Monday, May 2, 2011

The Market as Rorschach: Trading Osama

Combining our proprietary "What's on TV" timing model (backtested to January) with some fancy pattern recognition software gives us a trade set-up.

A burst of enthusiasm causes sellers to pull their offers.
Seeing planned trades moving away from them buyers increase their bids.
Markets gap up at the open and continue higher until somewhere between 2 and 4 p.m. EDT.
It dawns, first on the computers, then on the wetware that this is a silly reason to be jumping to pick off offers.
This daily high is also the high for the week with the market losing some of its daily gains into todays close.
The selling continues Tuesday and Wednesday resulting in a three to four percent decline, top to bottom.

There.
I've violated the sacred laws of analysis.
1) I've made a public prognostication where I have nothing to gain by being right and egg on the face by being wrong.
2) I failed to couch my bet in terms vague enough that it can be spun with ex post facto revisionism.
3) Most importantly, the prime rule: If you give a price target, never, ever give a date. Much less a time.

With 20 minutes to the open S&P futures are up 7.30, DJIA futures up 72.