My Comments: As someone with presumed knowledge about investing money, my record over these past 24 months has been pathetic. I’ve been defensive, expecting the markets to experience a significant correction “soon”…

I lived through the crash of 1987, the crash in 2000, and then the Great Recession crash in 2008-09. I saw first hand the pain and chaos from seeing one’s hard earned financial reserves decimated almost overnight.

Only the crash hasn’t happened. But every month there are new signals that one is imminent. And still it doesn’t happen.

I’ll leave it to you to decide if what Mr. Bilello says makes any sense. I’m not sure it does.

by Charlie Bilello, October 22, 2017

The Dow is trading at one of its most overbought levels in history. At 87.61, its 14-day RSI is higher than 99.999% of historical readings going back to 1900.

(Note: Developed by J. Welles Wilder, the Relative Strength Index (RSI) is a momentum oscillator that measures the speed and change of price movements. RSI oscillates between zero and 100. Traditionally, and according to Wilder, RSI is considered overbought when above 70 and oversold when below 30. Signals can also be generated by looking for divergences, failure swings, and centerline crossovers. RSI can also be used to identify the general trend. TK)

Sell everything?

If only it were that simple. Going back to 1900, the evidence suggests that such extreme overbought conditions (>99th percentile) are actually bullish in the near term, on average.

Come again? In the year following extreme overbought readings, the Dow has actually been higher roughly 70% of the time with an average price return of 14.2%. From 5 days forward through 1-year forward, the average returns and odds of positive returns are higher than any random day. While the 3-year and 5-year forward returns are below average, they are still positive.

Does that mean we’ll continue higher today? No, these are just probabilities, and 30% of the time the Dow is lower looking ahead one year.

What it does mean is that one cannot predict a market decline based solely on extreme overbought conditions. Declines can happen at any point in time and “overbought” is neither a predictor nor a precondition of a bear market to come.

If one is going to predict anything based on extreme overbought conditions (and I would advise against doing so), it would be further gains. I realize that doesn’t conform to the conventional narrative of “overbought = bearish,” but the truth in markets rarely does.