Are negative divergences necessarily bearish?

February 18, 2024 at 13:11 PM EST

Preface: Explaining our market timing models We maintain several market timing models, each with differing time horizons. The "Ultimate Market Timing Model" is a long-term market timing model based on the research outlined in our post, Building the ultimate market timing model. This model tends to generate only a handful of signals each decade.
The Trend Asset Allocation Model is an asset allocation model that applies trend-following principles based on the inputs of global stock and commodity prices. This model has a shorter time horizon and tends to turn over about 4-6 times a year. The performance and full details of a model portfolio based on the out-of-sample signals of the Trend Model can be found here.

My inner trader uses a trading model, which is a blend of price momentum (is the Trend Model becoming more bullish, or bearish?) and overbought/oversold extremes (don't buy if the trend is overbought, and vice versa). Subscribers receive real-time alerts of model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of the email alerts is updated weekly here. The hypothetical trading record of the trading model of the real-time alerts that began in March 2016 is shown below.

The latest signals of each model are as follows:

Ultimate market timing model: Buy equities (Last changed from “sell” on 28-Jul-2023)*
Trend Model signal: Bullish (Last changed from “neutral” on 28-Jul-2023)*
Trading model: Neutral (Last changed from “bullish” on 24-Jan-2024)*

* The performance chart and model readings have been delayed by a week out of respect to our paying subscribers.

Update schedule: I generally update model readings on my site on weekends. I am also on X/Twitter at @humblestudent. Subscribers receive real-time alerts of trading model changes, and a hypothetical trading record of those email alerts is shown here.

Subscribers can access the latest signal in real time here.

Divergences everywhereFrom a technical perspective, divergences may not matter in the short term, but long-term divergences are particularly worrisome.

The accompanying chart shows a series of long-term divergences that are concerning. Even as the S&P 500 rallied to all-time highs, the NYSE Advance-Decline Line did not confirm the fresh high. The relative performance of high beta to low volatility stocks, which is an indicator of equity risk appetite, is barely testing its overhead resistance. In the meantime, the 10-year Treasury yield (inverted scale) has been climbing and higher yields offer an increasingly more attractive alternative for investors. And the USD, which is historically inversely correlated to the S&P 500, has been rallying and creating headwinds for stock prices.

How concerned should investors be about these divergences? The full post can be found here.