The S&P 500 is on the verge of flashing a closely followed technical buy signal later this week.
The “golden cross” occurs when the 50-day moving average moves above the 200-day moving average.
The indicator suggests more upside could be in store for the S&P 500, which is up 15% from its October low.
The stock market is on the verge of flashing a closely followed technical buy signal that suggests more upside ahead for equities.
The S&P 500’s rising 50-day moving average was just 26 points below its falling 200-day moving average on Tuesday. With the gap between the two averages falling by about eight points per day, the S&P 500 is on track to flash a golden cross by the end of this week, barring a big sell-off between now and then.
‘Big Short’ investor Michael Burry warned stocks would crash and rallies wouldn’t last. Here are 6 of his key tweets in 2022, and what they meant.
“The Big Short” investor Michael Burry suggested the S&P 500 could plunge below 1,900 points.
The Scion Asset Management chief based his prediction on how past crashes have played out.
Burry said brief rallies were likely, and joked about his penchant for premature predictions.
Michael Burry, the hedge fund manager of “The Big Short” fame, rang the alarm on the “greatest speculative bubble of all time in all things” in the summer of 2021. He warned the retail investors buying up meme stocks and cryptocurrencies that they were headed towards the “mother of all crashes.”
The Scion Asset Management chief’s grim prediction may be coming true, as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq indexes tumbled by 19% and 33% respectively in 2022. In tweets posted in May 2022 then subsequently deleted, Burry took credit for calling the sell-off, explained why he expects further declines, and cautioned against buying into relief rallies.
Here’s a roundup of Burry’s best tweets about the stock-market slump:
The pandemic crash was just the start
The S&P 500 index has rebounded strongly from the pandemic crash in the spring of 2020, rising from a low of 2,192 points to around 3,800 points today. However, it could halve in value to below 1,900 points over the next few years, Burry tweeted on May 3, 2022.
When the S&P 500 has crashed in the past, it has traded lower several years later, Burry noted. He pointed to the index bottoming 13% lower in 2009 than it did in 2002, 17% lower in 2002 than it did during the Long-Term Capital Management fiasco in 1998, and 10% lower in 1975 than in 1970.
If the benchmark index follows that historical pattern, it could trade 15% lower than its level in the spring of 2020, Burry said.
There may be epic but short-lived rallies
A “dead cat bounce” refers to a temporary rebound in stock prices after a significant fall, often because speculators buy shares to cover their positions.
They often occur during major declines in the stock market, Burry said in a May 4 tweet. The implication is that investors shouldn’t get their hopes up about any rallies in the coming months, as they’re likely to be brief respites that won’t result in a market recovery.
Burry noted that 12 of the 20 largest one-day rallies in the Nasdaq index took place as the dot-com bubble burst, while nine of the S&P 500’s 20 biggest one-day rallies occurred in the aftermath of the Great Crash in 1929.
Don’t be fooled by stocks rebounding
Stocks could stage multiple rallies before the crash is over, Burry warned in a May 5 tweet.
He noted that after the dot-com bubble burst, the Nasdaq rallied 16 times by more than 10% — gaining on average 23% each time — on its way to a 78% decline at its nadir.
Burry also emphasized that after the Great Crash of 1929, the Dow Jones index rallied 10 times by more than 10%, rising by an average of 23% each time, before bottoming at a 89% decline.
Stocks are on a dangerous trajectory
The US stock market appears to be following the pattern of previous bubbles, leaving it poised for a monumental crash, Burry noted in a May 8 tweet.
The Scion chief pointed to the S&P 500’s trajectory over the past 10 years, noting it was strikingly similar to the index’s chart for the decade leading up to the dot-com crash, and the Dow’s chart for the 10 years before the Great Crash of 1929.
Burry suggested that human nature was behind the consistently decade-long buildups, and implied that history is repeating itself.
Burry predicts correctly, but early
Burry appeared to take a victory lap in a May 10 tweet, suggesting he believes the stock-market crash that he’s been warning about has finally arrived.
The Scion boss joked he was early with his prediction, just as he was during the mid-2000s US housing bubble.
Burry also nodded to Elon Musk calling him a “broken clock” last year, after the Scion chief bet against Tesla stock, predicted it would collapse in value, and questioned Musk’s motives for selling his company’s shares.
Stocks are set to tumble a lot further
7/7 SLIDES
If the technical signal does materialize, it would be the first time for the S&P 500 since July 2020 amid the ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Stocks went on to surge as much as 52% after the July 2020 golden cross.
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The indicator can help alert traders to securities in the stock market that are solidifying their uptrend and are likely to experience a continuation with higher stock prices.
In December, the Dow Jones Industrial Average flashed the golden cross signal. Since then, the index is about flat.
Meanwhile, the Nasdaq 100 is still far away from generating a golden cross, and that’s something traders will want to see happen to confirm that the recent rally in stocks can be sustained well into 2023.
The opposite signal to the golden cross is the “death cross,” which is a sell signal that triggers when the 50-day moving average crosses below the 200-day moving average. The S&P 500 flashed a death cross in March of last year, and the index subsequently went on to fall another 16% at its low.
But the technical buy indicator can sometimes be a head-fake as it has a success rate of 64%, according to data compiled by The Chart Report. Analyst Ian McMillan looked at a total of 81 golden crosses that occurred in the Dow Jones Industrial Average dating back to its inception in 1896.
He found that on average, stocks were higher three months after a golden cross 62% of the time, and higher six months after the golden cross 64% of the time.
The average three-month return when stocks were higher after a golden cross was 7.33%, while the average return six months after the golden cross was 10.65%.
Stressing the importance that moving average crossover signals are not perfect, Ari Wald, head of technical analysis at Oppenheimer & Co., said of The Chart Report, “All big rallies start with a golden cross, but not all golden crosses lead to a big rally.”
