Just before I underwent surgery at the end of the first week of February, I began to pen an article regarding the potential bearish set up in iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) as a follow up to bearish analysis I posted about iShares MSCI Emerging Markets ETF (EEM) earlier that week entitled “Sentiment Speaks: Emerging Markets Look Sick.”
Unfortunately, I got too busy to complete that article, but needless to say, the structure in remained quite troubling as long as it maintained below 174.
While the S&P 500 (SPX) was making new highs, both IWM and EEM were presenting rather ominous looking patterns. And, as I was telling the members of ElliottWaveTrader.net, either IWM was going to see a strong catch-up move through the 174 level (which I would join on a break out to the long side), or it was going to drop down to the 123 region and pull the rest of the market down with it.
Moreover, as I said about EEM in early February, the ETF was setting up a 1-2 downside structure, which was going to be pointing us much lower in the coming months of 2020.
So, the question with which we were grappling at the end of 2019 and early 2020 is which of these markets was telling the truth – IWM/EEM or the SPX?
Truth Be Told
If the SPX would have mirrored the patterns of IWM and EEM, we should not have broken out over the 3040 maximum resistance expectation. This is what threw off my analysis from November through February on the SPX, whereas the analysis on EEM and IWM remained quite consistent. And, when the SPX followed through over 3150, it was presenting a much more bullish posture, as long as it retained support over 3150, whereas IWM and EEM were still presenting a much more potentially bearish posture. And this is why so many of you took me to task for being wrong regarding my equity market analysis. Yet, as we see now, maintaining a cautious stance was not wholly inaccurate.
But, again, until early February, the question remained as to which equity charts were telling the truth. And this was the question that caused me great angst during the late 2019 and early 2020 period of time. It certainly made me struggle in my analysis of the SPX more than I have in the entire 9 years I have been writing articles. And, again, many of you took me to task for maintaining the cash I raised around 2880SPX and putting it into TLT in the fall of 2018. But, my money has been quite happy in TLT since that time and is now sitting in cash and available to re-deploy into the equity market.
Back in February, when the SPX approached the 3400 region, we began looking for another pullback, with initial support at 3280, followed by support down to the 3100-55 region. When it began to break support, the SPX won the award for the “fakeout-of-the-year” for both 2019 and 2020, whereas IWM and the EEM were telling the truth the whole time.
And as I kept telling members, until IWM confirmed the SPX move, I was unwilling to join the upside in the market in an aggressive fashion.
So here we stand with both EEM and IWM having pulled the market down and the SPX following along. In one week, the market has erased all the profits seen during the prior 5 months, which was the same period of time through which I was struggling in my SPX analysis. Moreover, in three weeks' time, we have erased a year of gains. Yet all the profits we have earned from being in TLT have allowed us to significantly perform better than most in the equity market as we sit here today with the benefit of hindsight.
While I am certainly not here to tell you that I was right in missing the rally from 2900-3400 in SPX, I am here to say that our Fibonacci Pinball mythology has kept me out of situations like this more times in the past than I can count. While there are times that I may miss a market move, the long-term track record that we have attained with our methodology has far outweighed the moves we have missed.
Don't Fool Yourselves
While there is no such thing as perfection in the equity market, I am quite happy with the manner in which our strategy has worked for us over the years, even though we have missed some moves. And anyone who thinks that they can garner every move offered by the market is seriously fooling themselves. Yet in the end, we are now sitting in a better posture than most in the market, as we have significant cash available to deploy, whereas most in the market simply rode this back down as they were paralyzed in their long positions.
Yet, the importance of this decline cannot be understated. It has now clarified why I have been struggling with my analysis these last several months, and it also appropriately supports my expectations for the next 3-5 years in the equity market.
You see, corrective structures take shape as a 3-wave event, which we label as an a-b-c move. The move down in IWM into its December 2018 low was the a-wave of that correction, the rally back up toward 170 was the b-wave of that correction and we are now likely within the c-wave of this correction. In fact I have had the 123 region as my ideal target zone for this correction in IWM for over half a year, and we are now a stone's through away from that target. In fact, based upon the current structure, there is growing potential to drop as deep as the 105-111 region before this correction completes. And the action we see over the coming week will give us a better understanding of that potential.
Ultimately, this should be viewed as good news by long-term investors. As it stands now, my long-term upside target for IWM is in the 210-240 region. So it is likely we are going to see a major buying opportunity in 2020, which, to be honest, is something I actually expected to happen several months ago.
While I am quite certain many will still take me to task, those that have earned their profits with our work in TLT since we called the bottom in November of 2018 are sitting quite pretty with that money in cash to now take advantage of the opportunity being presented to us over the coming weeks/months. And when I hear about the hedge funds that have been blowing up of late, it gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling that I have been able to keep my clients safe and out of this mess.