No. of Recommendations: 20
As at least half of the whole thread drifted into correcting misperceptions about how BCC is binary encoded, away from the original subject of the thread, whether (or how well) BCC worked post-discovery:
What are your conclusions?
For the 99 day signal (no new high lately), since the original post 2008-09-26
Original version as described has been bullish 84.1% of the time.
S&P 500 real total return (not annualized) during bullish periods has been 226.6%
S&P 500 real total return (not annualized) during the rest of the time has been 4.9%.
So, if you had been long in the bullish periods and had no return the rest of the time, your portfolio size would be worse off by 4.9% having used this as a timing signal.
This result is mainly because of whipsaws, getting out too hastily. (and secondarily because it is a trend following system, and the 2020 plunge was right after market highs)
For variants with the day count of 115 days or longer (up to maybe 175), a long/no-return strategy would have beat the S&P. Lately, it looks like a 135 day timeout might be about optimal.
So...the periods tagged as bullish were indeed mostly pretty bullish. Daily CAGR 1.28%/year higher than the overall time period since the 2008 post.
But the periods NOT tagged as bullish were not reliably bad.
This is a failure if seen as a long/short timing signal, but somewhat in keeping with the original intent of the signal: identifying times it is safe to go in the water, without an attempt to say much about the market at other times. The two signal states are in effect "bullish" and "beats me", not bullish and bearish.
Jim
