Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Is [short-term] Mean Reversion in the DJIA's Future? (DIA)

The Industrials are up 28.57 at 10,554.00.
Always, Always keep in mind the old traders lament:
As soon as you think you've found the key, they go and change the lock.
The following is for entertainment purposes only.
From Schaeffer's Research:
The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) logged its third consecutive 100-point daily rally on Monday, bringing the blue-chip barometer's three- day tally to a gain of roughly 4%. You wouldn't think that consecutive 100-point rallies were all that rare, but according to data from Senior Quantitative Analyst Alan "Rocky" White, there have only been seven such occurrences since 1997. In fact, according to Rocky, yesterday marked "the first time we've seen three straight positive 100 point Dow days since the first day of 2009." He added, "These occurrences have been rarer than I imagined."

Before we break out the champagne and celebrate the Dow's victory, we should take a closer look at the rest of the data from Rocky's study. As you can see from the tables below, these signals are pretty bearish for the Dow, with negative average and median returns for all of the time frames tested. For instance, the most recent signal in January 2009 preceded a 27% decline in the DJIA during the next 42 days. The study even led Todd Salamone, Schaeffer's Senior Vice President of Research, to quip that "The prior performance seems to reflect mean reversion."
FDX split strike synthetic long