Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Chartology: Watching For a Top In The Market

We don't have a lot of faith in long term chart patterns* but Kimble does and here's what he's looking at.
For what it's worth we think the markets, U.S. and MSCI, can chug forward for a couple more years.
Albeit with more variance than we saw over the first 5 1/2 years of the big bull.

From Kimble Charting Solutions:

http://blog.kimblechartingsolutions.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/nysebreakingsupportspydojijan27.jpg
Is the NYSE creating a "Giant Topping" pattern? Rising wedge patterns lead to lower prices around two-thirds of the time. At this moment, a top is not proven! For sure I do respect the potential that a rising wedge pattern could have some impact in the near future on this key broad market.

The upper left chart line (1) is based upon monthly closing prices starting with the 1987 lows. Notice that several key lows took place along this line and 2011's highs touched this line as well.

The apex of the rising wedge is narrowing, meaning this pattern should end fairly soon. The NYSE is a fraction below this line as of last night close, as the index has traded sideways for the past 6 months.

Last month SPY may have created a Doji Star topping pattern (lower right chart) at the 161% Fibonacci extension level based upon the monthly closing high in 2007 and monthly closing low in 2009....MORE
*First and most importantly is the "market memory" that price charts represent. If the goes too far back no one remembers that stocks petered out at this price resistance level or that support level.

Secondly, the markets under study have on average sample size of n=1, so the error bars have to be pretty widely spaced.