S&P 500 Index
Short
Updated

Unsustainable Market Trends

658
I'm overall a bear but I think we'll probably make a new high. I've explained previously how a new high does not annul the bear thesis since there are various spike out patterns. Let's now talk about the unsustainable nature of what we're currently seeing.

Like a bat out of hell?




First things first - trendlines going up at angles of over 70 degrees is not good! 35 - 45 degrees, good. That's quite sustainable. It can keep doing that. 70+, not good. It can not keep doing that.

I hate to speak in absolutes, but we can be fairly sure markets can not rise at this angle indefinitely without something really bad happening. Were this to happen, it would have to be a result of devaluation of the currency and although stock markets would be higher, everyone would be hurting. Especially average people.

A highly optimistic forecast of how this can end well would be after making gains markets go into a prolonged period of contraction. There's no more straight up price action but there's also nothing terrible to the downside. I can't really think of any examples of this ever happening. I guess the closest would be the big range before the 80s/90s breakout (But that was not like this into the high).

The most common outcome of markets going up at angles of over 70 degrees is they come down at angles of over 70 degrees!

I feel the moves of 2021 and 2023 have made the market exceptionally more risky. Markets looked extended in 2018 - 2019, but what felt like mania in 2018 was dwarfed in the following years with full years of rallies at angles above what is sustainable. It'd be highly uncommon for these moves to resolve without spiking out the low of where they started.

The tendency of parabolic moves to resolve themselves by trading under where the move started becomes increasingly worrying as we move further from that level. It's around 2,200 in SPX. Even if it came from the current high this would forecast a move worse than 2008. Were it to come from a bit higher, this would start to forecast a move on the scale of depression crashes (At least 80% and lasting at least 10 yrs without a new high).

What I am trying to say here is, if markets keep going up at angles of over 70 (And SPX really isn't far off 100 right now), something very bad is likely to happen. And it's looking likely SPX may do this. Markets may break and make a blow-off without further major retracements and this style of blow-off can be 20 - 25% above the last high.

This would give us estimates for a blow-off ending 6,000 area in SPX and just under 20,000 area in Nasdaq. Both of these would be drawing down at least 70% to break the low of where the excessive angle of buying started. While this is nothing earthshattering in terms of charting norms (What goes up comes down), this would be significant in the real world.

If this big spike out is coming, I think we're seeing the grand final act of the bull market. It will be the best it has ever been and it will be the best we're going to see it in a significant amount of time.

If markets continue higher at the same or steeper angles than the recent climbs (Especially if there's no big pullbacks) I think we'll have seen every single major warning signal there was at the top of rallies that would turn into multiple decade bears.

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Two years have passed since I wrote this post and all the warning signs have come to fruition.

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