Tips

Some errors just keep repeating themselves… much like the endless time loop in the classic film, Groundhog Day, starring Bill Murray. Let’s do a little myth-busting today—that savory task of uncovering indicators that don’t indicate what they’re supposed to. An indicator that gets a lot of press early each year is the “First Five Days” indicator, which holds that the direction of the first five trading days of the year is a valid predictor of the direction of the market for the remainder of the year. Rest assured; it just

I’ve written about asset correlation multiple times in the past three years. And guess what. We need to chat about it again. This time we’re dropping back to just the correlation between stocks (spoiler alert for my next follow-up article: Correlations are high for lots of assets right now, including crypto). But for today, let’s just look at stocks. As you’re probably aware, one of the key thoughts that institutional money managers keep in the front of their minds is the diversity of a given portfolio. We could dig into

Every single person who knows I am a market watcher has asked me the same question for the last two weeks. This past Monday (September 26th, 2022), I was asked at least three times as often. In fairness, the S&P 500 Index chart that many of them were looking at does beg this question. And on Monday, the market closed with the most crystal clear setup I’ve seen in a long time: Without any markup from me at all, this chart has the clearest: 1) Start of a Double Bottom setup and 2)

The huge sell-off early on Tuesday, September 13, 2022, had both the perma-bulls and the end-of-the-world gang pushing their agendas hard and fast. In particular, I had just read a piece, late last week, from an investor and writer that I really like. But, it was pushing the bullish agenda, big-time. And to be honest, bad news sells. So touting yesterday’s market slam as the biggest down day since 2020 was easy headline fodder. Persistent inflation news sent the Nasdaq down by -5.2%, with the S&P off -4.3% and the

Wednesday mornings are just about my favorite (well, for a weekday). That’s the time I usually prepare my notes to send to the production staff for my Thursday appearance on Varney & Co. Plus, I often use that same time in my thoughts for my contribution here at the Van Tharp Institute. It’s a full morning, but a time when I can really dig up something meaningful, useful, and actionable for hundreds of thousands of people. Plus, when I get to, I have a weekly Zoom call with an incredible