Friday, March 31, 2017

Stock Market Forecast April through September, 2017: Start to worry

My U.S. stock market forecasting models expect a flat or weak stock market for the coming month and the next six months -- not too surprising as the second half of the year tends to be weaker than the first half.  For April, the model expects a minuscule gain of 0.2%.  The next 6 months are projected to yield a loss of 1%.  The models are just a rough estimate of future results, so the current forecast is an expectation of little market change.

Forecasts from all of my semi-autonomous models have been declining for  several months.  If that continues, my forecasts and the market will get even weaker over the summer.  (Read below chart.)



The next graph shows, beginning in 2007, the actual 6 month return of the market (black) along with the projected return rates forecast by my models.  (I use the Value Line Arithmetic Average as my market index.) The red line is the composite projected by combining the forecasts of several of my models.  For the past several months the composite forecast and all the semi-independent forecasts have trended down.So far, there is no reason for alarm.