Contrarians
take note: The latest issue of Time
magazine featured another one of those infamous bull market covers. The bull was displayed rather prominently on
the cover under the headline, “How Wall Street Won.”
The
cover was clearly celebratory in nature, yet the sub-heading for the article
sounded a decidedly cautious note: “Five Years After The Crash, It Could Happen
All Over Again.” Normally the Time cover would be interpreted as a
contrarian bearish signal for the stock market – a “heads up” warning that a
topping process could well be underway with the potential for a sharp reversal
in the coming weeks or months. The
addition of the proviso about a potential market crash, however, would lead one
to speculate that perhaps the somewhat bearish tone of the article cancels out
the cover’s implication. One of the
pioneers of the magazine cover indicator, Paul Macrae Montgomery, has offered a
different spin on the latest Time
cover, however. He related to Randall
Forsyth in this week’s issue of Barron’s
that the cover’s graphic superseded the cautionary message of the Time magazine article.
“If
historic probabilities reliably forecast the future, there’s an 80% chance the
market will top in a month and will be lower a year from now,” he told
Forsyth. Montgomery’s analysis of the
latest Time cover jibes with some
other recent magazine covers which point to excessive optimism among
investors. For instance, the
aforementioned Barron’s published a
“bull” cover on September 2 under the headline, “The Bull’s In Charge.” The cover featured a smiling,
sunglasses-wearing bull holding multiple shopping bags while talking on a cell
phone; in the background an angry bear simmers at being left out of the
shopping spree.
In
last week’s issue of Bloomberg
Businessweek the cover featured a picture of the world’s biggest ship being
constructed by shipping line Maersk. The
cover is significant since record-breaking structures like skyscrapers and
ships tend to coincide with peaks in the economy.
To
be sure, the magazine cover indicator isn’t infallible and it’s admittedly more
reliable, for timing purposes, at bottoms than at tops. Nevertheless, a slew of optimistic magazine
covers featuring bulls or other symbols of extreme optimism are common in the
weeks and months leading up to major tops.
Ironically, the latest Time
cover doesn’t present us with a timing tool but it does at least provide a
warning that the market could be in the process of rolling over as we heading
into the fall. Take this message with a
grain of salt if you must, but keep it in mind as we head into the fourth
quarter, especially if the NYSE internal momentum indicators start
deteriorating.
