Tag: trade

A price above the cloud is auspicious; one below it is ominous. A true chartist needs only such information and “does not even care to know what business or industry a company is in, as long as he or she can study its chart”, as Burton Malkiel, an economist at Princeton and author of “A Random Walk Down Wall Street”, has noted.

These methods, though patently mad, have attracted attention lately because of how the s&p 500, the leading index of American stocks, has wiggled around. After slumping to a low of 3,637 on June 17th the index began to climb. On August 16th it peaked at an intraday high of around 4,325, a whisker away from its 200-day moving average of 4,326—a supposedly critical technical level.

An asset that has fallen in price but is rising is supposed to meet “resistance” at such levels. To chartists it is concerning when an asset fails to “break through” a resistance barrier—it is an indication of a bear-market rally, rather than a true bull market. And so, this time, it appears to have been: stocks have slumped by around 8% since August 16th.

Plenty of mainstream investors use some version of trend-following. Factor investing, invented by Eugene Fama, the Nobel prize-winning economist, and Kenneth French, is used by successful quantitative funds, like aqr Capital Management. It breaks down returns into component factors like “size” (small companies earn better returns than bigger ones) or “quality” (low-debt, stable businesses earn better returns than riskier ones).

Another such factor is momentum: stocks that are rising tend to keep rising. Still, their approach is a little more sophisticated than looking at a price chart. aqr’s algorithms tend to combine factors like momentum with others. They might buy, say, a small or high-quality firm whose share price has recently risen.

It is nevertheless possible to understand the chartists’ obsession with levels and trends. There is no real difference between a euro being worth $1.0001 or $0.9999, but these “big figures” in foreign-exchange markets assume importance. This is in part symbolic and in part practical: clients tend to place orders near round numbers and derivatives tend to be sold with round “strike prices”. That means it will take a lot more activity for the euro to fall from $1.0001 to $0.9999 than for it to fall from $1.0487 to $1.0485.

When placing orders, investors try to figure out where others are placing theirs. That can help them place a stop-loss order, to close a trade that moves against them, at a sensible level. If enough investors look at technical levels to inform their behaviour, then they begin to matter. Perhaps the real value of technical analysis is what its use tells you about market conditions.

No one bothers with the chartists’ pretty drawings when the economy is good, profits are high and stocks are moving smoothly higher—nor, indeed, in the depths of a frantic bear market, when prices will plunge through any and all levels technical analysts are wont to draw. Much as people who are feeling restless about the direction of their lives are more prone to become interested in astrology, investors who are uneasy about the direction of the markets will reach for the easy reassurance of an eye-catching diagram.

That some are laying the blame for the end of the summer rally on a technical tripwire suggests they have little idea what is really going on. Perhaps Buttonwood should derive a technical indicator of her own: the more regularly chartist analysis lands in her inbox, the clearer it is that no one has any clue as to why the markets are moving.

Correction (September 2nd 2022): An earlier version of this article said Eugene Fama and Kenneth French won the Nobel prize for their work on factor investing. They did not. Mr Fama won a Nobel prize for his work on the efficient-markets hypothesis. Mr French is yet to win a Nobel. Sorry.

Source: Why investors are reaching for the astrology of finance | The Economist

Critics:

Is it really that simple? I’ll fully admit that most of my understanding of the stock market is based on intuition and reading books with flashy titles. In other words, I’m far above the moving charalatan average in most aspects of my life, and you also sound like you might actually know what you’re talking about based on how definitive your answer is. If you also, for example, back-test a moving average strategy it usually ends up terrible I’ve noticed–either making almost no money or losing money.

Yet, I really like watching the stock market. It’s my favorite hobby in fact. It certainly feels like a death cross is going to be a bad time when it happens, but maybe the truth is more complicated then the cryptic silly lines I gain so much joy from.

You might already know this, but the stock market death-crossed around January and then it went down for a long time after that. But it also doesn’t always go down so dramatically every time there is a death cross. I’m not keeping accurate tallies on the whole thing, but it seems like it’s often bad when those two lines cross and often good when they cross in the opposite direction–the so-called “golden cross”.

I did actually put a little money on a stock because it golden-crossed recently and it went way up today, which was pretty exciting news. And I’m also avoiding a lot of stocks because they are about to death-crossed or just have recently on the weekly charts, but you know, I can also understand how the language I’m using might be mistaken for a seance organized by a bunch of teenagers dressed like vampires.

Mostly I listen to smart people like Warran Buffet and buy value stocks with good p/e, price-to-book, lots of equity, less debt, good earnings etc. It would be silly not to listen to the richest man in the world about what kind stocks to buy. Yet, it still feels like there’s something else there, even if my little hobby is about as realistic as playing a round of magic the gathering. It’s, you know, my little hour of make believe, that I put some money into in order to escape my otherwise mundane and factual existence.

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