The last time Mark Young posted on the Trader's Blog, he shared his views on a contrarian way of looking at the popular MACD indicator. Today, however, he is writing about something many of us have probably never heard of, "sentiment trading".

Mark has been an active investor in equity and options markets since 1983, and has been publishing his unique research and trading services since 1992. We hope you enjoy a look at this unique strategy he has developed and leave a comment for him here on the blog. We also encourage you to visit his site, WallStreetSentiment.com.
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For much of the past 25 years until recently, with some notable exceptions, "Buy and Hold" has been a challenging benchmark to exceed. While many active investors have "beaten the benchmark"  during that period, many investors were or would have been better served by simply taking a passive approach and allowing the market to provide them with historically impressive returns.

I hold, however, that those days are gone, and gone for the foreseeable future. The demographic factors that helped to drive the outsized gains of the 80's, 90's, and 00's are now working against even garnering mediocre long-term gains. To make matters worse, it is looking like the tax policies of the future are likely to become much less favorable to investing, capital formation, and economic growth. Continue reading "Buy and Hold Is Dead: Tools for Surviving a Traders Market" →