Thursday, September 20, 2007

Two indicators to stay out stock equity market

While everyone of us want to make the big return in stock market, sometimes, it's more advantageous to stay out the market when market become unfavorable and decline. Two great indications to signals I use are :
1) stay out market when interest rate is rising. When rate go up, business will have higher cost to expand and growth is slowed. Also, think of stock and bond competing money from investor. When bond rate increase, more people will buy bond instead of stock. This could means stock's demands is less and price tend to fall. I usually compare the interest rate in the beginning of each month and compare its with six months ago. If the current interest rate is slower, I'd be more cautious to get into stock market
2) stay out market when 6 months treasury bond is higher than 10 year treasury bond. This is called inverted yield curve. Normally, the longer the bond period, the higher interest rate investor is supposed to receive. However, in some unusual situation, short term bond rate happens to be higher than long term bond rate. This phenomena could indicate that recession is around the corner. It'd be not a bad idea to leave the money in money market or saving account until the 6months treasury bond is lower
These 2 signal applied only to U.S market. If you 're investing in international market, these 2 signal does not has much correlation and not applied. Interest rate is dropping, yield curve is normal, so I'm investing more into stock market these periods.

1 comment:

charlene said...

This is a quite new topic for me, could you please explain more in the future, I appreciate your time for the stock information :)