are published.

I included a brief quote from each educational piece below. Click on the headline to read the entire article. And don’t forget to come back for next week’s new educational pieces.

The most powerful technique for analyzing the market

Traders often predict the outcome of a market moving event correctly, unfortunately they are not as good at figuring out the market’s reaction. This leads to the popular misconception the market is “fixed” and “rigged”. This couldn’t be further from the truth and I will cover this fallacy in another blog post. In the meantime just take my word for it the market is an equal opportunity humiliator and does a fair and equitable job screwing over both retail and institutional investors. When you lose money, it isn’t because some cunning market villain stole your money, it’s because your analysis is missing key ingredients.

In my two decades of trading, far and away the most effective tool I use in identifying market’s next move is studying what it is NOT doing. Almost everyone obsesses over what the market is doing and tries to to fit these moves into their narratives, whether that is fundamental, technical, or a hybrid of the two.

Why popular investing strategies don’t work

Every popular investing strategy stops working once too many people start using it because the crowd quickly distorts the price-action that made it work in the first place. They sucks up all the profit potential and it is hardly worth the effort. Or the crowd triggers fake breakouts that suck everyone in and then spit them out with less money than they started with.

Knowing what the market is going to do is the easy part. Getting the timing right is where all the money is made. Have insightful analysis like this delivered to your inbox every day during market hours while there is still time to act on it. Sign up for a free two-week trial.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you again next week.

Jani

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 28

The bull that refuses to die

By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis

End of Day Update:

The S&P500 only closed higher by 0.12%, but that was enough to hit a new record close. Gains have been slow, but steady. There was no meaningful news driving today’s strength, simply a continuation of the recent drift higher. Given how ominous the last several weeks have been, at this point no news is good news. As I’ve been saying for a while, a market that refuses to go down will eventually go up.

It’s been several days since a North Korea headline hit the front page, but even if it did, the market has grown immune to those headlines and it will take something spectacular to dent this rally. Anyone who was afraid of North Korea sold weeks ago. When there is no one left to sell the news, it stops mattering.

The GOP released its tax reform proposal and the market is cautiously optimistic. Given how poorly Republicans handled healthcare, most traders are taking a cynical approach to tax reform. I suspect something will pass eventually, but it will look far different than what was proposed. But at this point anything is a positive since the stock market has largely given up on tax cuts. The easiest way to see the lack of hope is how little the stock market reacted to healthcare’s defeat. The market barely flinched at Trump’s and the Republican’s political humiliation. If traders had high expectations for tax reform, we would have seen a much bigger reaction to the Republican’s inability to get anything accomplished.

Volumes have been average or above since Labor Day. Big money finally returned from vacation and is getting back to work. It is encouraging to see they are more inclined to buy this strength than sell it. Fragile and vulnerable markets tumble quickly. Sticking near the psychologically significant 2,500 level for nearly three-weeks tells us the foundation under our feet is solid.

Earlier in the week we dipped under support, but rather than sell this technical violation, many traders rushed in to buy the dip. Ignore what the bears are saying, this market is healthy and poised to continue higher. August’s basing pattern refreshed the market by chasing off weak owners and replacing them with confident dip buyers. Given how long we have been holding near the highs tells us few owners are taking profits and most are confidently waiting for higher prices. As long as confident owners keep supply tight, expect the drift higher to continue.

August’s 2% pullback was quick and shallow. The market likes symmetry and as a result the subsequent rebound has also been equally unspectacular. There is nothing wrong with that, but it also isn’t a surprise or a concern how slow the breakout has been. Recent sellers are still nervous and it will take a little longer before they conceded selling last month was a mistake and buy back in. But few things calm nerves like rising prices and soon the fear of losses will be replaced by fear of being left behind.

Expect the gains to be slow and choppy over the near term, but soon underweight money managers are going to give up waiting for a larger pullback. Their chasing prices higher will give the market a boost in the final months of 2017. As long as the gains are slow and steady, they will be sustainable. I will get a lot more defensive if the rate of gains ramp up. A good opportunity to take profits could be following a pop on a tax reform agreement.

Expect these daily gyrations to continue, but the path of least resistance remains higher. Stick with what has been working and that is buy-and-hold and adding on dips.

Jani

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 27

CMU: Why popular investing strategies don’t work

By Jani Ziedins | Free CMU

Welcome to the new Cracked.Market University educational series. Look for new articles every Monday and Wednesday.

Why popular investing strategies don’t work

The library, bookstore, and late night TV are filled with “surefire” investing strategies that will allow you to quit your job and live a life of leisure. At least that is what the flashy dust jacket or energetic pitchman promises us. Follow their extra special fundamental screen, chart pattern, or buy a piece of software and you are well on your way to printing money. Sounds great, doesn’t it? If only it was that easy.

The first thing to realize is the stock market is largely a zero-sum game. That means under most circumstances, one trader’s profits come directly out of another trader’s pocket. This isn’t always a bad thing and both of sides can earn handsome profits in a rising market. But like every pyramid scheme, the last person loses out.

Profit opportunities arise in the stock market when prices are not where they are supposed to be. This is commonly referred to as an inefficiency. For one reason or another a stock’s price is out of alignment. Maybe sentiment is overly bullish or bearish. Maybe the public doesn’t know the company’s sales are about to miss expectations by a wide margin. Or maybe a secret product is about to be announced. Whatever the reason, the stock is about to experience a large move and owners are rewarded for being in the right place at the right time.

One of the most important things to realize about these profit opportunities is they are limited in potential. Not everyone can profit from the same opportunity. If too many people buy a discounted stock, their buying increases the stock price until the discount disappears.

Think of these profit opportunities like a $100 bill lying on the street. If I find it by myself, I keep all $100. If a good friend and I see it at the same time, we split it and both of us are $50 richer. If five friends come across the $100, each person benefits by $20. If 1,000 people find the $100, each person gets ten cents and at that point it is hardly worth the effort.

This same phenomena occurs with popular investment strategies. Let’s say a hypothetical formula identifies stocks that are undervalued by 20%. If we keep this strategy to ourselves, we make a lot of money. But if we publish a book with our strategy, a lot of people are going to start chasing the same 20% discounts. The more people looking for them, the harder it will be to get there first.

After missing out a few too many times, some investors decide they are perfectly happy with a 19% profit. Rather than wait for the stock to fall 20%, they jump in early so they don’t get left out again. Soon a lot of other people start doing the same thing and because of all the early buying, the stock never falls to a 20% discount.

Then some people decide 18% is good enough and they start buying even earlier. This process repeats over and over again until the discount shrinks from 20% to 10% to 5% and even 1%. The process of beating each other with the same investing strategy only stops once the profit opportunity is so small it isn’t worth the effort.

The above describes value investing, but the same process occurs in momentum stocks too. Let’s say there is a great stock screen that identifies companies with the largest profit growth. The strategy tells us to buy these momentum stocks when they breakout from a consolidation because that is when they have the most explosive upside. But soon everyone is chasing the same growth stocks at the same time and the breakout moves so fast few people can buy it before the stock is too far extended to buy safely.

Frustrated investors who get left behind a few too many times commit to buying the stock a little before it breaks out so they don’t get left behind again. It doesn’t take long before more and more investors are buying the stock before it breakouts and soon the buy early crowd is causing a breakout before the stock is ready. Without a sufficient consolidation, the breakout fizzles and tumbles back into the consolidation, triggering everyone’s stop-loss. Rather than make money using this surefire investing idea, all the followers are sitting on losses.

Every popular investing strategy stops working once too many people start using it because the crowd quickly distorts the price-action that made it work in the first place. They sucks up all the profit potential and it is hardly worth the effort. Or the crowd triggers fake breakouts that suck everyone in and then spit them out with less money than they started with.

Dogs of the Dow, value investing, momentum investing, technical analysis, candlesticks, cup-with-handle, etc, etc. When any strategy gets too popular, it stops working. The very act of people following a strategy changes it and that is enough to destroy the profit potential.

But don’t despair, there are a million different way to profit from the stock market. The key is to find a strategy that fits the way you look at the market and then add your special sauce. There is nothing wrong with starting with an existing strategy, but you must bring something extra to the process to make it profitable. Maybe you are a technophile and have a knack for knowing which products will be a hit before Wall Street figures it out. Or maybe you know which laggards are about to turn things around. Something, anything, but you absolutely must have that special sauce otherwise you are just one of clones fighting over the same $100.

In future Cracked.Market University pieces I will help you find unique ways to look at the market that will help you find your special sauce. Be sure to come back for more free CMU posts.

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 26

Why smart traders ignore today’s price-action

By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis

End of Day Update:

On Wednesday the S&P500 rebounded from Tuesday’s selloff but it was unable to hold those early gains and closed flat.

In a directional market, a late fizzle like this would be a big red flag. It warns us there is no follow through and support is crumbling. But this isn’t a directional market and traditional trading signals don’t apply.

We have been stuck in a predominantly sideways market most of this year and every breakout and breakdown has been a false alarm. Anyone who failed to realize this has been making the exact wrong trade at the exact wrong moment. Buying the breakout just before it fizzles and selling the breakdown just before it rebounds.

Unfortunately the market fools traders with these tricks far more often than people are willing to admit. That’s because it is nearly impossible to come to the market without a bullish or bearish bias. Many traders cognitively know the market trades sideways 60% of the time, but in the moment they always think prices are either about to take off, or on the verge of collapse.

Read any blog post or social media stream and all you see is endless bickering over whether the market is about to explode higher, or about to plummet. The rarest opinion is “meh, the market isn’t doing much and I don’t think it will do anything any time soon.”

Unfortunately for most traders these bullish and bearish biases convince them to buy the breakout or sell the breakdown, moments before prices reverse. Then they either chicken out or hit their stop-loss and lock-in their losses. To add insult to injury, prices reverse hours after the trader closes his position. Almost every single person reading this blog knows exactly what that feels like.

Buy high and sell low is a horrible way to trade the market, unfortunately it happens way more often than anyone wants to admit. Directional traders make a lot of money getting here, but they give it all back in these sideways stretches.

The above was a very long-winded way of saying, ignore today’s late fizzle because it is meaningless. Just like last week’s breakout didn’t mean anything, and the fizzle before that. We are stuck in a market that refuses to go down nearly as much as it refuses to go up. Don’t fall for these tricks by reading too much into this meaningless price-action.

While we are in a mostly sideways market, the path of least resistance is definitely higher. Headlines have been resoundingly bearish over the last several weeks and the market has flatly refused to breakdown. If this market was fragile and vulnerable to a crash, it would have happened weeks ago. The fact we withstood wave after wave of bearish headlines means this market is far more resilient than most people realize. A market that refuses to go down will eventually go up.

Keep doing what has been working. Stick with your buy-and-hold positions and add on dips. Big money returned from summer vacation and they are more inclined to buy this market than sell it. Expect this demand to prop up prices over the near-term as big money keeps buying every dip. Over the medium-term expect this resilience to pressure underweight managers into chasing prices higher into year-end. This is an old bull market, but it still has life in it. Underestimate it at your peril.

Jani

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 25

The most powerful technique for analyzing the market

By Jani Ziedins | Free CMU

Welcome to the new Cracked.Market University educational series. Look for new articles every Monday and Wednesday.

Many traders approach the market by trying to predict the outcome of an event and profit the market’s expected reaction. If the Fed raises rates, then the market will respond this way. If unemployment misses expectations, the market will move that way. Cause-and-effect analysis works well in everyday life it is natural to bring this line of thinking to the market. Unfortunately this method fails to account for how markets work and this omission explains why so many people lose money.

Traders often predict the outcome of a market moving event correctly, unfortunately they are not as good at figuring out the market’s reaction. This leads to the popular misconception the market is “fixed” and “rigged”. This couldn’t be further from the truth and I will cover this fallacy in another blog post. In the meantime just take my word for it the market is an equal opportunity humiliator and does a fair and equitable job screwing over both retail and institutional investors. When you lose money, it isn’t because some cunning market villain stole your money, it’s because your analysis is missing key ingredients.

In my two decades of trading, far and away the most effective tool I use in identifying market’s next move is studying what it is NOT doing. Almost everyone obsesses over what the market is doing and tries to to fit these moves into their narratives, whether that is fundamental, technical, or a hybrid of the two.

The problem is looking at what the market is doing inevitably leads us to thinking about what it “should” be doing. When the market doesn’t do what we think it should be doing, rather than admit we are missing something, our natural instinct is to argue with the it. This response is incredibly counterproductive and leads to more lost money than every other mistake traders make.

Take the current situation with North Korea. This is obviously a bearish development and there are grave consequences for everyone involved if this situation escalates beyond words. Despite these ominous warning signs, the market continues to hover near all-time highs. This leads many people claim the market is complacent, stupid, and worse. Common sense tells us the market should have sold off dramatically on these dire headlines. But we didn’t. That mean either the market is wrong, or god forbid, we are wrong. We couldn’t possibly be wrong, so obviously the market is wrong.

Rather than acknowledge the market’s strength, these critics double down and claim it will only be time before prices crash and they are proven right. The problem is these traders are missing the incredibly powerful signal the market is giving us. This market is not selling off, not because it is stupid, but because it is unbelievably resilient and strong. There are few things more bullish than a market that refuses to go down on bad news. Everyone who is spending all their energy arguing with this market is about to get run over.

If this market was fragile and vulnerable, it would have crashed a long time ago. Rather than argue with it, we should acknowledge it. Better yet, let’s profit from it! A market that refuses to down will eventually go up.

The same thing happens on the opposite side. A market that fails to go up on good news is a clear warning of potential exhaustion. A recent example is AMZN spiking on the acquisition of WFM. Since then the stock is down 13% and it definitely looks like it is struggling to find new buyers.

Asking what is the market is not doing gives a trader great insight into which direction a stock is inclined to go. A market that refuses to go down on bad news has a lot of upside potential in it. A stock that fails to go higher despite all the praise it is getting is a clear sign new buyers are scarce and at the very least it needs to rest and consolidate recent gains.

I have a large assortment of tools and techniques I use to evaluate the market, but this is far and away the easiest, most powerful, and most profitable tool I use.

If you found this post useful, share it with your friends, colleagues, and followers!

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 22

Weekly Scorecard: North Korea still doesn’t matter

By Jani Ziedins | Scorecard

Welcome to Cracked.Market’s weekly scorecard:

This post includes a summary of the week’s market developments, links to the free posts I published, and analysis on how accurate each post was since I wrote it. 

Weekly Analysis:

Tensions with North Korea flared up again as Trump threatened to “Totally Destroy” North Korea in a speech to the U.N. and North Korea retaliated by threatening to test a nuclear bomb in the Pacific Ocean. Last month headlines like these sent the market tumbling 1.5%. This month the market barely flinches.

News gets priced in over time. That’s because owners who are afraid of these headlines sold weeks ago and were replaced by confident dip-buyers who demonstrated a willingness to hold these risks. Since everyone who is afraid of North Korea already bailed out, there is no one left to sell this latest round of headlines. When no one sells the news, it stops mattering and that is exactly what happened here.

The other significant development was the Fed announced it would start winding down its bond portfolio and they left the door open to a third rate-hike later this year. While both of these developments are potentially bearish, the market expected these policy decisions and they didn’t move the market. It’s been years since a Fed decision moved prices in a meaningful and sustainable way and this time was no different.

The market’s price-action has been incredibly resilient given the headline uncertainty. A market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. Keep doing what has been working and that is sticking with this bull market.

Read my daily posts for deeper insights and analysis on these topics and more.

Tuesday Sept 19th: Stick with this Bull

“As we saw today, the North Korean rhetoric no longer matters to the market and we can safely ignore it. Next item coming up is the Fed’s policy statement on Wednesday. Consensus is the Fed will start winding down its balance sheet. This is an anti-stimulus move, but the market is largely ready for it. Yellen and the Fed have done a great job telegraphing their moves to minimize disrupting financial markets. While we should expect a brief bout of volatility, it’s been years since a Fed decision affecting the market in a significant and lasting way. I don’t expect tomorrow to be any different.”

Score 10/10: This analysis was spot on. North Korean headlines failed to ignite a selloff and the market barely moved after the Fed announced exactly what everyone thought they would. Read the entire post for more insights into why the market reacted to these events the way it did.

Thursday Sept 21st: Don’t fear a routine and healthy dip

“If we are expecting the market to collapse on bad news, Thursday’s “news-less” day definitely won’t cut it. This market withstood a nearly constant barrage of negative headlines over the last month and barely sold off two-percent. If those headlines couldn’t break us, there is definitely nothing in the current news cycle that tops ballistic missile launches, nuclear bomb tests, and back-to-back hurricanes. That resilience means we can safely cross news-fueled selloff from the list of vulnerabilities. If this market was going to crash on bad news, it would have happened weeks ago.”

“As I write this, overnight futures slipped on Asian weakness. But as I said above, testing support is a normal and healthy part of moving higher. There is nothing to worry about if we dip under 2,500 support. A wave of selling might hit us as recent buyers’ stop-losses are triggered. But that selling will quickly dry up like it has every other time this year. Confident owners didn’t sell far more dire headlines last month and there is no reason to think they will start bailing out now. Confident owners keep supply tight and prop up prices. That has been happening all year-long and there is no reason to think something has changed here.”

Score 10/10: This analysis from Thursday night perfectly described Friday’s price-action. Predicting what the market will do isn’t hard if you take your time to thoughtfully think about what is happening and resist the temptation to join the crowd’s overreactions.

Cracked.Market University: Contrarian Investing: Why most people screw it up

I started a new educational series and will publish new articles each Monday and Wednesday. Sign up for Free Email Alerts to be notified when new articles are published.

“All too often people mistakenly think they are contrarian investors when all they are doing is arguing with the market. If a price is going up, they sell it. If the market is going down, they buy it. At this point many of you are scratching your head because that sounds exactly like what I described in Part 1. Isn’t it?

“Nope, not even close. Don’t feel bad, this is an easy to mistake to make and it costs a lot of smart people a lot of money every day. Contrarian investing is not going against the price or the trend. Never forget price and trend have nothing to do with contrarian investing! The only thing that matters to the contrarian is what the crowd thinks.

“More often than not the contrarian trade is actual follows the market trend and buys something that has gone “too far”. Or sells something that has gone “too low”.”

This post generated quite a bit of enthusiasm and was enjoyed by many of my followers. Click the link above to read the full post.

Knowing what the market is going to do is the easy part. Getting the timing right is where all the money is made. Have insightful analysis like this delivered to your inbox every day during market hours while there is still time to act on it. Sign up for a free two-week trial.

Have a great weekend and I hope to see you again next week.

Jani

If you found this post useful, return the favor by Re-Tweeting it.

If you want to be notified when new posts are published, sign up for Free Email Alerts. 

Sep 21

Don’t fear a routine and healthy dip

By Jani Ziedins | End of Day Analysis

End of Day Update:

On Thursday the S&P500 experienced the largest drop in over two-weeks. As dramatic as that sounds, we only lost 0.3% in a relatively benign pullback to support. This was the lowest volume day this month and the first time trade has been below average since August.

As far as pullbacks go, this one was as mild as they get. There are two ways to interpret this. Either this dip was the best bears could manage in such a resilient and strong bull market. Or these are the first cracks in what is about to become a larger selloff.

If a person thinks a bull market needs to go up every single day, they should be worried about this price-action. For the rest of us, we know markets moves in waves and down days are a normal and healthy part of moving higher. Prior to today the S&P500 was up seven out of the last eight days and a routine down day was long overdue.

The question is if this is the first signs of a larger down move? Headline wise not a lot happened Thursday. The biggest market news was a continued digesting of Wednesday’s Fed policy statement that announced the unwinding of their bond positions and the continued possibility of a third rate-hike later this year. While both of those actions are relatively bearish, the market widely expected these moves and no one was caught by surprise. We slipped a little in Wednesday’s intraday trade, but a late-day rebound put us back where we started by the close. Thursday’s dip retraced some of Wednesday’s selloff, but it didn’t undercut the lows.

If we are expecting the market to collapse on bad news, Thursday’s “news-less” day definitely won’t cut it. This market withstood a nearly constant barrage of negative headlines over the last month and barely sold off two-percent. If those headlines couldn’t break us, there is definitely nothing in the current news cycle that tops ballistic missile launches, nuclear bomb tests, and back-to-back hurricanes. That resilience means we can safely cross news-fueled selloff from the list of vulnerabilities. If this market was going to crash on bad news, it would have happened weeks ago.

The next possibility is this bull market is extended and exhausted. Markets that rally too-far, too-fast are prone to collapse because everyone who could have bought has already bought and there is no one left to keep pushing prices higher. But the thing about exhaustion tops is prices race ahead and climb at a steeper rate than the prior uptrend. Is that price-action happening here?

The last several months were a sideways consolidation that ended with a double bottom and rebound off of the 50 day moving average. That looks more like sustainable base building than overextended exhaustion.

If this market is not vulnerable to negative headlines and the recent consolidation looks more supportive than threatening, do we really think Thursday’s dip is the start of something bigger? Or just one of those normal and healthy down-days that accompany every increase in prices?

As I’ve been saying for over a month, if this market was fragile and vulnerable, we would have crashed by now. While the rate of gains is nothing to get excited about, a market that refuses to go down will eventually go up. I see no reason to think anything has changed in the last several days. That means keep doing what has been working. Continue holding your favorite positions and adding more on the dips.

As I write this, overnight futures slipped on Asian weakness. But as I said above, testing support is a normal and healthy part of moving higher. There is nothing to worry about if we dip under 2,500 support. A wave of selling might hit us as recent buyers’ stop-losses are triggered. But that selling will quickly dry up like it has every other time this year. Confident owners didn’t sell far more dire headlines last month and there is no reason to think they will start bailing out now. Confident owners keep supply tight and prop up prices. That has been happening all year-long and there is no reason to think something has changed here.

Jani

If you found this post useful, return the favor by Re-Tweeting it.
If you disagree, tell me why in the comments.

Free blog posts are published Tuesday and Thursday evenings.
Signup for Free Email Alerts and be the first to read my latest analysis.

1 … 185 186 187 188 189 … 247