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Tharp's Thoughts

Market Update for November

Market Condition: Volatile Bear

by 
Van K. Tharp, Ph.D.

I always say that people do not trade the markets; they trade their beliefs about the markets. In that same way I'd like to just point out that these updates reflect my beliefs. If my beliefs and your beliefs are not the same, then you may not find them useful. I find the market update information useful for my trading, so I do the work each month and I'm happy to share that information with my readers. 

However, if your beliefs are not similar to mine, then this information may not be useful to you. Thus, if you are inclined to do some sort of intellectual exercise to prove one of my beliefs wrong, simply remember that everyone can usually find lots of evidence to support their beliefs and refute others. Just simply know that I admit that these are my beliefs and that your beliefs might be different.

These monthly updates are in the first issue of Tharp�s Thoughts each month. This allows us to get the closing month�s data. These updates cover 1) the market type (first mentioned in the April 30 edition of Tharp�s Thoughts), 2) the five week status on each of the major U.S. stock market indices, 3) our four star inflation-deflation model plus John Williams� statistics, 4) tracking the dollar, and 5) the five strongest and weakest areas of the overall market.

Part I: Market Commentary

I don�t really see any major changes from last month. We are in historical market conditions that could be worse than anything since the Great Depression. 

One of my clients sent me a email of all of the retailers who are closing stores. As a result I looked at articles on store closings and this list is what I came up with. It�s quite amazing. Over 6000 stores are being shut down, and I expect more after a terrible retail season.

Dead Companies

Linens-N-Things is closing all stores nationwide.

Circuit City closing 155 stores nationwide and filing for bankruptcy.

Friedman�s Jewelers is closing 120 stores and filing for bankruptcy.

Lillian Vernon, an online business, is filing for bankruptcy.

Boscov�s is filing for bankruptcy.

Mervin�s is filing for bankruptcy.

La-Z-Boy is filing for bankruptcy.

Shoe Pavilion is filing for bankruptcy.

Value City is filing for bankruptcy.

Barbeques Galore is filing for bankruptcy.

Sound Advice is filing for bankruptcy.

Wickes Furniture is going out of business and closing all of its stores. Wickes, a 37-year-old retailer that targets middle-income customers, filed for bankruptcy protection last month.

Levitz is closed already. The furniture retailer first announced it was going out of business and closing all 76 of its stores in December. The retailer dates back to 1910 when Richard Levitz opened his first furniture store in Lebanon, PA. In the 1960s, the warehouse/showroom concept brought Levitz to the forefront of the furniture industry.

CompUSA is gone. They are just working out how to cover their warranties.

Movie Gallery will close 160 stores as part of its reorganization plan to exit bankruptcy. The video rental company plans to close 400 of 3,500 Movie Gallery and Hollywood Video stores in addition to the 520 locations the video rental chain closed last fall.

Sharper Image recently filed for bankruptcy protection and announced that 90 of its 184 stores are closing. The retailer will still operate 94 stores to pay off debts, but 90 of these stores have performed poorly and also may close.

Bombay Company unveiled plans to close all 384 U.S.-based Bombay Company stores. The company's online storefront has discontinued operations.

KB Toys posted a list of 356 stores that it is closing around the United States as part of its bankruptcy reorganization. 

In Big Trouble: Probably Good Short Candidates

Ann Taylor is closing 117 stores nationwide. A company spokeswoman said the company hasn't revealed which stores will be shuttered. It will let the stores that will close this fiscal year know over the next month.

Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherine�s closing 150 stores nationwide. The owner of retailers Lane Bryant, Fashion Bug, Catherine�s Plus Sizes will close about 150 underperforming stores this year. The company hasn't provided a list of specific store closures and can't say when it will offer that info, spokeswoman Brooke Perry said today.

Talbots and J. Jill are closing stores. About a month ago, Talbots announced that it will be closing all 78 of its kids' and men�s stores. Now the company says it will close another 22 underperforming stores. The 22 stores will be a mix of Talbots women's and J Jill, another chain it owns. The closures will occur this fiscal year, according to a company press release.

Gap Inc. is closing 85 stores. In addition to its namesake chain, Gap also owns Old Navy and Banana Republic. The company said the closures�all planned for fiscal 2008�will be weighted toward the Gap brand.

Foot Locker to close 140 stores�all planned in fiscal 2008. 

Zales, Piercing Pagoda are both closing stores. Zales and Piercing Pagoda previously said it had plans to close 82 stores by July 31. Today, it announced that it is closing another 23 underperforming stores. Of the 105 locations planned for closure, 50 are kiosks and 55 are stores.

Sprint Nextel will close 125 retail locations. New Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse appears to have inherited a company bleeding subscribers by the thousands, and will now officially be dropping the ax on 4,000 employees and 125 retail locations. Amid the loss of 639,000 postpaid customers in the fourth quarter, Sprint will be cutting a total of 6.7% of its work force (following the 5,000 layoffs last year) and 8% of company-owned brick-and-mortar stores, while remaining mute on other rumors that it will consolidate its headquarters in Kansas. 

Pacific Sunwear will close its 154 Demo stores after a review of strategic alternatives for the urban-apparel brand. Seventy-four underperforming Demo stores closed last May.

Wilsons the Leather Experts will close 158 stores.

Goodyear Tire and Rubber is closing 92 stores.

Saks is closing its Ft. Lauderdale store and 98 Club Libby Lu stores.

Big $ is closing 10 stores.

84 Lumber is closing 80 stores.

Steve and Boys is closing 103 stores.

In Trouble

Eddie Bauer to close more stores. Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter and plans to close up to two more outlet stores by the end of the year.

Cache is closing stores. Women's retailer Cache announced that it is closing 20 to 23 stores this year. 

Disney Store owner has the right to close 98 stores. The Walt Disney Company announced it acquired about 220 Disney Stores from subsidiaries of The Children's Place Retail Stores. The exact number of stores acquired will depend on negotiations with landlords. Those subsidiaries of The Children's Place filed for bankruptcy protection in late March. In the news release, Disney said it has also obtained the right to close about 98 Disney Stores in the U.S. 

Home Depot store closings. Nearly 7+ months after its chief executive said there were no plans to cut the number of its core retail stores, The Home Depot Inc. announced Thursday that it is shuttering 15 of them amid a slumping US economy and housing market. The move will affect 1,300 employees. It is the first time the world's largest home improvement store chain has ever closed a flagship store for performance reasons. Its shares rose almost 5 percent. The Atlanta-based company said the underperforming U.S. stores being closed represent less than 1 percent of its existing stores. They will be shuttered within the next two months.

Macy�s is closing 9 stores.

Pep Boys will close 33 stores.

J. C. Penney is scaling back.

Lowe's is scaling back.

Office Depot is scaling back.

Ethan Allen Interiors announced plans to close 12 of 300+ stores in an effort to cut costs.

Dillard's Inc. said it will continue to focus on closing underperforming stores, reducing expenses and improving its merchandise in 2008. At the company's annual shareholder meeting, CEO William Dillard II said the company will close another six underperforming stores this year. 

And on December first the DOW closed down nearly 680 points on news that the economy has been in a recession since December 2007. I have news for you. There are lies. There are damned lies. And there are statistics. And then there are government statistics on the economy. Manipulation of government statistics on the economy is one of the few weapons the government has left and the media still believes the statistics and reports them to the public. Because the CPI is so manipulated, the idea of recession is also manipulated. According to John Williams of www.ShadowStats.com, we have been in a recession since 2000 with a one-quarter reprieve in 2004.

Baltic Dry Index has collapsed an incredible 90% since the worst of the volatile bear market started!!! This index traces the changing cost of shipping dry goods such as coal, wheat, and cement around the world. The Baltic is telling us that international commerce is dying or actually close to dead. 

Click here for a larger view

The G-20 meeting in Washington, which had the potential to be important, accomplished nothing. But President elect Obama decided not to attend, since it was President Bush�s show. They basically agreed to allow free trade at least for a while.

Part II: The Current Stock Market Type Is Volatile Bear

I have now substituted my new market type for the 1-2-3 model (which is still red light) The reason I�ve done that is that the 1-2-3 model has now gone below a certain PE ratio (that has turned Steve Sjuggerud quite bullish) and that automatically turns one of the three signals to �go.� However, I expect us to be in a secular bear market until the PE ratios of the S&P 500 reach single digits. Thus, the 1-2-3 doesn�t really fit my current beliefs. 

My advice is that secular bear markets usually end when the PE ratios of the S&P 500 hit around 6-8�for example, 1932, 1942, and 1982. We�re in the worst crisis since the Great Depression and perhaps in one that is worse. Are you willing to risk the PE ratio of the S&P 500 dropping to single digits? My advice is to get in the market when prices are above the 200 day moving average and get out when they are below (or at least stay out until our market type turns to bullish for at least two weeks). That would have kept you out of this market all year.

I�ve now changed how we measure volatility. Using the ATR, as I had planned, did not work because the ATR gets bigger as the price of the S&P 500 goes up. Thus, the market, based upon historical ATRs has been nearly 100% volatile since 1996. As a result, we now look at the ATR as a percentage of the close and that does the trick on a historical basis. In the table below, notice that every week in 2008 is volatile on a historical basis. The quiet markets do not start until August 2007. 

I now have the historical ATR (over 13 weeks) as a percentage of the close since 1950. The historical average is 2.88% and the standard deviation has been 1.33%. The last two weeks have been over 14%. This means that we are experiencing volatility that is 9 standard deviations above the mean. If I had data going back to the end of 1929, which I don�t, I suspect that there might be some precedence for it. 

Some of the largest daily gains ever in the stock market occurred during the huge plunge of 90% after the 1929 crash. So far, we�ve only had a 40% plunge this year�with perhaps a 50% plunge since the 2007 highs. However, to get to the kind of area in which bear markets end�with a PE of less than 10, we probably need to go down another 50 to 75%. After last week (according to my friend Chris Weber), the PE ratio of the S&P 500 was 19.44 and the dividend was 3.06%. Bear markets typically end with a PE in the single digits (i.e., about 6 or 7) and a dividend yield of 6-7%. That suggests that this market decline is about half over�.but then again earnings could go down from here.

I find it interesting that the last two months have ended on large up weeks. The S&P 500 was up over 19% last week, which is typically a good year�not just a good week. But remember what I said about this being a 9 standard deviation market. Those large weekly gains don�t come close to getting us out of �volatile bear� territory. We�re still down 35% over the last 13 weeks as of Monday�s close. We would have to move up nearly 30% to get into a volatile sideways mode. And in my opinion, we need to form a base for quite a while before we can begin to shift to sideways. 

We�ve now had an almost solid volatile bear since June of this year. We could easily have the worst year in the history of the U.S. stock market if this decline continues at the current rate though December.

Notice that throughout the year, we�ve only had two weeks that we labeled bullish and they, in my opinion, were abnormalities. So now let�s look at what the market has done during the month of November. 

November was actually a slightly up month. However, all of that was erased on December 1st. 

Notice that the market is down about 40% without including the December 1st 680 point decline in the DOW. Are you ready to invest for the long term in these market conditions? I hope not. 

Part III: The Strongest and Weakest Market Components

I have a new model in which we track the relative strength of the various ETFs representing the economy of the entire world. I will be publishing this once a month. Ken Long, who developed the algorithm we use, publishes a similar report every weekend at www.TortoiseCapital.com. If you�d like more information, then I�d suggest you attend our ETF workshop which is held several times each year.  Ken explains how these numbers are derived in this workshop.

Click here for a larger view

The areas in green are strong and those in brown are very weak. By the way, I usually consider strong to be in the 70s and there is obviously nothing in that range on this particular chart. My entire world view is continued in the charts below.

So what are the best performing areas? It�s obvious when you look at the chart. First, interest rates are doing well across the board. This means that interest rates are going down so that bond prices go up.

Second, anything short is doing very well, especially the double leveraged short ETFs. 

The double leveraged short semiconductors are currently the strongest ETF. 

And lastly, the Japanese Yen and the U.S. dollar are doing fairly well.

What�s weak? Obviously, any double leverage long fund is very bad, especially in real estate and financials. And the really weak areas are real estate, financials, coal, oil, and steel. And the Russian market also looks really weak.

You would make the most money being in the short ETFs. But before you invest, especially in double leveraged funds, ask yourself how you would react to huge gains�like the 19% gain in the S&P 500 (39% against you double leveraged) that would be losses for you in these funds.

Part IV: Our Four Star Inflation-Deflation Model

Once again, we are in a credit contraction mode, so it is not the inflationary bear market I once thought we were going to get six or seven years ago. The entire world is experiencing a credit contraction. Real estate is crashing worldwide, although I don�t know the total amount. Equity markets are crashing worldwide. And so are the commodity markets. All told, about $US50 trillion in wealth has been erased in this worldwide bear market so far.

Yes, the Federal Reserve and other central banks are printing money like crazy, but they cannot print it as fast as money is disappearing in the credit crunch. What happens in a credit crunch is that cash is king. Once again, cash is king, but it must be safe. When all of the bankruptcies play out, then money will be printed like crazy to stimulate what�s left of the economy. And at that point, gold is the king. This is my personal opinion. 

By the way, I talked to John Williams, the economist who publishes the shadow statistics data. His definition of deflation is a negative value on the CPI and we certainly have not seen that, so he�s predicting massive inflation and a dollar crash. Overall, we did see the largest decline in history of the CPI (published since 1947) in October 2008. So that brings up an interesting question. Does deflation occur when we see a massive contraction of real wealth or of prices? I don�t know the answer, but I guess it just points to the power of beliefs. It is what you believe it to be.

So with that in mind, let�s now look at our measure of inflation/deflation.

Notice the huge drops in three of the four categories with gold showing a nice rally. We�ll now look at the two-month and six-month changes during the last six months to see what our readings have been. 

Our model is clearly showing the credit crunch that is going on and the potential for deflation. And the magnitude of the drops is amazing.

Part V: Tracking the Dollar

The dollar is continuing its uptrend because of deleveraging.

People are still paying off debt so they must acquire dollars to pay off the debt. I have no idea when this will finish, but once the debt is paid off, don�t expect this phenomenon to continue. A great trade may be the collapse of the dollar when this debt paying process is over. 

Incidentally, gold�s performance is excellent when you measure it in most other currencies beside dollars. 

What You Should Do

My goal over the next few years is to compile a list of strategies that become superb trading methods under each of the six markets conditions. Since we are currently in a volatile bear market, we�re now compiling a list of strategies that work in Volatile Bear Market Conditions. If this condition is still present in the spring (which is my next available time to do a workshop), we�ll do a workshop on specific techniques to use under such conditions. I rather suspect that those conditions will still be present and these techniques will be even more important at that time than they are now. Why? Because most Volatile Bear Market techniques are those that find opportunities that only occur in bear markets, but are designed to profit at the end of the bear market. 

I strongly recommend that you read the article I wrote last week, especially for the psychological advice I gave. One of my Super Traders was given that advice at our Super Trader meeting and his results since using it have been very, very interesting. And he�s only been using it a few weeks. 

Until December�s update, this is Van Tharp. 

About Van Tharp: Trading coach, and author, Dr. Van K. Tharp is widely recognized for his best-selling book Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom and his outstanding Peak Performance Home Study program - a highly regarded classic that is suitable for all levels of traders and investors. You can learn more about Van Tharp at www.iitm.com.

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Trading Tip

Volatility: The Real �Back Story� in Today�s Market

by
D. R. Barton, Jr. 

I�ve written a bunch about volatility over the past several months. And with good reason, I believe.

While the price drops over the past 12 months are some of the biggest that we�ve seen, the volatility that has accompanied the market action is arguably the highest in the modern history of the markets. Add to this the fact that this exceptional volatility has been sustained for months now, and we have to acknowledge that the markets are acting in a truly unprecedented fashion.

And the increased volatility has been seen in almost all areas�stocks, most commodities, currencies, and even bonds.

This heightened volatility affects investors and traders in many ways. But the effects are wide reaching and must be understood well to thrive (or even survive) in these market conditions.

I�d like to take an in-depth look at volatility over the next several weeks. We�ll investigate the many ways it can be represented, which calculations are more and less useful, how volatility affects investors and traders in obvious and subtle ways, and finally what we can do to protect ourselves and even use it to our advantage. I hope you have as much fun reading the series as I do researching and writing.

Let�s start by taking a look at one of the most overused, misunderstood and misused measures of volatility: Beta.

Beta: Take It with a Grain of Salt (and Understand What It REALLY Tells You)

Let�s imagine that your great aunt calls up and asks for your help. She�s read Buffett�s New York Times editorial and thinks it�s time to get more heavily invested in stocks. She�d like five low-risk stocks on the NASDAQ to add to her portfolio, and wants you to give her five names to discuss with her husband.

You�ve heard the Wall Street talking heads mention beta many times on CNBC. �Beta is the standard measure of a stock�s volatility. The lower the beta, the lower the risk.� These guys are on CNBC, so they must know how to pick low-risk stocks�

So you do a quick stock screen on the Internet. You know that high volume stocks are best for your great aunt, since they�ll have the liquidity to help her get into and out of positions with no problem. You screen for all stocks on the NASDAQ with a volume greater than two million shares per day and then rank them from highest to lowest beta.

You pick stocks with a low beta and with names that your great aunt will recognize: JetBlue Airways, Direct TV, Huntington Bancshares, Comcast and Staples. That was easy. You figure that by picking stocks from the bottom of a list ranked according to beta, you�d be picking low volatility, low- risk stocks.

And you�d be dead wrong.

�Beta�: Do You Really Want to Use THAT To Measure Volatility?

First, let�s understand how beta is calculated and how to interpret it. Beta attempts to measure volatility by comparing the monthly change in price of a given instrument (stock, mutual fund, index, etc.) to an established index, usually the S&P 500. In the most common beta measurement, 60 end-of-month returns are plotted for the stock and also for the S&P 500. A �best fit� straight line is drawn through the data points for the stock and for the S&P 500. This is done using a standard mathematical tool called linear regression. (If you want to see how a line is regressed through scattered data, there is a very cool web application that will do this for you in real time! Go to: http://www.math.csusb.edu/faculty/stanton/m262/regress/regress.html. You will need to have a Java plug-in for your browser to make this to work.)

Now we have two straight lines�one for our stock and one for the S&P 500. Beta is a comparison of the slope of our stock�s line to the slope of the S&P 500 line for the same time period. 

How is beta interpreted? Here�s the interpretation found on every financial dictionary site on the web: The beta of a stock that exactly matches the S&P 500 would be 1.0 while a stock that has 50% more volatility than the S&P 500 would be 1.5. A stock with a volatility of 50% less than the S&P 500 would be 0.50.

Now we�ll look at the stocks you chose and their current beta measurements.

Based on their beta measurements, this looks like a good low risk list. The stocks are all below the volatility of the S&P 500 (at least according to their beta measurements and the traditional definition of Beta). But as we shall see, beta doesn�t tell the whole story. In fact it can be very misleading, as is the case with the five stocks that were chosen for your great aunt.

Conceptually, Beta was meant to compare volatility to the S&P 500. But we can see from the calculation where 60 months of data are compared (five full years!), that this measure may have little to nothing to do with what�s happening in the market and the individual stocks.

Next week we�ll look at how Beta compares with one of my favorite measures of volatility: the Average True Range. And we�ll revisit the list of stocks you picked for your great aunt to see if they really are �low volatility�. Until then --

Great Trading,
D. R.

About D.R. Barton:  A passion for the systematic approach to the markets and lifelong love of teaching and learning have propelled D.R. Barton, Jr. to the top of the investment and trading arena.  He is a regularly featured guest on both Report on Business TV, and WTOP News Radio in Washington, D.C., and has been a guest on Bloomberg Radio. His articles have appeared on SmartMoney.com and Financial Advisor magazine. You may contact D.R. at  �drbarton� at �iitm.com�. 

D.R. is presenting the upcoming How to Develop a Winning Trading System That Fits You Workshop, January '09.

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