Hello Brooke,
RE: Well, I don't rightly know. It's been my impression that many market timers, while priding themselves on their objectivity, have been at the mercy of the prevailing sentiment lately, with a few outstanding exceptions."
A couple of years back I got a big bug to see if I could come up with a market timing system for some retirement accounts that can only be in mutual funds. The idea was/is to beat buy and hold.
I looked around and found Fabian (Fabian.com) and basically duplicated his system in a couple of day's, and it's not very good. Then Roarbach and also duplicated it but again, results not so good. A few others followed with the same results. I learned a great deal, it's fun, I still do it, all beat the S&P during bear markets but just get killed during bull markets.
Bottom line, nothing, and I mean nothing, comes close to Yale Hirsch's seasonality indicator that Sy Harding has doctored up with an mcad for enter and exit. It's beat buy and hold over the last 40ish years by approximately 3 times. And that's big stuff! It went long 10/2.
So, the approximate six months I'm out of the market in retirement accounts (May thru Oct), I've found a few little systems to jump in and out in periods of weeks in these retirement accounts. But, primarily out of the market in those months with my real money.
Take care,
Eric |
