Hi, Shrewd!        Login  
Shrewd'm.com 
A merry & shrewd investing community
Best Of MIBest OfAll BoardsThe Shrewd’m WeeklyLearn to InvestHow to Become Shrewd
Search
Shrewd'm.com Merry shrewd investors
Search
Best Of MIBest OfAll BoardsThe Shrewd’m WeeklyLearn to InvestHow to Become Shrewd


The week's question
In December 2024, in the thread "Re: BRK: Why Not XOM?", BreckHutHigh asked the members: "What about the long road trips with kids?" This week it is put to everyone again. The button below opens the small thread re-asking it - read what others have said so far, then give your own answer as an ordinary reply.
Answer this questionContinue to Shrewd'mThis note won't appear again
Investment Strategies / Mechanical Investing
Unthreaded | Threaded | Whole Thread (9) |
Author: mungofitch 🐝🐝🐝 GOLD
SHREWD
  😊 😞

Number: of 6131 
Subject: Re: Minor Major Market Bottom Indicator
Date: 03/23/26 10:54 AM
Post New | Post Reply | Report Post | Recommend It!
No. of Recommendations: 24
If you'll share the methodology and datasets, I can make this do exactly what you do.

I described it in moderate detail before, though not a couple of probably meaningless tweaks that make me feel important and mysterious.

Broad strokes for the major bottom detector:

It's based mostly on new highs and new lows, each expressed as a percentage of total issues, looking for an extreme in both of those at the same time. Low #highs and high #lows. Nothing surprising. Those numbers are smoothed a bit.

Those two numbers are combined with a relative weighting into a single metric, as they aren't equally important. That combo metric is ranked among a lookback history of itself, and the percentile tested against a cutoff. Different levels of cutoff give different certainties of a bottom, and have different average forward returns, which is why I sometimes mention whether the signal was weak or strong on a given day. I do have a single "canonical" cutoff though.

My short term bottom and major bottom models are constructed differently, not just two different cutoffs of the same metric.

The main flaw is that it will give a whole bunch of signals all the way down a "waterfall" market crash like late 2008. Despite being bad signals, one year forward returns are still fine from the earlier signals, which is what it's tuned to accomplish, but the first month or two can be (ahem) arbitrarily low, just as a market bottom can be arbitrarily low. Most of the time you only get a short cluster or two, so it's not a big deal, but it gets confused in a big lasting meltdown and signals too early.

Jim
Post New | Post Reply | Report Post | Recommend It!
Print the post
Members reply directly to mungofitch here — and replies get answered. Reading is free; so is joining the conversation. Join Shrewd'm »
This community has written 6,115 posts about Mechanical Investing. The article-length ones it recommended most:
Dividend investing · 52 recs · 2025
Non-Mag7 screen · 34 recs · 2025
OT - Div yields and returns · 32 recs · 2024
Using AI to generate backtesting programs · 30 recs · 2025
Rankings for 19Dec2022 · 29 recs · 2022
Unthreaded | Threaded | Whole Thread (9) |


Announcements
Mechanical Investing FAQ
Contact Shrewd'm
Contact the developer of these message boards.

Best Of MI | Best Of | Favourites & Replies | All Boards | Followed Shrewds | Open Questions | Moving a community