Sentiment panic, weak tape = no heroics
Comment of the Day

August 16 2011

Commentary by Eoin Treacy

Sentiment panic, weak tape = no heroics

Thanks to a subscriber for this cautious report from Ajay Kapur Priscilla Luk and Ritesh Samadhiya for Deutsche Bank. It is posted without further comment but here is a section:
Currently, a combination of very weak global equity technicals and Risk-Love (sentiment) at panic levels suggests no heroic market views - bullish or bearish. History suggests that this combination (weak technicals, panicked sentiment) offers a 60-40 chance of higher returns in three months, with severe drawdown possibilities. If the Tape/technicals become stronger, we will change our minds. The only high-confidence view we can see is the attraction of "junk" in the US, given record stock correlations of stocks with the benchmark there, but not in Asia. Last week, in "Ceasefire, for now", Investigator, 8th August, 2011, we said we would update our high-frequency metrics and see if anything had changed. We had said, "those who are very nimble and need to manage their net exposure on a daily/weekly basis should simply respect our checklist model, not listen to our interpretation, cut exposure and get back in if the risk model turns positive". Last week, Asian equities were down 5.4%, and we think this advice still holds, since our checklist is still negative. See Figure 1.
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