Stock market cycles are the long-term price patterns of stock markets and are often associated with general business cycles. They are key to technical analysis where the approach to investing is based on cycles or repeating price patterns. The efficacy of the predictive nature of these cycles is controversial and some of these cycles have been quantitatively examined for statistical significance. Well known cycles include:
Investment advisor Mark Hulbert has tracked the long-term performance of Norman Fosback’s a Seasonality Timing System that combines month-end and holiday-based buy/sell rules. According to Hulbert, this system has been able to outperform the market with significantly less risk. According to Stan Weinstein there are four stages in a major cycle of stocks, stock sectors or the stock market as a whole. These four stages are consolidation or base building upward advancement culmination decline.
Cyclical cycles generally last 4 years, with bull and bear market phases lasting 1–3 years, while Secular cycles last about 30 years with bull and bear market phases lasting 10–20 years. It is generally accepted that in early 2011 the US stock market is in a cyclical bull phase as it has been moving up for a number of years. It is also generally accepted that it is in a secular bear phase as it has been stagnant since the stock market peak in 2000. The longer term Kondratiev cycles are two Secular cycles in length and last roughly 60 years. The end of the Kondratiev cycle is accompanied by economic troubles, such as the original Great Depression of the 1870s, the Great Depression of the 1930s and the current Great Recession.
Compound cycles
The presence of multiple cycles of different periods and magnitudes in conjunction with linear trends, can give rise to complex patterns, that are mathematically generated through Fourier analysis. In order for an investor to more easily visualise a longer term cycle, they sometimes will superimpose a shorter term cycle such as a moving average on top of it. A common view of a stock market pattern is one that involves a specific time-frame. In this kind of a chart one may create and observe any of the following trends or trend relationships:
A long-term trend, which may appear as linear
Intermediate term trends and their relationship to the long-term trend
Random price movements or consolidation and its relationship to one of the above
For example, if one looks at a longer time-frame, the current trend may appear as a part of a larger cycle. Switching to a shorter time-frame, may reveal price movements that appear as shorter-term trends in contrast to the primary trend on the six-month, daily time period, chart.
Use of multiple screens
A stock market trader will often use several "screens" or charts on their computer with different time frames and price intervals in order to try to gain information for making profitable buying and selling decisions. Often expert traders will emphasize the use of multiple time frames for successful trading. For example, Alexander Elder suggests a Triple Screen approach.
Longer-term screen: To identify the long-term trend and opportunities
Middle screen: To identify the best day on which to locate a buy or sell opportunity
Finer screen: To identify the optimum intra-day price at which to buy or sell a given security
Publications
Conference Board - Consumer Confidence, Conference Board’s Present Situation Index - Major turns in the Conference Board’s Present Situation Index tend to precede corresponding turns in the unemployment rate—particularly at business cycle peaks. Major upturns in the index also tend to foreshadow cyclical peaks in the unemployment rate, which often occur well after the end of a recession. Another useful feature of the index that can be gleaned from the charts is its ability to signal sustained downturns in payroll employment. Whenever the year-over-year change in this index has turned negative by more than 15 points, the economy has entered into a recession. The most useful methods to predict business cycle use methods similar to the organization as Eurostat, OECD and Conference Board.
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago - Chicago Fed National Activity Index Diffusion Index - The Chicago Fed National Activity Index Diffusion Index is a macroeconomic model of Business Cycle Models. “CFNAI Diffusion Index signals the beginnings and ends of recessions on average one month earlier than the CFNAI-MA3.” … the crossing of a -0.35 threshold by the CFNAI Diffusion Index signaled an increased likelihood of the beginning and end of a recession...,
Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia - Aruoba-Diebold-Scotti Business Conditions Index - is published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The average value of the ADS index is zero. Progressively bigger positive values indicate progressively better-than-average conditions, whereas progressively more negative values indicate progressively worse-than-average conditions.
BofA Merrill Lynch - Global Wave - has indicators from around the world such as industrial confidence, consumer confidence, estimate revisions, producer prices, capacity utilization, earnings revisions, and credit spreads. When the Global Wave troughs, THEN the MSCI All Country World equity index is up 14% on average over the next 12 months.
JP Morgan - Equities tend to do well in environments featuring rising growth rates as well as falling inflation. S&P 500 return = 9.80% - 6.44 x Max . R2 = 22.4%.
