[JimStudent]

...So personally I think the method performed beautifully with this recent breakdown, highlighting the increased risks in the US market well in advance in the weight of evidence, and via the multiple failed breakouts and majority of stocks moving into Stages 3 and 4, then finally the indexes themselves

Thanks again for all your hard work. And I agree the method works perfectly, I am almost 100% in cash except for a very small speculative position in GDXJ, (I hope it is in the stage 1b accumulation phase but that remains to be seen)

When I say I missed the August move, I have to admit I don't have one short position open. So hopefully some of us that have been mostly just reading will post some of what we are thinking. There is a saying, "As iron sharpens iron,
So a man sharpens the countenance of his friend." Hopefully we can cause each other to sharpen our trading skills.

[gbarbs]

A shout out and much thanks to gbarbs and shaunattwood for posting and helping us keep our eyes on the trend and what Stan would focus on.

One of the reasons I am so appreciative for your posts is this board has gone so quiet, which I don't understand. This is one of the most exciting times to be following the market since I first read 'Secrets for profiting in Bull and Bear Markets'. Unfortunately, I was so busy reading and listening to so many voices that I missed Stan's perspective on what was happening in August.

Your posts are helping me focus on Weinstein's instructions. Thanks again!

---

Also thanks as always to Isatrader for all your insights.

Hi Jim,

The reason for the board going quiet is because I've had to scale back the time I spend on here due to an increased workload running my design business, which is giving me very little free time for anything else. And I was doing around 80% of the posts on here, as the majority of members mostly read the site but don't tend to get involved.

My original hope with the website was that there would be less lurking from members as time went on, and that more people would get involved as their understanding of the method got better. However, this hasn't happened, except for a few core members, and so it still relies on me for the majority of new content, and so with my limited time at the moment I need other members to apply what they've learnt from the site and have discussions about promising stocks showing the right attributes.

As far as the markets go, even with the more limited posting that I've been doing, I began highlighting the various breakdowns in the market breadth charts back in early June, which along with the behaviour of the stocks in my portfolio caused me to exit all of my long positions on the 9th June and go to 100% cash as I mentioned at the time in my trading journal thread. Since then I've highlighted that the Weight of Evidence from the market breadth measures has continued to get even weaker, and so I think at the very least, people following Stan’s method that read the board should have seen the increased risk factors well before the August breakdown as there was multiple posts highlighting that the Weight of Evidence was showing that more stocks were in Stages 3 and 4 than they were in Stages 1 and 2, and the major US indexes themselves (which lag individual stocks that make up the indexes remember) were showing signs of Stage 3.

So personally I think the method performed beautifully with this recent breakdown, highlighting the increased risks in the US market well in advance in the weight of evidence, and via the multiple failed breakouts and majority of stocks moving into Stages 3 and 4, then finally the indexes themselves.

isa you mention the weight of evidence and the % of stocks in stage 3 and 4 being larger than 1 and 2. Can you point me to that? I would like to follow that for sure and think I overlooked it, or is it presented as something else?

Personally I had not been following the method for some time but returned when I got access to my retirement funds to manage. Perhaps I was a little too anxious to put it somewhere and the only place i thought looked good was regional banks. That in itself should have been a clue as I did not see much strength anywhere else. Certainly would have paid to keep up with the blog.

With that being the case, i lost about 5% of my account in part due to sell stops. I started focusing on short etfs to enter:

REW, SKF, SMN, SSG, SIJ (attached charts)

[JimStudent]

...continued for the short watchlist

Hi Isatrader, It looks like you are using Stockcharts. If you are using Stockcharts, what are the parameters you use for your short scan?

Thanks,
Jim

---

isa you mention the weight of evidence and the % of stocks in stage 3 and 4 being larger than 1 and 2. Can you point me to that? I would like to follow that for sure and think I overlooked it, or is it presented as something else?

gbarbs, In Stan's book, "Secrets for profiting in ...." on page 78 there is a footnote that answers your question.

footnote - "Each week I calculate the percentage of stocks on the NYSE in Stages 1 and 2 - this is the total that is charted versus the DJI. A quick shortcut that produces and excellent "Gallup Poll" for all 1500- plus NYSE stocks, however is to simply do this exercise for the Standard and Poor's groups. This is just one of 50 technical indicators that make up my "Weight of the Evidence" in the Professional Tape Reader."

Using Stan's gallup poll exercise it clear to see most of Standard and Poor's groups are in stage 3 or 4. (Also from Stan's footnote it is not hard to scan the 30 stocks in the Dow and see what is below the surface of the Dow - currently a quick look says 28 of the 30 stocks have broken the 30 week moving average.)

I thinks we see the same thing with Isatrader's post about the number of stocks trading below their 150 and 200 day moving average.

[isatrader]

isa you mention the weight of evidence and the % of stocks in stage 3 and 4 being larger than 1 and 2. Can you point me to that? I would like to follow that for sure and think I overlooked it, or is it presented as something else?

Jim nailed it in his reply above. The long and medium term Percentage of stocks above their 200 Day and 150 Day Moving Average charts are the first port of call for doing the gallop poll of the US market, and Stan has been quoted as saying that they are around 80% in line with his proprietary Stages survey. But obviously the market is much bigger these days, so I include the Nasdaq Percentage of stocks above their 200 Day and 150 Day Moving Average charts as well, and so those markets combined covers around 4500+ US stocks. So when the overall balance of those is below 50% and on bear confirmed signals on the P&F charts that make them up, it highlights the weakness under the surface that may not be visible in the indexes themselves at the time.

These, as well as the slower moving Bullish Percent Indexes are the core tools for gauging risk in the market and producing the quick gallop poll that Stan mentions in the book.

It may have only been a footnote to a chart. But I think it's the single most useful piece of information in the book.

So I highlight these charts and various other market breadth charts in the Market Breadth Extra thread, and as I said we started to get initial sell signals appearing in early June in the moving average breadth charts and the cumulative advance decline charts here: http://stageanalysis.net/forum/showthrea...28#pid9028 and then the cumulative new highs - new lows also started to breakdown in early July and then we saw the NYSE Bullish percent Index moved to Bear Confirmed on July 26th with the Percentage of stocks above their 200 Day and 150 Day Moving Average charts showing further deterioration and both below the 40% level at that point. Hence, you could see from that quick snapshot that the majority of stocks were in Stage 3 and 4, as only 34% were trading above their 150 day (30 week) moving averages.

I hope that helps. Market Breadth is an extensive subject on it own, but an integral part of the method. So, I think as long as you follow the Weight of Evidence approach that Stan suggests, then it will help you gauge risk much better.

[isatrader]

Hi Isatrader, It looks like you are using Stockcharts. If you are using Stockcharts, what are the parameters you use for your short scan?

Not a particular scan for shorts, I just created a custom scan for each sector so that I could manulally go through the whole sector. For example for the Financial Sector in the S&P 500 the stockcharts code is:

Code:

[group is SP500] and [group is FinancialSector]

And then I run the scan and created a new chartlist for S&P 500 financials, and then viewed the list as 10 Per Page format, so that I could quickly skim through them visually in a few minutes.

To view the weekly charts with your Weinstein settings in 10 Per Page view you need to open a chart and set your Weinstein weekly chart settings and then click the Save As Default link in the ChartStyles under the chart. Then all new charts you open will have the Weinstein weekly chart by default.

Attached is the settings I use for the weekly charts in stockcharts

[isatrader]

AMBA - potential to make an early Stage 4 breakdown

       

[isatrader]

GPRO - Approaching major support on increasing volume. If it doesn't hold, then it could have a Stage 4 breakdown

       

[isatrader]

IBB - In Stage 3 and struggling to regain it's 200 day MA. Potential for an early Stage 4A breakdown attempt if the weakness in the market continues.