Are IBD Follow Through Days After Day 10 Less Reliable?

One of the interesting claims that William O’Neil make about Follow Through Days is that they are less likely to work if they come more than 10 days from the potential market bottom. As part of the study on Follow through Days, I decided to test this. Those who missed the first several installments of this study may want to click on the “IBD Follow Through Day” label lower down on the right hand side of the page. This will be the 9th installment in the series.

Using the original basic assumptions of an 8% decline needed and a 1% up move on the Follow Through Day (as opposed to the current 1.7% requirement that I found to be less effective), I reviewed all FTD’s listed in the study.

A Follow Through Day actually occurring after day 10 was a fairly unusual occurrence. Downtrends and bottom formations typically carry significant volatility, so a strong, high-volume move off a low normally occurs before day 10.

Of the 65 FTD’s listed in the study, only 8 of them occurred on day 10 or later. They are listed below along with the FTD Day # and whether they were “successful” or not. (Success was defined in Part 1 - Are They Predictive?)

Seven of the eight FTD’s that came after day 10 were successful according the study. While the sample size may be too small to claim significance, there certainly seems to be no credence to the claim that FTD’s after Day 10 are LESS reliable. In fact, the opposite appears true. Seven out of eight seems especially impressive considering the fact that only 55% of the FTD's in the study were successful. I suspect one reason for this may be that the delayed FTD allows stocks more time to carve out proper basing formations before the market attempts to launch higher. In light of the facts, it seems a curious claim for IBD to make.

The takeaway here is: next time a follow through day doesn’t come immediately, traders shouldn’t fret. The chance of success is likely higher.

VIX System Discussion Follow-up

After my VIX post a couple of days ago, “Frank” made some interesting comments in the comment section. He duplicated part of the system I discussed, but his results were very different. Using a 15% VIX stretch (a close 15% above the 10ma) he found 17 of 18 short trades since 2004 to be winners if you wait for a reversion to the 10ma to exit.

The big differences sparked some good conversation over at the Daily Options Report, which has picked up on this study. So I felt I should clear up a few things.

1) I mistyped in my post. Options were not used in my testing - futures were.

2) My "system" looked at several measures of overbought/oversold - it generally entered if more than one triggered and exited when the triggers were removed. The 15% VIX stretch was one example.

3) I did not scale in. If a trigger occurred, the system was basically “all in”. I’m sure scaling as Frank did, would help.

4) I don’t think 1, 2, or 3 above really matter much. Looking back to the beginning of 2004 I did a quick count of the number of days that the VIX closed at least 15% above its 10ma. I counted about 70 times. Frank only found 18 times. I suspect Frank was looking for a 15% stretch in the futures. I was looking for a 15% stretch in the actual VIX.

My point was to show that the futures and options could not be easily traded based on the action of the VIX alone. A stretch in the futures successfully reverting to its mean doesn’t surprise me. I’ll bet in many of those 18 cases the VIX index would have put the system into the trade even earlier and at a worse price – turning several of Frank’s winners into losers.

To sum up – the VIX is not tradable. Buying calls or puts based on VIX action as I’ve seen suggested in the media looks good on the surface but is a horrible strategy. Frank has generously shown that astute traders CAN successfully trade VIX futures by focusing on VIX futures action.
Below is a chart of the VIX(green) and front month VIX futures (orange). The chart is a few months old because I don’t have my futures data fully updated (I don’t trade it). The takeaway from this chart is that sharp moves in the VIX “cash” index are dulled in the futures. Note how while they generally move in the same direction, the cash VIX will oscillate around the futures. If you look at futures further out than front month, this “dulling” of the VIX moves by the futures will be even more pronounced.

The Intermediate Term Significance Of A Lagging Nasdaq

One indicator I look at comes from Gerald Appel’s book “Technical Analysis – Power Tools For Active Investors”. It is a relative strength measure of the NYSE vs. the Nasdaq looked at on a weekly chart. Without going into great detail, the premise behind the indicator is that the market tends to perform better when the appetite for Nasdaq stocks is greater than the appetite for NYSE stocks.

Part of this is due to the higher volatility of the Nasdaq, and part of it is due to investors willingness to speculate more aggressively when their outlook is positive. Whatever the reasons behind it, the indicator has been a pretty good barometer over the years. Mr. Appel suggests using a 10-week relative strength indicator to measure this phenomenon. This is what I’ve done in the chart below. The way the indicator works is as follows: When the red line is above the yellow line, the Nasdaq is leading the NYSE. When the red line is below the yellow line, the Nasdaq is lagging the NYSE. (Click to enlarge).

Since 1971, close to 100% of the market’s gains have occurred when the Nasdaq is leading rather than lagging. As you can see from the chart above, the Nasdaq has begun to lag badly. I decided to look and see how the market has performed under similar conditions in the past.

Using the NYSE composite as the “tradable” vehicle, I set up the following rules: 1) The NYSE must make a new 5-week high this week. 2) The current NYSE/Nasdaq ratio must be at least 3.0% below the 10-week EMA. (The red line must be 3.0% or more below the yellow line.) 3) The difference between the current NYSE/Nasdaq ratio and the 10-week EMA must be at it’s widest point in the last 5 weeks. (The red line must be farther below the yellow line than it has been in at least 5 weeks.)

If all three conditions are met, sell the market short on the close. Cover X weeks later. Results below:

As you can see, a Nasdaq lagging as badly as it is right now has been quite bearish historically. The bearish tendency carries through over a significant period of time as well (10 weeks.) If the Nasdaq could begin to assert a leadership role, that could help the current rally attempt greatly. If not, bulls better hope it’s different this time.

Do Reliable Oscillations In The VIX Make VIX Options An Easy Profit Vehicle?

I’ve seen some articles in the press over the last few months suggesting that one way to profit in volatile markets is by trading VIX options. They typically make it sound easy. “You don’t even need to know the direction of the market. You just need to determine whether volatility is likely to rise or fall. If you think volatility is going higher, you can buy VIX call options. If you think its going lower you can buy VIX put options.” The problem with this logic is that VIX option prices do not follow the VIX index. They follow VIX futures prices. A couple of months ago I decided to quantify how much this really matters.

It is well known by traders that the VIX has a strong tendency to oscillate. Therefore, when people consider trading the VIX, they many times think mean-reverting strategies will work best. I took some simple mean-reverting strategies and applied them to the index to see what kind of returns I would get. Two examples were: 1) Short the VIX if it closes 15% or more above its 10-day moving average. Cover when it closes below its 10-day moving average. 2) Short the VIX if it closes at a 10-day high. Cover when it closes below its 10-day moving average. In both cases the opposite stretch would apply for purchases. Not surprisingly, they worked. What was intriguing was HOW WELL they worked. I then combined these strategies with a few others to create an indicator which would signal to me when the VIX was stretched and due for a reversal.

Assuming you treated the VIX as a security and allocated a certain dollar amount whenever you bought/shorted it, over the last 3 years my simple system would have returned about 170% per year based on raw returns (no commissions or slippage).

Now, to see the effect that trading futures would have on the system, I downloaded all the historical data from CBOE and ran the trades through using front month options. I performed rollovers those times when the future expired before the trade closed. Note that the entry and exit triggers were based on the action in the VIX – not in the futures. The purpose of the study was to see whether someone could trade futures/options based on the action in the VIX index. The results? Instead of returning 170%/yr over the last 3 years, the system now returned 5% total!! Factor in some commissions and slippage and my incredible system is now a money-loser.

Moral of the story: Be careful when trading VIX options / futures. Simple systems which look spectacular on the VIX cash index simply do not translate.

Below are some informative links which also discuss this issue.

http://vixandmore.blogspot.com/2007/05/vix-futures-one-picture-to-remember.html

http://mktbetadata.blogspot.com/2007/09/basis-risk-in-vix-futures-contracts-my.html

Surge Leads To Breakout - Is That Good?

More bailout talk today led to another surge of buying. The major averages closed strongly positive on good breadth and increased volume. Technically notable is the fact that the triangle pattern in the S&P was broken to the upside. An argument could be made that the triangle broke to the downside on Friday and that break quickly led to an upside reversal. Based on the definitions in the studies I laid out last week, there was no break on Friday. The first breakout came today. In this case I’ll stick with my definitions because those are the ones that were used to develop the statistics. The minimum target based on those studies' triangle measurements would be 1446.57. Of note is that over 70% of these patterns have failed to reach their target before dropping below the lower triangle line. In this case a failure would mean a move below 1327.04. It appears looking for an entry to fade this breakout may provide the greatest edge.

The surge the last two days which broke this market out has certainly been impressive. I looked back to see how the market had reacted following similar boughts of strong buying. Below is a table displaying how the market has performed near-term following two strong days of buying during a long-term downtrend.

Historically, fading these surges has provided a decent edge. As can be seen in the picture above, not all breakouts are good news. Between the 2-day surge and the triangle breakout study it appears the edge over the next few days is to the downside.

Late Day Surge Doesn't Help To Establish Direction

While the move down Friday morning may have violated trendlines some technicians drew on their charts, it did not signal a break for either of the triangle testing methods I laid out last week. For violations to be official I currently would need to see one of the following: 1316.75 broken on the downside for method #1, 1369.23 on the upside for method #1, or 1367.94 to the upside or 1327.04 to the downside for method #2. Therefore, as per the studies, we are still waiting for a break to look to fade. The studies on Thursday night suggested fading the breakout could be the highest-odds play.

While it failed to move the S&P 500 out of its range, the action Friday certainly wasn’t mundane. A late-day reversal led to a sizable upside surge – moving the indices from squarely negative to squarely positive. I decided to look and see whether past late-day surges had led to a directional edge over the days following. Looking back 30 years I was only able to find 22 other times where the S&P 500 gained over 1.5% in the last hour of trading. Results following those instances were mixed. Over the next one and two days the market closed higher 10 of 22 times. Over 3 and 5 day periods the market increased 14 times. Looking our further (10, 15, 20 days) results were close to a coin flip. The win/loss ratio in all these instances was close to 1 as well.

In other words – the late day surge on Friday seems to have no predictive value when looking out over the next few days. All it managed to do was put the market squarely back in the middle of its range. Traders with time-frames longer than intraday may want to continue to wait for a range resolution before getting aggressive.

Triangles

The formation that everyone seems to be focusing on at the moment is “triangles”. The major indices are all making them and the media and blogging community have taken notice. The standard line is that triangle formations show a contraction of volatility. A break out of the formation can lead to a sharp move in the direction of the breakout. So the big question being asked is “Which way is it going to break?” To me a better question seems to be “What is likely to happen after it breaks?”

The profit potential of a triangle breakout is normally determined by subtracting the low of the triangle from the high and adding that to the breakout point. Triangles are one of those formations that are easier to spot on a chart than they are to program, but I attempted it two different ways.

I first looked at formations where the most recent swing low was higher than the previous swing low and the most recent swing high was lower than the previous swing high. A breakout was defined as a move outside the nearest swing high or low. The profit target was defined as the distance from the entry point plus (or minus for shorts) the highest swing high minus the lowest swing low. A “failure” was defined as a reversal through the opposite swing point in the triangle.

The second way I defined a triangle was a bit simpler. I looked at weekly bars and defined any two consecutive “inside bars” as a triangle. Here again I set a profit target using the biggest bar and defined a stop point as a move through the opposite end of the most recent inside bar.

In both cases the success rates were highly disappointing. Looking at all S&P 100 stocks over the last 15 years, method 1 posted a success rate of about 38% and method 2 a success rate of 30%. The success rate in the S&P 500 Index over the last 30 years was 30% for method 1 and 27% for method 2.

Some traders may still be tempted to play the breakout because the potential reward is higher than the risk. Even so, method 1 was only slightly profitable as gains outsized losses by a mere 1.03 to 1 without factoring in commissions or slippage. Method 2 showed net losses.

It seems to me that the best way to trade these kind of triangle formations is not to play the breakout. Since about 2/3 of the breakouts I tested eventually failed, I’d rather wait for the breakout to occur and then evaluate possible reversal areas that could offer a more substantial edge.