3-29-15 Comments

[Mike]

IBD has the Market Under Pressure. In a study I have seen regarding growth stock breakouts since 2003 the best opportunities came with the market in correction and the worst times came when the market was under pressure. The first part may seem counter intuitive but by the time stocks start breaking out in a correction the Follow Through Day usually comes along and the early breakouts do okay. So it seems we are currently in the worst of times.

The Market School position is 30% invested on the long side with buy switch on, waiting (hoping) for a FTD to reset the distribution count which is now high at 7 days. These distribution resetting FTDs are a bit different from normal FTDs when the buy switch is off and are part of a complicated advanced technique. The earliest we could see a legal FTD is Tuesday (day-4 of an advance off of a low).

With the USD index still riding high at 97.6 I expect companies with big exposure to international sales to miss profits in the upcoming earnings releases. This would equate to many large cap companies. Thus I am suspecting that we could see a real correction develop in the coming months. I don't know how this would impact the FED but I doubt it would hasten their move to tighten.

Watch lists in the High Growth section are updated.

[Harry]

Appreciate the write-up Mike.

Harry

[eschroeter]

What are your thoughts on the success of Market School? Is it still an official IBD premium feature? Any changes in the methodology of note?

[Mike]

What are your thoughts on the success of Market School? Is it still an official IBD premium feature? Any changes in the methodology of note?

Market School is still being taught, the next seminar is in Florida April or May. They are going to convert it to a home study course soon. Market School brings in some techniques that Bill O'Neil uses that are taught nowhere else. The prime example may be setting up right now in the market. When the distribution count climbs to a full count (+6) in a 25 day trailing window and a pullback occurs followed by a follow-through-like day Bill will zero the distribution count. Normally follow-through days apply to situation when the buy switch is off but this is a case where the FTD is used in an ongoing rally with the buy switch on. We are at a full count right now and we have had a pullback. Today is day-4 of a possible advance so if the market strengthens going forward the distribution count could drop to zero. IBD won't make mention this in the paper if it occurs, nor will they drop the count in IBD. Bill and his portfolio managers will however.

The changes that have occurred involve the addition of an S14 sell signal (sell if we close below the last marked high that triggered a B8 higher-high buy signal. The definition of the power trend has changed also making it much more "sticky" keeping the buy switch on more of the time. There have been minor tweaks to other rules.

The buy switch is on now in a power trend with an investment level of 55%. We have 7 days of distribution.

[eschroeter]

Thank you, Mike. You obviously have an excellent grasp of all the rules. Can one still get the notifications of Market School through Leaderboard? Also, plain and simple, do you think it still works? Any results anywhere I can look at? (I realize it is stock-selection dependent, but perhaps someone has some numbers using simply an index, etc.)

[Mike]

Thank you, Mike. You obviously have an excellent grasp of all the rules. Can one still get the notifications of Market School through Leaderboard? Also, plain and simple, do you think it still works? Any results anywhere I can look at? (I realize it is stock-selection dependent, but perhaps someone has some numbers using simply an index, etc.)

Market School posts results of the exposure model on Leaderboard if you have attended Market School, otherwise the data is hidden from view. I presume this will continue to be the case with the upcoming home study course. The exposure model is a good guide to what you should be doing in the market and in my opinion better than I have been able to do by reading IBD or other mechanisms I have tried. As a way to measure performance I show the following chart.



The blue line represents passive buy and hold. The buy and hold strategy buys one share of the NASDAQ on 1/2/1973 at $134.63 and holds it until yesterday's close value of $4,947.44.

The red line starts with a starting portfolio of $134.63 on 1/2/1973 (same as buy and hold) and buys the NASDAQ index at the Market School recommended exposure (0% to 100%) ending up with $43,599.19 at yesterday's close.

The first conclusion is that timing the market can work but you should note that I have not modeled trading costs in this analysis which would reduce the performance of the exposure model (red line). Also note that you can't really buy NASDAQ shares, this is just a way to measure relative performance of two approaches using the underlying index that the exposure model is using. Also note that this is a cash portfolio analysis, judicious use of margin could increase the performance over this baseline case.

For me the best part of the approach is what I learned about reading the market with a totally mechanical model. It is a true unbiased read of the market as the only inputs are index price and volume.