Pretiorates' Thoughts 71 – Are the bears waking up from their hibernation?
Published on March 3rd, 2025
In our analyses, we regularly examine current movements, identify possible influencing factors and assess the general market situation. However, these are not recommendations, but merely opinions and food for thought.
Dear readers!
Last Friday, something happened in the Oval Office that could change our world. It is not the first time that the question of gratitude has upset a US president. But as always, it makes no sense to get political and draw conclusions. So we stick to the strategy: we don't know everything, the markets know more and we try to get our answers from that side.
When looking at long-term developments, the development of the money supply helps. Interestingly, the development of M2 excluding the US has a high correlation with the percentage development of the S&P500 index. This is likely related to international capital flows. Current developments suggest that the S&P500 index has currently jumped a little too far ahead...
The wage development of US citizens also has a high influence on the stock markets. The higher the wages and thus the savings, the better for investments. With a delay of six months, the wage development also indicates the percentage development of the S&P500 index fairly accurately. The current message: US equities are unlikely to see any further major advances in the coming months...
From a long-term perspective, a comparison of the simple moving averages over 10 and 30 months is also helpful. The further one moves away from the other, the stronger the indication with a long-term view. Currently, this indicator suggests that the bears could soon have the advantage again...
Let's change our perspective to the short-term development: During the last two weeks, the US stock market has given us several bearish signals – however, we cannot yet speak of a real correction. In fact, from a short-term perspective, the market is oversold (exaggeration, red area), which could see technical recoveries ahead...
The Market Pendulum has already fallen to a very low level, so the bulls are unlikely to want to give up just yet...
However, real sell-offs in the market usually only happen when sentiment is already pessimistic – unless there is a sudden reason for it (black swan event). While sentiment has indeed deteriorated in recent trading days, it is not yet pessimistic...
A similar picture can be seen in the IT stocks, in the Nasdaq index: the red area (exaggeration) indicates an oversold market. Certainty of a sustainable recovery would be higher if a 'strong action' point had also been generated. However, this is not the case...
The sentiment among Nasdaq stocks has not really been great recently, but it could be interpreted as slightly positive. But this indicator has also taken a clear new direction recently – southwards...
The 'General Sentiment Indicator' is also deteriorating, but is still far from reaching a very negative level...
Conclusion: the bears seem to have awakened from hibernation. The battle for the trend in the coming days and weeks has not yet been decided. This time, however, we would bet on the bears...
That’s it for today!
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