One afternoon he read the numbers on my ticket stub. The prize was an air-pumped rocket. My friend Elly and I went to an open field, pumped it as hard as we could, and let it go. It went straight up, stalled, lost momentum, nose-dived and hit the sidewalk.
Stock Markets soar and crash too. Stock Market traders sometimes become kids with a toy. Every day the market pumps itself up. Indices spiral upward making many giddy with kiddish delight; nobody wants this rocket to fall from its lofty heights. With little notice, the market stalls, momentum is lost, and markets crash.
Simple laws of gravity inform us that upward moves of any force require energy and momentum. The stock market is ruled by the same laws. Markets cannot, will not, and have not moved in one direction without correcting. This means that bull markets are not forever, and bear markets are bearable.
"What happened?"
My toy rocket did not give me any warning when falling to reality. Stock markets project warning signs when upward momentum stalls. You never want markets to go up forever. It is best when markets move up, pause, contract, and build a base before making their next move.
A base-line provides support for a market index like the Dow or the S&P. Long support lines give investors solace because it takes a lot of sellers to break through it. A support line or base (see image) is a trading pattern of stock buying and selling with little price change.
No support means the market index has potential to keep falling until it finds a support line/base or bottom. Markets stall when reaching a high price on average daily stock trading volume. Bulls (buyers) will strain to push the markets upward, but Bears (sellers) thwart the momentum. An excessive number of sellers (many more than the average) can force an index/stock to new lows.
"Make it go higher!"
My toy rocket did not reach heights too fast. Elly and I were ten or eleven years old; we wanted that rocket to disappear in the clouds. Many investors act the same way; they want the markets to go up and up because it means more money. When markets hit successive days of positive returns, investors get starry-eyed. We like it when Neil Cavuto (among others) reports new highs for the Dow (read " The Dow Jones Industrial Average: Failing the Average Investor" by Steven Selengut).
Dizzying heights cause most investors to miss subtle market moves. Stocks/indices must move higher on strong buying volume. When markets reach a bench-marked high level, getting past it will take three times the average number of daily buyers.If the price stalls at the bench-marked high and the buying volume is less than the daily average, index prices decline.
"Don't worry."
Elly never worried; I always worried. When that rocket went off, I feared it would break a window or hurt someone. Elly said, "Just pump it Ray and let it go!" Some stock investors never worry. Wise Wall Streeters know that "The market needs to climb a wall of worry." War, high oil prices, poor consumer sentiment, and Federal Reserve rate increases are walls of worry. Euphoric investors topple markets.
Something to Fear
The Vix Index is the "fear index" When the Vix spikes, worry increases; when the Vix is down, optimism is excessive. Today, May 22, 2006), the Vix spiked. The VIX "is a good indicator of the level of fear or greed in U.S. and global capital markets. When investors are fearful, the VIX level is significantly higher than normal." (Antognelli, Ferreira, McArdle, and Traub. "Fear and Greed in Global Asset Allocation." The Journal of Investing. (Spring 2000), pp. 27 - 32). Every rocket must return to earth for refueling. I learned this with my friend Elly and my toy rocket.
Want to build a toy rocket? Gary Rollins tells you how in his articleBuilding A Model Rocket Can Be A Great Learning Experience
It would be difficult to imagine a more interesting and chaotic time in the financial markets. We're seeing market characteristics (daily ranges, reversal patterns, etc.) that are literally unprecedented. The volatility (as measured by Average True Range or ATR) of almost every major trading instrument is at all time highs. It doesn't matter if you're looking at stock indexes, bonds, oil, gold, currencies, etc. It seems that the only broad groups of instruments not trading at their highest volatilities ever are the smaller commodities that don't have big hedge fund and institutional interest- things like coffee and orange juice. This volatility expansion is significant for several reasons: It is broad-reaching. As mentioned above, it is hitting practically every traded instrument. It is persistent. The markets are no strangers to volatility spikes. We see them come and go when particularly juicy reasons for fear or greed enter the markets. But this volatility explosion has not subsided. Depending on how you measure "persistence"; the volatility "spike" has lasted four to six weeks, not just for a few days. It is huge. Back in April of 2000, we made the previous volatility highs when the Internet bubble started to collapse. Then volatility (as measured by 14 day ATR) was 3.0% of price. Last Wednesday, this same ratio showed ATR at an astonishing 8.3% of price!! To punctuate the truly wild nature of the recent market volatility-here's an interesting market tidbit: today is a "Fed Day" (FOMC meeting announcement) and after dropping both key rates by 50 basis points, it looks like the market will have a day within only 2/3rds of its recent range! I think that the market is giving us some really important information through this language of high volatility. The message is this: the uncertainty of where the markets are heading next has never been higher. With the slightest whiff of negative news, the market free falls. When even a shimmer of hope comes along (like the Fed strongly hinting that the rate cut was real yesterday, sending the markets up 10%), the markets jump through the roof. It's like a cat on a hot tin roof... after drinking a can of Red Bull. Every move is over exaggerated. One of the questions that I get most often is " when will the market return to some sense of normalcy?" It's hard to predict this, of course. But one key indicator will be when the volatility settles way down from its current unprecedented highs. It's okay if the market is directional; I don't think we'll see a traditional basing / consolidation period from here. But what IS needed is a sense that the markets don't jump every time someone whispers, "Boo". And a volatility contraction will be a good (and maybe the best) indication that this is happening.
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