After the S&P 500 made a low of 1257 on
16 March, I kept expecting a retest of that low. It hasn’t happened yet. It could still occur, of course, but that is
less likely now.
The NTSM system gave a SELL at 1315 on 22
February. Since our system is based on
closing numbers, the next day’s close was 1307 and that is our base point for
calculating gains and losses. Likewise
our Buy point was 1337. That means that
the cost of being out of the market was 2.2%. Frankly, since I was 100% in the market before
the Sell signal and I had the benefit of a huge run-up from the previous 2 July
low of 1022, I can’t complain. In fact,
I had a great deal of peace of mind being out of the market during the recent
turmoil. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “Nothing
can bring you peace but yourself.” I
think he meant to get out of the stock market and cut your risk when the
serpents creep into the porridge. Well…perhaps not, but I do know one thing, had
this been the start of a bear market, followers of NTSM would have been very
happy.
One curious point: if the NTSM Sentiment
indicator had been 0.1% higher on 17 Feb, NTSM would have gotten us out of the
market at the Top and we would have made about ½% gain. There’s an element of luck to this game!
NTMS switched to BUY on 20 April. The NTSM remains BUY today.
