DOW JONES 50% correction or a new norm?

17 Mar 2019

The question on everyone's mind is that: "Are stocks overvalued right now or not?", "Is a major crash coming or we've seen the bottom and we're going for new all time highs?".

This is a hard question to ask. I try to approach this matter using the Great Depression as my basis point. Using the Pitchfork tool on the Great Depression, four very distinct ranges are presented. The top two I call the Bubble Band and the Bullish Band. The lower two, the Bearish Band and the Recession Band.

We see that since the Great Depression, DJI traded within the lower bands for almost 60 years after a convincing break-out took place in 1994/95 that paved the way to the tech bubble. This rally aggressively moved Dow Jones from the Bullish Band almost to the middle of the Bubble Band. Naturally the price levels were too unstable and crashed. The Dot-Com crash was not strong enough to break below the Bullish Band but the Subprime Mortgage bubble was. However trading inside the Bearish Band was short-lived and after a bottom was formed the index quickly recovered and traded inside the Bullish Band on a moderate rally for 8 years. Until only recently (2018) when it again entered marginally the Bubble Band and we've already seen the high volatility effect of this overvalued level.

So what happens next?

Either an approximately -50% correction like the last two times the index broke the Bullish Band (Dot-com, Subprimes) or a rather hard to grasp scenario for the extremists: The index will continue rising within the Bullish and Bubble Bands until it consolidates, making trading within the upper bands the new norm just like the 60 years that followed since the Great Depression where the price traded inside the lower bands.

No opinion can be right or wrong here. I welcome every "voice" in the comments section!