May 6, 2022

MarketMap-2022 The Scenario Planner

The GOP is CRAZY! and the Dems are a pack of limp wrist Betas

This lack of civility and the widening gap in American political norms hangs like the sword of Damocles over the markets and our way of governance.

In the market map issue #3 which was published in mid-January of 2022, we pointed out that when the Dow made seasonal peaks between the December 11th and January 15th bracket it had similar outcomes in terms of market behavior. We pointed out that during that 12-month period following the peaks the market behavior – the scenario of the market – was remarkably similar to each other from high pivot to selling panic and from the top to the ultimate low. In the three market parallels used here, there is a strong sell-off in May and June with an ultimate panic low in mid-October. That low in the fall of the year is associated with a national security event.

We also pointed out that those three tops were followed by national security threats that the market did not know how to deal when the events happened. And that this seasonal top pattern was a twofold caliber because there was an event in October of the year of the December-January peaks and there was another national security event that put pressure on the markets in the following year between August and October.

While there were other examples historically, we focused on the modern events that traders, analysts, and advisers could relate to and they are 1961, 1973, and 2000. If you refer to the COT (change of trend table) you’ll see that we highlight anniversary dates that occurred in these three parallel seasons. The 2018 experience was very close to meeting the seasonal envelope projected but its top was outside the bracket on 1/26/18.

Contrary Thinker sees the pattern being significant in 2022 based on its own history and other unrelated methods that suggest the same scenario. So, we’ll take a look at each in some detail.

In 1962 there was a high rate of change sell-off in May and June with a mini panic low on May 28th, 1962, and again on June 22^nd. These two-anniversary dates are on the near-term horizon and today’s expectation is for the market to be 25% lower from here and enter a panic condition. Traders should be looking for we should be looking for those long bar days from opening high to closing low on those days exceeding 4% to 5% which on the Dow is about 1500 to 2000 points.

Next week the current tidal cycle opens up the likelihood of such long bar days to begin.

The form the markets are likely to take is a 1930s type trading market where in effect you have big swings going down 70% and then bouncing back 50%. These big swings will be great for good market timers. There are a number of reasons for this scenario, but one is clear and loop side. That is after 21 years of buying the dips and holding long stocks for the great bull market where market timing became a nonexistent thing with few knowing really how it works, the next ten to twenty years will be dominated by this group of specialists.

Alternately if the market turns out to be like the nifty 50 peaks in January of 1973 followed by the worst bear market since the Great Depression um at the time that bear market was one of the dullest low volatility declines in history and only had one countertrend rally at the end of eight months of 20%. Otherwise, it was really a dull decline we don’t think that’s going to be the case looking forward, because we’ve just exited a decade of very low volatility conditions, especially in 2017.

But I want you to pay attention to the key conclusions here of the December 14th through January 15th tops in that from those highs you can count

This work by Jack Cahn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International