Harlyn’s Process – Page 2 – Harlyn Research LLP

Prices Move Before the News

Friday, September 4th, 2020

Investors need a process which highlights what they don’t know

One of the great virtues of our process is that it is sensitive enough to identify sudden changes in the relationship between risk and return, which have no apparent justification in real life – until the news story which prompted them finally breaks. We have just had a classic example of this with the resignation of Prime Minister Abe, which was announced in late August, eight weeks after our weighting in Japan was suddenly reduced. There is always an explanation, even if you don’t what it is, and this note highlights ten other recent moves at sector or country level, which we think are only partially explained.

Filed under: Categories: Elections, Harlyn's Process, Japan

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Lessons from a Fast Market

Friday, June 12th, 2020

China plays a different game and Healthcare suffers

Yesterday’s sell-off was so brutal that it probably marks the start of a different regime in equity markets. We are out of Phase 1 of the recovery and into a second more sceptical and nervous regime. Both the US and the UK broke of out the uptrends in our daily indicator that have been in place since March. The technical situation is better in the Eurozone and Japan, while the level of financial repression is China so severe, in our view, that the indicator has lost most of its signalling power.

Filed under: Categories: China, Eurozone, Government Bonds, Harlyn's Process, Japan, United Kingdom, United States, Volatility

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Re-Configuring the S&P Sectors

Friday, May 29th, 2020

Time to Start Thinking About It

Well-designed sectors make portfolio management easier, but that means that the definitions need to be reviewed and refreshed on a regular basis. We believe we have arrived at that moment in the US. We propose splitting the Tech sector into two, combining Materials with Industrials and Energy with Utilities. We find that it is easier to generate systematic outperformance using the new definitions.

Filed under: Categories: Equities, Harlyn's Process, Risk-Adjusted Returns, Sector Strategy, United States

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No Crystal Ball

Friday, May 1st, 2020

Introducing a new daily indicator

We cannot hope to forecast all the social and economic consequences of the pandemic, but we can construct a model which allows us to observe to their impact on equities in real-time. Our new daily models are based on the same process as our weekly models. They outperformed during three similar crises in 1998, 2002 and 2008. They also suggest that US Equities will not regain their recent highs before the model reaches a point where previous mid-crisis rallies have come to an end.

Filed under: Categories: Harlyn's Process, Market Timing, United States

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Two Week Warning

Friday, January 24th, 2020

Mean reversion signal getting close to the danger zone

Our standard PRATER process is well-correlated with the subsequent performance of equities vs bonds. However, the relationship decays when we get close to extremes. Here, we can use a modified RSI approach to estimate the potential for mean reversion. Our 25-year data set indicates that equities are particularly vulnerable when they have been accelerating too hard (RSI) in relation to the speed at which they are travelling relative to bonds (PRATER). Presently, they are accelerating too hard, but the difference is not yet critical. At current progress, global equities will enter the danger zone in about two weeks, after which the probability of a high single-digit correction vs bonds rises sharply.

Filed under: Categories: Equities, Government Bonds, Harlyn's Process, Market Timing, United States

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Message from the Black Box

Thursday, May 2nd, 2019

July is the next danger period for US equities

Our models are actually very simple but they often look like a black box to outsiders. We have three separate indicators which all suggest that July will be a dangerous period for US equities. All of them are based on the way in which our models have behaved over the last 24 years. Of course, things may be different this time. We will just have to wait and see.

Filed under: Categories: Global Equities, Harlyn's Process, Market Timing, Seasonality

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Capitulation and the rule of 35

Thursday, April 18th, 2019

Managing risk on the downside

Equity bears are capitulating. The priority is to protect their portfolios from further underperformance by getting closer to their benchmark equity weight. Our models have always shown that the worst sample periods for our process are between 29-35 weeks. The behavioural explanation would be that fund managers are allowed to be wrong for two quarters in a row, but not for three. Cutting a losing position during the third quarter of the mistake tends to be more damaging than doing it early in the second.

Filed under: Categories: Diversification, Global Equities, Government Bonds, Harlyn's Process, Market Timing

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Markets at a Crossroads

Wednesday, February 20th, 2019

US Industrials may give us a sign

We detect signs that the rally in global equities is losing momentum, but we could be wrong, so we are going to do nothing for the next week or two. There are signs of recovering risk appetite in EM Equities and in credit, but not in equity sector selection. Our global equity vs fixed income model is at a critical chart-point and we will look to US Industrials to provide confirmation of that message, whatever it is, whenever it comes.

Filed under: Categories: Defensives, Global Equities, Harlyn's Process, Market Timing

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